TODAY IN FOOD: It’s National Corn Chip Day
| When we first began to evaluate corn chips, we went to the supermarket and specialty food stores and bought every brand available. The results were staggering. The supermarket brands were—to our sensitive palates, which don’t eat preservatives or mass-marketed brands packed with salt—INEDIBLE. They tasted like salted cardboard. Now, we know that these products (we won’t name names, but some begin with D and F, and they are not the only ones) rack up many millions of dollars in sales. But there’s a lot of bad food out there, and a lot of people who don’t know the difference pay for it. If you like your big-name chips, we do not mean to impugn your value as a lover of fine food. We believe you have not tasted the good stuff, and when you do, you, too will convert to what we think are the best brands or corn and tortilla chips. |  Blue and yellow tortilla chips grom the Garden of Eatin’ garnish a bowl of black bean soup. |
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| What’s the difference between a corn chip and a tortilla chip? They are both made from corn or masa,* vegetable oil, salt and water; but tortilla chips are cut-up wedges from tortillas. Corn chips are processed into a particular shape—curls or scoops, like Fritos. Corn chips were, for the most part, the only known corn-based chip outside of California until the 1970s, when they were popularized by growth of Mexican restaurants.
*You’ll often see masa listed in the ingredients, instead of corn. Masa is corn that has been dried, treated with a lime water solution, then ground. |
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