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Popchips – Review

A number of weeks ago Tiffany told me about a great new snack chip she had while at work, they are called Pop Chips. I’m not big into snacks like this but thought it may be worth a shot, their claim to fame is they aren’t fried, they aren’t baked and they use all natural ingredients – kind of a novel idea! A week ago I was hunkered down in a hotel working and made a run to the grocery store for food to keep me going and I saw a display of Popchips so I picked up a bag.

My first thought is that they are a little pricey for what they are, then again I was in a pricey area so I’ll reserve branding them as expensive until I shop around for them locally. The next thing I noticed is the “share bag” their larger bag, is only 3 ounces, compared to 8.5 ounces or more in regular bags of chips for the same price it makes popchips seem rather expensive. But let’s not hold that against them just yet.

They are healthier, they are using all natural ingredient and due to the way they are processed they are lower in fat. My “go to” chip of choice is Cape Cod Original Chips when I’m going to eat chips, which is pretty infrequently in my life. Comparing the same 1 ounce serving size the Popchips do have 1/2 of the total fat, 4 grams compared to 8 grams from Cap Cod chips and no saturated fat, compared to 1 gram from the Cape Cod chips, score one for Popchips! What does concern me is the sodium, one ounce of Cape Cod original chips have 110mg of sodium compared to a staggering 280mg from the Popchips, score one for Cape Cod. The Popchips have fewer calories coming in at 120 which 35 come from fat compared to 150 calories from the Cape Cod chips which 70 come from fat. It seems the caloric difference is directly tied to the higher fat content of the originals. Cape Cod does offer a Reduced Fat chip and that makes it a much closer battle.

I guess if you count calories the Popchips have an advantage, but the Reduced Fat Cape Cod chips only have 10 calories more. If you are looking for lowest fat, the Popchips do win hands down they are low in fat for a potato chip, even the Reduced Fat Cape Cod’s have 6 grams of a fat per serving compared to Popchips 4 grams. If you’re watching your sodium, avoid Popchips they seem to be just full of it!

How about taste, do they live up to the hype, are they a viable low fat replacement to the regular potato chip? I think the best answer here is maybe? They do taste good, but they are not a regular potato chip, then again they never really claimed to be regular, they are Popchips. If a regular potato chip and a toasted rice cake had a child it would be a Popchip. It tastes like a lighter potato chip but there is a certain toasted taste to them that borders on tasting burnt. The texture is miles off, it reminds me more of a rice cake than a potato chip. While they are all natural they are heavily processed. You’ll notice the image below all of the chips are the same exact size and perfectly round.

Some develop waves and have holes in them but you can clearly see they all came from the same mold. I obviously don’t have access to exactly how they are processed, I suspect they shave, mash or somehow create a potato paste of sorts and then apply their famed heat and pressure to “pop” them in a mold. While it may be all natural ingredient you can tell they are heavily processed. Call me old fashioned but I like natural ingredients as they are provided for us by mother nature. Often the more we do to an ingredient the further we get from it’s original taste, shape, texture, etc… and that appears to the case with Popchips, they sort of taste like a potato, but something is just a miss to my palate.

I think my biggest complaint was the almost burnt taste they had. They were pale and appeared to cooked correctly, but they had a heavily toasted taste to them that wasn’t terrible but it also didn’t make me want to keep eating them. It’s 3 weeks later and I still have 1 serving from the 3 ounce bag left. I wanted to try the original chips first before I attempted any of their flavored chips, I will likely try them again but if my second impression mimics my first it will be my last. I eat potato chips so rarely that when I do I want it to be a potato chip, not mashed paste that is heated and pressurized.

I may be wrong in my theory about how they are processed, however their site is particularly vague and I suspect that my theory is pretty close to accurate. I would love to hear if I’m miles off, so if anyone with insider info reads this please let me know.

I took one final image, a close up to try to capture they texture of these chips – be sure to click the image to see the original size.

Popchips are an interesting concept, but sometimes I just want to eat real things instead of a concept.

Two Simple Tips for Better and Easier Seasoning

Seasoning is one of those simple items that alludes so many, so why not share few simple tricks to make it simpler and more efficient. I also find these techniques make seasoning fun and I always enjoy sharing it which keeps it fresh in my mind – yes I just said I find seasoning fun!

The first trick is really obvious when you know it, but until you think about it you can miss it entirely. Season from a distance, that’s right, that’s it! Don’t get really close to what ever you’re season, keep your hands as far away from your target as possible. The benefits of this are pretty obvious, more even distribution of seasoning over your food. Take a pinch of salt and sprinkle it over a large plate 1″ above the plate now take the same size pinch of salt and sprinkle it from 5″ or more the plate and notice how it is distributed. It’s a very simple trick that anyone can do and it will make your food just that much better.

