Oyster & Seafood Flavored Potato Chips

I spent almost thirty minutes the other day watching my 3-year-old peacefully organize and categorize his dinosaur toys.  Green with green, blue with blue, big with big, small with small.  It was shocking, as the kid rarely sits still for more than five minutes, and that's only while eating chicken nuggets.  Once all set up, he proceeded to show them off.  With some Toddler-ese translation, I realized he was explaining all the different features and attributes of the dinosaurs.  "These have big, sharp teeth."  "This one has a long tail."  "Check this one out - wings!"  It was really more "toof! teef! big tail! wings!," but I understood.

My Oyster Tin Collection

It felt like foreshadowing, as I pictured him getting older and talking my ear off about his Fortnite cosmetics collection or Minecraft modpacks.  I vividly remember my nephew, who's now 13, doing the same with Marvel superheroes.  I also remember being obsessed with Pokémon and baseball cards myself as a kid.  And at least for me, these interests haven't stopped; they've simply been repackaged.  To this day, I maintain modest coin and oyster tin collections.  But the repackaging goes beyond the traditional digital or material collections.  I'm completely consumed by what varieties of tomatoes, peppers, and squash I might grow in my garden each year.  Learning the intricacies of the Star Wars universe has fascinated me while watching all the new Disney series.  Even exploring the subtle nuances of oyster flavor profiles could be classified as a form of collecting.    

Apparently 70% of us, as children, collect something.  Rocks, trading cards, action figures, seashells, bottle caps, dolls, postcards, state quarters, whatever.  I'm sure there's a ton of research out there as to why.  "Pre-historic peoples had their children gather and sort berries.  Modern day children collect and categorize to fill this evolutionary void."  Or "psychologically, children compartmentalize control anxiety by collecting and organizing."  Freud claimed it was a result of an "unresolved potty training conflict."  It seems there's no scientific consensus as to why we collect, and that existential debate isn't the subject of this post.  

However, according to the same studies, only 15% of us have hobby collections as adults.  This, I would argue, isn't really the case.  Rather, our desires to collect are simply rehashed or reimagined in other ways.  Few of us are filling out the collection-cliché stamp books or setting eBay alerts for Elvis memorabilia.  But I'm guessing several of you enjoy and preserve your Wüstof knife set, Christmas tree ornaments, or DeWalt power tools.  Maybe it's an exotic fish tank, PXG golf clubs, or Martha Stewart cookbooks.  Perhaps you treasure your passport stamps or your Instagram feed full of selfies from various national landmarks. You might curate your Spotify or Pandora playlists daily.  Who wasn't obsessed with the complexity of Westeros and the Game of Thrones for nearly a decade?  And among wine tastings, ice cream flavors, coffee varieties, beer tastings, spice assortments, scotch flights, cheese samplings, and hot sauces, I'm sure you enjoy at least one. 

Sure, in some Emersonian way it could be argued that all consumerism is a form of collection.  However, even if seemingly a stretch to classify as such, the interests above are much more akin to the classical view of collecting than we'd like to believe.  They're consumption or accumulation of variety within specific categories.  Travel, food, music, fiction.  They are really just repackaged, adult-approved versions of your childhood comic book or stuffed animal collections.  You may not be a hoarder, but you're most certainly a collector in one way or another.

My latest iteration of collecting manifested itself in seafood flavored snacks, so maybe only semi-adult-approved in this instance.  As you can see from the picture, it teetered on hoarding pretty quickly.  20 odd bags of chips from 12 different online purveyors.  As I'll explain later, even these 20 were sourced with strict parameters and notable exclusions.  I've got two young kids, a mortgage, car payments, college savings accounts, phone bills.  Spending an exorbitant amount on shipping for international treats didn't quite agree with the budget, or the wife.  A $250 credit card charge from UmamiCart and potatoes wouldn't be the only thing getting sliced as a result of this blog post.  Just kidding.  No SF Oyster Nerds were ever in harm's way.  Anyway, with crispy-fried and oceanic-laden delights in my sights, I jumped right into the deep end of seafood flavored potato chips. 

