12
votes
Truffle chips suggestions?
I'm trying to make my own truffle chips for the wife after having it at a nice bar together. Any suggestions as to the types of chips or truffle seasoning? I'm going to try to buy a bag of regular chips, put it into a bowl, and just shake with some truffle salt and truffle oil (real kind not synthetic flavor).
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
*Thanks everyone! Looks like it's time to do it properly instead of the lazy way...
If you want to do it for real, get a mandolin. Slice the potatoes super thin, put them in a bath of water to blanch them. Ideally you'd add a tablespoon of vinegar and boil them for 30 seconds or so to thoroughly blanch them, but that's optional. Strain and dry. Heat some oil to 350F, fry until lightly golden (without the thorough blanch they'll be darker because of the excess starch turning to sugar and caramelizing). Once you take them out of the oil and let the oil drain, there's a 30-second window where the chips will pull any flavoured oil into them. This is when you want to season them with truffle salt/oil.
I personally wouldn’t slice super thin because keeping them (reasonably) thick gives better texture. But yes, OP should make them himself. It’s a bit of a pain but the result will be better since he is in control of the seasoning.
Even if you want thick crisps, a mandoline is excellent for consistency which I've found makes a huge difference with frying.
Oh absolutely, no denial there.
I agree that freshly fried is probably your best bet if you're already splurging on good quality truffle products. The advantages of DIY are being able to control for salt and having the seasoning adhere better to the hot chips. I recommend making small test batches to see if you like the results before you commit to using up all of your ingredients. Do you like thick cut or thin? Starchy or waxy potato? Can you get them crispy enough with a shallow fry or deep fry? Would you rather sacrifice crispiness for ease by air frying? Etc. Some people (me lol) do not like deep frying at home because they don't want to deal with the cleanup and eventual disposal of the used oil.
As an alternative, you might be able to utilize storebought chips by briefly reheating them in the oven, maybe blotting with paper towel before and tossing with truffle seasoning/oil. I would watch out for salt levels depending on the brand. My favorite thin chip is Lay's Lightly Salted which has only 65mg sodium. For a thicker chip, I've recently become addicted to Costco Kirkland Signature's Krinkle Cut Kettle Chips with Himalayan Salt, but it has 200mg sodium so I wouldn't add even more salt to it.
Good luck on your culinary adventure! 🤤
Forget chips. Like others have said, to do it properly you'll need to fry your own. Sprinkling things on to commerical chips won't work.
Popcorn. Get a small, expensive bottle of good white truffle oil from a source like Eataly — there is a lot of bad truffle oil out there, so which one you buy matters a lot — and some white truffle salt. Melt your butter, then add a few drops of truffle oil and salt the popcorn with truffle salt. Voila.
You can probably get away with doing this on light microwave popcorn packets, but to do it right pop your own from scratch so you can add more truffle seasoning without making it too salty or greasy.
I love savoury popcorn (ususlly nutritive yeast, pepper, salt), and can't believe I've never thought to mix flavoured oils into the butter. Game changing, thank you
If you don't want to use a deep fryer you can use an air fryer to make the chips :) I do this at home and use an avocado oil spray so that the chips have a light coating of oil that the flavor can adhere to, and to keep the chips from getting too dry. I agree that the flavoring needs to be added immediately after the chips are cooked.