So I am snacking on some tortilla chips that have been in my cupboard for a couple of weeks and noted that they while they were still good, they were not as crisp as they would be if the bag was freshly opened. I am assuming that they absorb moisture from the air which makes them somewhat “dead”.
I am slow to eat chips, so if I have a bag, it is always around for weeks. Would storing the open bag in the refrigerator help to keep the chips crisp and fresh tasting?
Possibly, but the problem is they would condensate and absorb moisture very quickly as soon as you take them out of the fridge. So, they might stay fresher longer, as long as they’re in the fridge, but they’ll get stale a half hour after you take them out, even if you just opened them yesterday.
The trick would be to keep them in the fridge totally sealed and let them come up to room temperature before breaking the seal OR bring them back up to room temperature in an warm oven so that condensation isn’t an issue.
OTOH, I can’t think of anything crunchy that comes out of the fridge, so maybe not.
Nope, they get soggy when they revert to room temp, I’m guessing because of condensation. Course, I’m from SC, so EVERYTHING gets a bit damp as soon as it’s exposed to our normal levels of humidity. Mileage may vary.
If you froze them, and ate them quickly while still frozen, that might work.
Odd that you guys are speaking like this is a hypothetical.
Yeah, they don’t stay any longer, but they don’t really get stale either. So if you run out of clippies to seal them up, putting them in the fridge isn’t a bad idea.
And, in the event of stale chips, just put them in the microwave for like 30 seconds or so.
Alternatively, you could get a little deep fryer for twenty bucks and have fresh tortilla chips whenever you want.
I have made my own chips before, both from masa and from tortillas. In my experience, it is one of those things where the hassle-to-payoff ratio makes it just not worth it. It takes a long time to make any significant quantity of chips and they are dirt cheap at the store.
Buy a small snack bag, try it and see.
Only solutions are to either buy smaller bags, eat larger bags faster, or some combination of the two.
Oh, I haven’t tried making them from masa, just store bought tortillas.
If you pop your bowl of stale chips in the microwave for about 20 seconds they usually crisp back up and the corn taste comes out.
I wanted to see if there was a consensus answer before wasting time on this. If I could have determined the answer quickly, I would have just done that. To figure this out, it would take months–multiple runs with a control, each lasting three or more weeks to ensure that the chips have a chance to get stale.
There are also related questions. Can I keep the chips fresh longer if I put a couple silica gel packets in the bag? What if I put some rice in the bag–would that help? Someone out there has to have tried this already.
I like to pop them into the conventional oven for 10 minutes or so (spread out on a cookie sheet @ about 300F).
They’ve got this oil still on them, and this is kinda like frying them again. And unlike with the microwave, I get the re-heating-the-oil benefit without getting the turn-the-water-into-steam effect.
Just use a plastic storage container, like the red-topped Rubbermaid ones from Target. I use one for cereal and one for chips, just put the whole bag in there. A good sized container will hold a couple to three opened bags with the air out of them and scrunched down.