I started in the States, and much to my expectation and chagrin, there wasn't a whole lot.  The only widely available offerings were crab spiced chips.  Utz Crab Chips.  Route 11 Chesapeake Crab.  Herrs Old Bay.  Simply put, we don't eat many seafood flavored snacks in the U.S.  Yes, the keto-craze has made products like salmon skin chips, tuna jerky, and seaweed snacks a bit more popular, but certainly not mainstays or staples.  Even Route 11 sees it best to overtly advertise "Contains No Seafood" on their chips.  Cape Cod Kettle Chips made a New England Bisque flavor that I couldn't track down, and Lay's Tastes of America series had a New England Lobster Roll flavor I'd tried back in 2018.  Beyond that, there wasn't much.  If I'm missing any major domestic ones, please share.  This research, primarily from taquitos.net, did open up the world of Lay's international variations.  Lay's takes potato chip flavor diversity pretty seriously.  They're a driving force in the industry with a crazy-awesome 300+ flavors globally, mostly throughout Asia.  It is a shame that seafood-seasoned chips get the cold shoulder domestically.  I guess it's based off market research on American palates and preferences, or we're just too busy making everything Flamin' Hot.  Seriously, we need to chill on that, all pun intended.    

Before I opened the Pandora's box of Asian Lay's seafood flavors, I had to look into other snacks available internationally, specifically Europe.  At this point, I really started boiling down my search to just potato chips, as there were quite a few dried fish snacks about, mostly from the Nordic countries.  Maybe it was availability, or maybe it was a language barrier in my research, but I ended up mostly finding British Isle's chips, or crisps, rather.  Walkers, the Lay's-owned UK subsidiary, made a Fish & Chips version that I couldn't source.  I was able to procure their Supreme Prawn Cocktail flavored chip.  Unfortunately, it wasn't exactly my cup of tea.  They tasted more like ketchup chips with hints of the crispy bits from shrimp tempura.  Then I stumbled across quite a few oyster flavored chips.  Dublin based Keogh's made a collaborative, limited release Guinness & Oyster flavored crisp in 2022 that's sadly no longer available.  Yorkshire Crisps makes an Oyster, Chili & Lemon version, but they don't ship to the U.S.  Luckily, I found Kent Crisps' Oyster & Vinegar for delivery via Goodwood's British Market.  More on these in a bit.  

Last but far from least, I went down the real rabbit hole: Asian seafood snacks.  My potato chips-only approach was tripled-stamped and locked-in here.  The sheer volume of tapioca starch based seafood snacks available, just varieties of shrimp chips alone, was mind blowing.  This doesn't even account for all the other dried, jerkied, or candied ones out there.  And with just potato-based snacks, the amount was still overwhelming.  I ended up buying the bulk from Yami for convenience purposes, with some key finds peppered in that had to be sourced elsewhere.  As expected, the majority ended up being Lay's, given their hegemonic flavor empire.  A lot of these seem to be marketed throughout all of East Asia and Oceania, so I found it best to categorize by where they're produced.  Disclaimer that this is by no means an exhaustive list of what's out there.  I tried to get as wide a swathe as possible based on what was available for shipment to the U.S.

China - Lay's Spicy Crayfish, Lay's Takoyaki, Lay's Fried Crab, Lay's Salt & Pepper Shrimp, Lay's Roasted Fish, Lay's Ridged Sizzling Squid, Lay's Roasted Garlic Oyster

Thailand - Lay's Hot Chili Squid, Lay's Stax Spicy Lobster, Lay's Shrimp Tom Yum Hot Pot, Lay's Ridged Grilled Prawn & Seafood Sauce

Taiwan - Hwa Yuan Oyster Omelette, Hwa Yuan Spicy Oyster Omelette

Japan - Maruichi Shoten Oyster Marugoto Senbei, Calbee Jaga Pokkuru Scallop

Going through the entire clip in comprehensive detail would be fun, but undoubtedly overkill.  My blog posts are too long as is.  It would be a disservice not to mention a notable few, though.  Lay's Fried Crab was particularly interesting.  It tasted distinctly like crab roe or crab tomalley, as opposed to crab meat with seasoning.  The Spicy Crayfish was the same in tasting just like the juices from a crawfish head.  Both delicious, but definitely not for the faint of seafood-flavored heart.  As for the more broadly or Western-palate appealing, the Roasted Fish and Hot Chili Squid were the best.  They both surprised me with more of a chili, ginger & garlic sauce taste and subtle charred fish and fried squid flavors underneath.  The Takoyaki chips were delightful as well, tasting exactly like the savory-sweet teriyaki-esque sauce that frequently tops the iconic, namesake octopus donut holes.  

