Lays, FTFY: Making Improved Sriracha Chips and Chicken & Waffle Chips

Hey everyone, so some of my friends know that I was pretty devastated by the loss of Sriracha and Chicken & Waffles in the recent "Lay's Do Us a Flavor" contest, where predictably, some cheese-based flavor ended up winning.  The only one I got to try was sriracha, which my friends and I decided tasted more like American hot sauces, and didn't have the distinct sriracha flavor that comes with fermentation of the chili peppers.  In general, I've heard that the chicken & waffle flavor was lacking in chicken flavor and was maybe too sweet.

First, in order to design better sriracha and chicken & waffle (c&w) chips, it's important to understand where the originals went wrong.  The sriracha chips ingredients list indicates that their chips were flavored by creating a "creamy sriracha seasoning", which included "natural flavors" (probably some chili powder blend) and sour cream/cream/cheddar cheese, which were likely responsible for diluting the sriracha flavor.  Also, these high-fat components were used so that they could make a powder using maltodextrin, a starch that stabilizes fat, allowing them to be turned into powders.  The chicken and waffle chips ingredients notably contain no chicken based ingredients and no maple syrup components (using instead brown sugar).

For the sriracha chips, I decided it would be easiest to just find a way to make a powder out of store-bought sriracha sauce.  After dehydrating in an oven for several hours, the solid sriracha formed a nice powder when ground up in a coffee grinder . 

Left: 1/3 cup sriracha sauce spread out onto parchment paper.  Middle: sriracha sauce spread thin.  Right: After ~4 hours at 250 degrees F, sriracha sheets were peeled off parchment paper

In order to slightly prolong the shelf-life of the powder (only from about 1 day to more like a week or two before the powder really gunks up), and also to make it easier to pour/sprinkle, I weighed out 2% by weight silicon dioxide .  Silicon Dioxide (SiO2) is basically sand, and you'll find it as an additive in many spices in stores, listed as an "anti-caking agent".  SiO2 is a dessicant, meaning it will seriously absorb water, and is what makes up the insides of those silica packets you find inside of various food items, like beef jerky.  WARNING: silicon dioxide inhaled into your lungs can't really be gotten rid of (prolonged exposure can lead to silicosis, which is serious business), so if you do decide to work with this stuff, please use reasonable precautions (I would recommend some form of mask, working in a well ventilated area, taking care not to aerosolize the SiO2)

Left: Dried sriracha put into a coffee grinder.  Center: Dried sriracha ground with 2% by weight silicon dioxide, forming a fine dry powder.  Right: Put it in a saltshaker for easy distribution

Making C&W powder was a bit more difficult, just because there are many more components that need balancing.  For chicken flavor, I decided the best source was chicken broth powder, which is available in most stores.  I chose Lee Kum Kee brand chicken bouillon powder , since in the ingredients list it had the fewest extra flavorings included (lots of other brands like to include tumeric or cumin or other spices that would distract from the c&w flavor).  Maple powder and butter powder are available from American Spice Co, although if you're really interested, you could probably make maple powder using the same procedure as with sriracha.  However, there was one major component missing. In C&W, the most dominant flavor is always the flavor of 'fried'.  Both the exterior of the waffle and the chicken are essentially fried flour, and the chicken, maple, and butter flavors are basically secondary flavors.  It was critical to find a way to make a powder that captured this 'fried' flavor.

Left: melting 1 tbsp butter. Center: Still melting.  Right: Pouring brown butter into a few tablespoons of maltodextrin.

One option would be to actually make a waffle and grind it up into a powder, but that seemed wasteful and time consuming.  Instead, I had the thought of trying to make a powder out of either roux or brown butter, both have very nutty flavors/aromas that remind me of fried goods.  To do this, I just heated a small amount of butter until bubbling ceased and nutty flavor was strong.  I mixed this with maltodextrin to get it into a solid form.

Left: Brown butter mixed with maltodextrin, forming large chunks.  Center: Brown butter powder mixed with maple powder, butter powder, and chicken broth powder.  Right: after grinding in a coffee grinder, filled another saltshaker with chicken & waffle powder

The final step was to coat some potato chips and eat.  I actually tried making some chips from scratch, and determined it was a total waste of time.  For the time and money (mainly in using up so much oil to deep-fry), you could just buy several bags of plain potato chips.  The finished powders were sprinkled on a regular bag of chips, although it helped to some degree to pre-heat the chips for about 2 minutes at 400, to release some oil onto the chip surface.  Here it was very important to coat very liberally, without a substantial amount of powder, the salty potato flavor can easily dominate.  

Left: regular uncoated potato chips.  Center: Sriracha potato chips.  Right: Chicken & waffle potato chips

So that's it, you all can rest easy knowing that good sriracha and chicken & waffle chips aren't gone for good, give it a shot and let me know if it beats the Lay's versions or not!

Detailed recipe coming soon!