AirFryday: The best chips for a shoestring budget

Shoestring chips are cut as slim as matchsticks, although their name comes not from a matchstick but from the width of an ordinary shoelace.

We must presume that the term is American, given that in parts of the world where British English is spoken, they’d be called shoelace chips. But “shoelace” just doesn’t fit as well, I think, especially in one context: the coincidence that to shop on a shoestring means to shop the way everybody is doing this Thrifty January — on a budget.

There’s another bonus: because the chips are cut so thinly, once cooked and piled on your plate they give the impression that there are a lot more chips than you would have, had they been cut conventionally, as in standard “French fries”, as Americans call frites.

And “French fries” or frites are Belgian anyway (Flemish, to be yet more precise).

So, shoestring potato chips in your air fryer — let’s get to it…

A quick refresher on the simple rules of good, crispy potato chips:

• The potatoes must be dry.


• Once sliced into chips, they must be laid out on kitchen paper, with space in between each chip.


• More kitchen paper must then be placed on top of them, and patted down with your palms to mop up any moisture.


• Then, the paper is removed (just lift at the edges and shake the chips onto the surface below).


• If making air fryer chips, you need to pour a little cooking oil into a bowl, add salt and pepper, add the chips and toss and shake to coat each chip in oil. 


• Any excess oil is not put into the air fryer.