Middleswarth Potato Chips are "our" chips
Written by Cindy Herman
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My sister moved to North Carolina more than 20 years ago, but our mother still makes sure to have Middleswarth Potato Chips on hand when she comes home for a visit. No one makes chips like Middleswarth's. "It's kind of what you've grown up with,"Jeff Goff, vice president of Ira Middleswarth & Son, Inc., said of the locally-loved chips. |
The white, light-as-air crispiness of Middleswarth potato chips has endured through some 66 years. Middleswarth's are "our"chips, the chips most often present at Central Pennsylvania picnics, late-night snack fests, tailgate parties - shoot, any and all parties period. They hang in individual-sized bags at Little League concession stands and they are the ones most likely to be seen in a big "Weekender"bag sitting on top of the refrigerators in our homes. "Most companies use corn, canola, or cottonseed oil,"Goff said. "We use soybean shortening, a hydrogenated soybean oil. That's what gives it its flavor and light texture."
And those fat bubbles, too. "We call them blisters,"Goff said with a laugh, when asked about the bubbled chips that everyone reaches for first. The chips will sometimes blister, depending on the thickness of the slice or the variety of potato. "It gets a little bit of cooking oil trapped in it, in the blister,"he said, then as it goes through the process, it cools. And while they don't specifically try to create blisters, I was relieved to learn they're not trying to prevent them, either. Same goes for those delicious curled-up chips. "That is all due to thickness of the slice and the temperature profile in the cooking,"Goff said. A thinner slice and lower cooking temperature will cause a chip to fold over. "We try to cook right between 340 and 350 degrees."That is the responsibility of the fryer operator.
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