How do they do it?

I finished off the last few scraps in a bag of Ruffles® Potato Chips. That created a desire for more, so I grabbed a couple of red skin potatoes and sliced off a few thin pieces on the flat blade of our cheese grater (which is known around here as the Swedish Cuisinart, so named by one of the ranch’s cooks since the one at the high ranch was made in Sweden). A splash or two of canola oil in the big frying pan on the wood stove was all I needed to start making fresh chips (crisps, for you Aussies it seems crisps are what they’re called in England). Since the hot oil was shallow, I had to turn the chips as they cooked, not an easy task since it took a two-handed effort with a fork and tongs. As they browned, I pulled them out one at a time and laid them carefully on a paper towel. There was still a sheen of oil on their tops, so I dabbed them gently with another paper towel, taking care not to break them. I dusted them with very fine salt, then jiggled and flipped them around on the towel to spread the salt evenly.

Soon the potato slicing on the Swedish Cuisinart had to stop because as I reached the thick middle of the potato the slicing blade was too short. Now I had to break out the real Cuisinart and find the slicing blade in the messy cabinet where all the odd things that are rarely used are stored—things like the apple peeler/corer, the hand-cranked grinder, the 86-year-old electric waffle iron that still works beautifully, and various lidless storage containers and piles of lids for no-longer-owned storage containers.

Our Cuisinart blade cuts a 3-millimeter slice, which is not really what you want for chips/crisps since they come out too thick and tough, so I made what ended up as round thin French fries (chips). Again, the turning, draining, patting and salting took so long that what had started as a project with the potential to be really fun turned into a drudge.

Eventually I finished cooking the two potatoes and had a big mess to clean up. I remarked to Karla that I couldn’t imagine how the Frito-Lay company made any money doing this. Then I figured that they probably didn’t use frying pans on a wood-burning stove, and they probably had a bigger Cuisinart with a thinner blade. But their paper towel bill must be staggering unless perhaps they use cloth towels that they wring out at the end of every shift. Still I can’t imagine how they reach such a high volume of production without going batty with boredom.

Then there is the thing that makes every bag of chips so dismaying to the consumer—packing the large, whole chips on top, broken ones beneath, and finally the teensy flakes and potato grit at the bottom of the barely half-filled bag. Now that must take real skill!