Mari has emailed asking about leftover chips – as in English chips eaten hot, thick fries not potato chips/crisps – saying her family nearly always have “eyes bigger than their bellies” when they order fish’n’chips and end up with some leftovers:

Good thick chips not just tiny hard scraps. It’s such a waste. Can anything be done with them?

Obviously the first thing here is to reduce the amount she & her family buy in the first place – but I realise chip portions are a variable thing. I read about a study recently that found that portion sizes could vary from between 250g (half a pound) to 1kg (2.2lbs!) depending on the shop and server. I think most families would have leftovers even if they bought just one bag of the latter!

Whenever my father (not) in law has leftover chips, he wraps them back up in their paper again and freezes them for a snack at a later time. I’m not sure how he defrosts/reheats them (and admittedly, he’s not got particularly high standards when it comes to cooking) but it might be worth experimenting with if you have them leftover regularly.

At the end of the day though, they’re just leftover fried potato – and can be reused like any other leftover potato. Mash up the softer ones – they could be used in fish cakes or a hash/bubble & squeak. The little hard ones could be chopped up and used as a crispy coating/topping.

Here, they’d go in our “misc stuff for the chickens” pile.

What would you do with leftover chips?

At any one time, there are at least two or three crisp (potato chips) packets blowing around our street, invariably ending up in our garden or making “fffffwhpp” sounds as they rattle against the railings at the end of the road.

I remember making shrinky-dinks out of them when I was a kid but aside from that, I can’t think of any other ideas about what can be done with them. (And I don’t even know whether you can do that with the foil lined packets kicking around now.)

So is anyone else more inspired about what can be done with them? Suggestions for big “family size” packets as well as standard ones are welcome.

(And in case anyone else other than me is interested, this is the 250th post on here – that’s a whole lot of reusing and recycling ideas! I’m think I’m going to celebrate with some salty potato snacks!)

(Photo by monomatt)