The next trick is almost comical but it saves time and is sure to be a conversational technique when you do it in front of friends and family. Season your cutting board, there I’ve said it. When preparing proteins you usually want to season both sides of the meat prior to cooking, this requires flipping the raw protein when seasoning both sides. If you season your cutting board, place the meat on it then season the other side while it’s resting on the seasoned cutting board. It sounds simple, perhaps even silly but it works great and reduces how often you’re handling the raw meat. Now just think of the jokes you can make for dinner guests serving them seasoned cutting board!

There you have two simple, effective, time saving seasoning techniques that will make your cooking experience more enjoyable and successful.

Lexington BBQ Fest 2011

Last Saturday, October 22, 2011 was the Annual Lexington BBQ Festival and what a sight it is! I lived in Lexington for nearly 2 years, we recently purchased a home 20 minutes north of Lexington but Tiffany had never been to a BBQ Festival so we went to check it out. This event is a HUGE food event, but it’s a lot more than just BBQ. I bet most readers will find it shocking that neither Tiffany or I had any BBQ at BBQ Festival, held in Lexington, the self proclaimed BBQ Capital of the World – their claim, not mine! I’ll explain why we didn’t later on, for now let’s discuss what has become a world famous food festival.

Since 1984 Lexington has hosted Barbecue Festival to wrap up their tribute of sorts to Barbecue Month, they have a number of Barbecue theme’d events all month long culminating in the enormous BBQ Festival. The exact tally of how many come to pay homage to this unique style of BBQ is unknown but it’s rumored to be between 100,000 to 150,000 people, 2011 was probably on the high side of this. Below is a sample of what the crowd looks like.

This crowd has come for BBQ and what’s turned into an enormous exhibition that encompasses just about anything you can imagine. They also have been feathering in more traditional carnival and fair type attractions, including Pig and Duck races, Chainsaw show, rides, face painting, BMX Bike show, countless displays and of course fair food! There is a general BBQ and pig overtone on everything, but that’s part of the charm of this festival.

A little history on Lexington style BBQ, like most regionally famous cuisines it stems from poverty, pigs were plentiful but the desirable cuts were sold for profit and they retained the less desirable cuts for themselves. In this case they use pork butt or shoulder is used as the protein of choice for Lexington style BBQ. From there there will likely be subtle difference from one BBQ place to another (there are over 20 BBQ restaurants in Lexington) and everyone likes their’s just a little different. But typically it’s slow roasted over hardwood embers, “pit cooked” in what has become the traditional “low and slow” barbecue anthem. Different places prefer different types of wood, but it usually is always hardwood and it’s always cooked low and slow. There is no dry rub, no conventional seasoning applied during cooking though it is basted with Lexington style bbq sauce, what the local’s call “dip.” Much like the actual wood blend used to cook the pork dip varies slightly from place to place, the basic formula for dip is equal parts, vinegar, ketchup and water with salt, pepper and other seasonings to taste and it’s traditionally cooked down while the pig is cooking. Like I said every place does the sauce a little differently and it can range from sweet to tangy to even a little spicy. Once the pig is cooked it’s traditionally served “chopped” which means just that, it’s cut up and chopped into very small pieces, see the image below to get an idea of the consistency.

It’s typically served on a very inexpensive roll with a side of dip and/or some restaurants apply a little dip when making the sandwich. If you’ve looked closely you’ll notice some red and white “slaw” on top of the meat, that is another staple to Lexington style bbq. This slaw, which is known as bbq slaw in this area is super simple and I just love it. Red Slaw is just chopped cabbage, vinegar, ketchup and black pepper. A little variation I’ve made to this slaw is I do equal parts bbq sauce and ketchup, it adds a greater depth of flavor and a pleasant smokiness – purest think I am the devil.

That pretty much wraps up the mystery of Lexington BBQ, the festival is based around this rather unique style. As anyone who has looked closely into BBQ knows, it varies hugely region to region, one of these variation is eastern NC bbq which is radically different from western NC bbq, in the eastern side of the state it’s more of a vinegar based sauce, they enjoy NC ribs and they don’t use “dip” they use “mop” but that’s a post for another time, back to the festival.

I mentioned earlier that we didn’t have the BBQ, I recommended this option for two reasons, it was a beautiful day and the turnout to the free admission festival was huge, it was estimated at near 150,000 people this year. It seems they run out of BBQ every year and I felt it would be nice to let those who traveled a greater distance enjoy it on the day of the festival, we can get it just about any day. Also, the purest claim the bbq isn’t as good on the day of the festival because the participating restaurants all commingle the bbq and then you lose a lot of the subtlety of the individual places. All of these altruistic reasons aside, we wanted the fair food that is rarely available in this area. We had funnel cake, home made ice cream, butterfly chips with cheese and sampled a number of other local products. We rarely get to eat these delicious and terrible foods so we enjoyed cutting loose and participating in the festivities.