I needed to reign all this in somehow.  Hell, someone could write a blog post on the art and design of the chips' packaging alone.  Several were quite aesthetically pleasing.  In figuring out how to narrow, I ended up going back to my roots.  This is, after all, an oyster blog, so I decided to focus on the oyster flavors I'd obtained.  They provided a touch point on a few different countries and brands while compartmentalizing the adventure to a manageable niche of seafood flavored potato chips.  Sadly, the one site I located the Taiwanese Lay's Oyster Vermicelli had it listed as unavailable at the time.  And of course, as I write this, it's now available.  Murphy's law felt oddly appropriate when dealing with potatoes.  Four products did seem enough to do the project justice, though.    

Japan - Maruichi Shoten Oyster Marugoto Senbei: Technically potato "crackers" as opposed to the classic potato chip.  Prized Maruaka potatoes are made into a dough, hand-rolled and pressed with a whole oyster inside, then cooked.  The aroma and flavor was overbearingly low-tide.  The potato cracker dough had a pleasant sweet-salinity to it, but the gaminess of the dried oyster was a bit much.  I'm sure the oysters were high quality as they're harvested near Kumamoto Prefecture, but this preparation was a little too intense for my taste.  

United Kingdom - Kent Crisps Oyster & Vinegar: More of a kettle chip as thicker, heartier, and with pleasing, bubbly air pockets.  In terms of texture and mouth feel, these were the best chips.  However, the reported inspiration of enjoying Whistable oysters on the Kentish seaside fell short.  They honestly just tasted like a sea salt and vinegar variation with a hint of sweetness.  The ingredients told the tale as not a single seafood essence, extract, or product was listed.  Not surprising they didn't taste of oysters.  

Taiwan - Hwa Yuan Oyster Omelette: Tightly ridged and much lighter and softer than a traditional potato chip, like Ruffles.  I've never had a true Taiwanese oyster omelette, but there were definite notes of sea brine and egg yolk.  The predominant flavors were much more clove, allspice, onion powder, and fish sauce.  A great bag of chips I'd happily eat again, but by no means did they scream "oysters."  

China - Lay's Roasted Garlic Oyster:  Identical to the Lay's Original potato chip in texture and crunch, right down to that all-too-familiar greasiness they leave on your finger tips.  Even so, this chip won hands down in delivering that oyster taste.  They were strongly garlic forward, but the roasted oyster flavor hit me wave after wave, and even remained after I finished the whole bag.  Pure potato chip wizardry.  Also, perhaps I'm just a cheap date when it comes to potato chips, but Lay's are always pretty damn tasty.

With four oyster flavored potato chip varieties under my belt, I hope you were able to anticipate where this was heading.  I had to make my own oyster flavored potato chip.  During the entire tasting process, the ideas came flooding in.  Hangtown fry.  Oysters Rockefeller.  Grilled oysters with chorizo butter.  Oyster pan roast or stew.  All tried and true taste combinations.  However, my absolute favorite way to eat oysters has always been raw with a dash of malt vinegar mignonette.  It's damn near impossible to replicate that bright and beautiful sea spray pop that fresh, raw oysters deliver.  Nothing can match that, not even some self-reported quality raw bars, in my experience.  But if I focused on the malt vinegar, shallots, and pepper from the mignonette with hints of the oyster's salinity and minerality, I might just come close.

