Store Your Chips in the Freezer to Prevent Them From Drying Out.
Long-term storage of chips is not a priority for most of us, who usually breathe in an entire packet for a day or two. If, however, you get overly ambitious and buy a family size, you may find yourself having a sad, stale, half full bag of chips in a week or two – that is, if you don’t close them tightly and insert them. freezer.
Yes, freezer. Admirers of this practice argue that it prevents open-ended chips from aging for months. While food chemists are not entirely sure why this works, there is ample anecdotal evidence that it does, from tortilla chips to potato chips . I first tried this trick a few months ago after I noticed a friend stores tortilla chips in the freezer and they never get stale. Fascinated, I soon found other people enthusiastically recommending this practice on Reddit , Twitter, and the general blogosphere , so I decided to try it myself. I’ve seen the same results. Maybe my chips will become obsolete someday, but I’m still waiting.
Storing chips in the freezer makes some intuitive sense – the chips need to be sealed and stored in a cool and dry place, and what place in your house is colder or drier than the freezer? If you live in a particularly warm or humid climate, your freezer or refrigerator may be the only place in your home that’s cool or dry at all. This may be why this trick works so well for me; As a New Orleans resident, I live mostly in a swamp.
As with storing a bottle of vodka or gin in the freezer to chill, tossing in a bag of chips won’t get you fully frozen the next time you feel like pampering yourself. According to Bob Jones, president of Jones’ Potato Chips, chips don’t freeze in the usual sense of the word – they just get very cold . Jones says most of the moisture comes from potatoes, so there is almost no water left to freeze. “When you put [potato chips] in the freezer, the water content is very low and it probably just freezes the residual water,” adds Sally Mitchell of the American Chemical Society. Mitchell tells us that she and her colleagues suggested that freezing tiny amounts of water in the chips prevents the starch from retrograding, which is associated with the staling process. The amount of frozen water is small enough so that it does not alter the texture, flavor, or nutritional value of the chips, or freeze the chips’ solids.
If you don’t seal them incorrectly, they will come out the same as they were. Make sure they are in their original packaging or in another airtight container such as a Ziploc bag. The less air hits the chips, the better. You can eat the chips straight from the freezer, or place them on the counter for a few minutes to warm them up to room temperature. Some people really like the taste of cold chips, but that depends a lot on personal preference.
It’s one of those bizarre, cryptic tricks that doesn’t seem to work as well as it does – until you try it.