Additionally we met a lot of fantastic vendors, saw some incredible products and enjoyed a very family friendly environment. If you’re anywhere in the area I strongly recommend checking out this food festival or making a trip to try this delicious and unique Lexington Style BBQ at any of the many local BBQ restaurants in town.

Maldon Sea Salt – Review

If you’ve ever watched Food TV or spent any time around professional chef’s you’ll notice an awful lot of them use a very course sea salt when cooking, the sea salt that is preferred by chef’s is Maldon Sea Salt. As someone who’s watched a fair amount of Food TV I was curious what all the hype was about, I knew it was expensive for salt, I knew it was coarse and uneven but I was curious if it was any better, or was it just different? I picked up a two pack, it was cheaper to buy two and what if it really changed my life, I didn’t want to wait to get more. I had to order it online, I looked at my local markets and none of them carried it, I guess it is sort of high end for salt, but come on it’s just salt! I ordered mine from Amazon but with some further digging Salt Works seems to have a better price.

At first glance I was shocked to say the least, see the picture of Maldon below

A nice, high quality box of premium sea salt – this is the stuff dreams are made of! Now look below and see the shocking part, a side by side image of my trusty old Morton’s Kosher salt next to the new dog in town, Maldon.

I’m thankful the big mean Morton box didn’t step on our new British friend, because it was laughable seeing the two boxes next to each other. Maldon is a British company, the salt is imported and has an interesting legacy behind it, read more about it on their site. Once the laughter wore off I was almost sick to my stomach, I just paid $8 for this tiny little box of salt compared to the $3 and change I normally pay for the giant Morton kosher salt. I don’t mind sending more if I’m getting something special and I don’t even mind splurging from time to time for something special, I just wasn’t expecting such a difference. The best way to put it the Maldon cost me roughly $0.94/ounce the Morton cost my around $0.08/ounce that is a huge price difference for “salt.”

Next came the appearance of the Maldon, this too was shocking.

Click on the image to see it full size, the variety of the individual grains is pretty extraordinary, it looks just like it does on TV! It varies from an almost powder like salt to little “nuggets” larger than a pea. Of course I had to try it and not to surprisingly it tasted salty! Though there was an enjoyable crunch present, unlike some other extremely large salt crystals I’ve had in the past these were enjoyably crunchy, normally large pieces of salt are like munching on shale, not in this case they taste light and fragile despite their “don’t mess with me” size.

Below is a picture of Maldon next to my regular Morton Kosher Salt – the Maldon is on the left/top and the Morton is on the right/bottom

Visually the difference is striking, the Morton is whiter which comes from it being “pure” salt, Maldon has natural minerals and natural additives/flavorings. Though keep in mind both salts are at least 97% sodium chloride so the minerals and additives in in the Maldon are minimal. Next comes the grain size, while Morton’s Kosher salt is no slouch in this department it is dwarfed by the king kong of salt crystals, unfortunately I didn’t have any iodized (table) salt in the house for comparison.

Now onto the taste, Morton is my staple, I’ve used probably 10lbs of it in the last 5 years, I know this salt very well, it’s versatile, affordable and a wise investment for any chef or cook who wants to explore beyond iodized salt (which I find to have a very sharp and unpleasant taste.) Kosher salt as a rule offers a mellower flavor than iodized salt, it’s more relaxed, not as sharp tasting and thus gives you a greater range of seasoning you can apply which is a great thing when cooking. Which brings me to an interesting and note worthy point, when heavily cooking or dissolving Maldon I can discern no difference in flavor, the wonderful crunch vanishes and it tastes just like the Morton’s. So when cooking, anything that will dissolve the salt entirely I would not recommend spending the premium on Maldon.

On the flip side, Maldon is GREAT when you can tell it’s still there. When finishing a dish, grilled steaks, broiled seafood and the list goes on and on, I find Maldon to be amazing. It’s even mellower than Morton’s kosher salt, it has a very light and crisp taste that is delightful. I know we are only talking salt here, but if you try both back to back you’ll see what I’m talking about. Yes it is a luxury but it’s an affordable luxury, I think most people can swing $8 on something that will last them for a year or two and it’s a great product to try and see if you really enjoy it. Some luxuries in the culinary world are absolutely insanely priced, this is insanely priced for salt, but it’s still an affordable luxury to try. We’re not talking about $1,600/pound white truffles here, but it is a nice treat to reward yourself with if you enjoy cooking.

To recap, Maldon Sea Salt is the rock star of the salt world, I think it even wears sun glasses. It’s extremely expensive by salt standards, nearly 12 fold the cost of regular kosher salt but not an expensive luxury item to try. I don’t recommend it to season soups or other dishes when it will be dissolved and essentially vanish. However, if finishing a dish before serving and applying some seasoning, or any other instance that the salt will hold up through the cooking process I think it’s well worth trying the Rolls Royce of the salt kingdom.

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