First, I picked up the ingredients to traditional raw oysters with malt vinegar mignonette: two dozen Wellfleet oysters from Main Line Seafood and Holland House Malt Vinegar, shallots, and peppercorns from a local grocer.  Next, I broke out my Cosori Food Dehydrator, an expensive impulse buy from years ago that I now had a reason to use.  To concentrate all these flavors into potato chip seasoning, I had a simple plan of dehydrating them into powders.  Nothing more, nothing less.  Most commercial potato chips have a slew of additives for preservation, artificial flavoring, coloring, anti-caking, etc.  Maltodextrin, citric acid, potassium chloride, magnesium sulphate, and so on.  I'm not knocking those from some all-natural, granola-proselytizing, Portlandia perspective.  I just don't know how they work or how to use them.  Science is hard.  So, after a little ad-hoc research, I threw a bunch of stuff in the dehydrator, switched it to 145°, and waited.  The vinegar I actually had to cook down with some baking soda first as pure vinegar dissolves completely and doesn't crystalize.  But the oysters were shucked, placed in their liquor, and dehydrated, and the shallots were sliced thin, seasoned with some pepper, and treated the same. 

The shallots took 24 hours to become dried and workable into a powder.  The oysters took a little less than 48 hours.  The malt vinegar, on the other hand, took five full days until completely crystalized.  Wrong temperature, wrong ratio, wrong reduction time.  I'm not quite sure, but it eventually worked.  Side note - when dehydrating shallots, oysters, and malt vinegar at home, do so in the garage or outside.  The Mrs. wasn't too pleased with the smell that lingered around our house for a few days, and I can't say I blame her.  It definitely stung the nostrils.  Either way, each went into the blender for powderization and I was on to mixing the perfect seasoning for my chips. 

It took a couple of trials mixing all three powders in different ratios with a little salt.  Dried oyster powder is intense, to say the least.  The first few smelled and tasted like tide pools at the Jersey shore on a 95° day.  Just a little bit of oyster powder goes a very long way.  I even toasted what I thought was my final mixture to replicate it hitting hot potato chips fresh out the fryer.  The oyster powder's aroma bloomed so strongly that I had to walk it back even more and add in some fresh lemon zest.  One more toast-test and taste and I was happy with where I'd landed. 

At last, it was spud-fryin' time.  He's turned into a bit of an online troll and mitch as of late, pretentiously picking comment fights for no real reason, so I've become less and less of a fan.  However, I can't deny that Kenji's approaches always deliver, and his potoato chip logic seemed pretty spot on.  I thinly sliced two pounds of russet potatoes and soaked, rinsed, and repeated in cold water a few times.  Next, I par-boiled the chips with a touch of vinegar and dried them.  Finally, in they went to a 325° peanut oil bubble bath.  It took four batches at about 15 minutes per batch, and each batch that came out immediately got a healthy dose of the oysters with malt vinegar mignonette spice blend.

Uncle G's Oysters & Malt Vinegar Mignonette Chips

As anticipated, the spice mixture instantly bloomed when hitting the hot oil soaked chips and aromatized the whole kitchen.  The deep golden brown crisp and crunch of the chips was exactly what I'd hoped for.  Like I said, Kenji's recipes never disappoint.  As for the smell and taste, it was noticeably more oyster forward to the nose than when I'd lightly toasted the seasoning.  Glad I'd walked the ratio back.  The first bite was a magnficent mix of caramalized vinegar and peppery shallot cut with bright lemon notes and salty-sweet oyster undertones.  The oyster taste was there, but not nearly as prominent on the palate as it was on the nose.  I gave my neighbor a few to try and he loved them.  Proof of concept, check.  No, the chips didn't transport either of us straight to a seat at the raw bar.  But pair them with a cold glass of champagne and some imagination, and you might come close.    

Brand marketers, please hit me up.  I'm keen on some stylish packaging and spreading the word about my debut line of Oyster & Malt Vinegar Mignonette Chips.  Investors, based on labor and ingredient costs, I'm pretty sure we could make a modest profit selling 2 oz. bags at $59.99 each.  Quite the steal, no?  All jokes aside, my collection-driven desire to experience as many varieties of seafood flavored potato chips as possible was a whirlwind.  I braved some intense flavors, discovered some hidden gems, and learned a ton about the global diversity of snack foods.  Whenever you see an obscure, or even intimidating potato chip flavor, please don't hesitate to at least give it try.  You never know what interest it might pique or where it might take you next.

Cheers,
The SF Oyster Nerd