How Potato Chips are Made

This monster of the snack food industry has to go through many steps before it takes on its form as a potato chip. First the potatoes are dumped into a bath and washed. Then they are lifted to the peeler. The peeler is not the modest little metal potato peeler you use in your kitchen. The peeler is a long cylinder with rollers that revolve around and around stripping the potato of its skin. The peeled potatoes then empty unto an inspection table where inspectors look for defects in the potatoes to remove.

Then the potatoes move to a slicer that looks like something out of a scary monster movie. The slicer features eight sharp blades held upright in a ring. In the center of this ring is a revolving plate. One by one the potatoes drop upon this revolving plates. Over and over the spinning plates throw the potatoes against the revolving blades to remove slices from the potatoes. Generally these slices are 1/20 of an inch.

These newly made slices are carried to the fryer while being washed and dried. Hot oil and slices are put in the back of the fryer together. (The fryer is a long shallow trough.) While cooking the chips, the hot oil pushes them from the back of the trough to the front where they are carried off by conveyor belt.

A conveyor lifts the chip out of the oil. Then workers salt, season and inspect them. A conveyor belt carries them to machines where they are packaged. Those packages arrive at your grocery or convenience stores. Americans snack on potato chips all year round. Yet more of these monstrously popular snack are consumed on Super Bowl Sunday than any other day.

And to think that this monster snack began with just a humble Michigan potato!

Source: Michigan

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