The Easy Trick That Keeps Chips Fresh Way Longer

It’s not too often in this house that a bag of chips is not polished off in one sitting. Every now and then, though, my family and I exhibit a bit of self-control; we clamp the tops of those half-full bags with a chip clip and tuck them away in the pantry. 

Room temperature is the way we’ve always stored opened bags of chips, but is it actually the best way? As it turns out, there’s an even more ideal place to store chips, and it's perhaps the most unlikely place of all: the freezer. Here’s what the deep-freeze does for your potato chips.

Why You Should Store Your Chips in the Freezer

Unopened potato chips are tightly sealed, and the bags are designed to keep air and light out, so that the snacks inside stay fresh-tasting and crunchy. That all goes out the window once the bag is opened—the chips begin to absorb moisture from the air. Even when the tops are clasped with a clip, moisture and air will creep in. After several days, the opened chips will start to become stale and lose freshness.

However, when stored in the freezer, the extreme cold apparently slows this process down. By storing them in the deep freeze, it’s possible to keep the crunch in those chips for a month or even longer.

I tested this idea, storing one opened and clipped bag of chips in the pantry and another in the freezer, and I gave them a week. I was certain the freezer chips would be soft or soggy, but to my surprise, they were just as crunchy as the pantry chips—perhaps a tad more, since the chips stored at room temperature are more vulnerable to the moisture in the air.

There was something else I noticed about those chips stored in the freezer: they were tastier. When I took a bite of the frozen plain potato chip, I noticed it had a deeper flavor and a slightly heartier crunch. It was crisp but with a little more bite than the room temperature version. The chill in the chips was unexpectedly satisfying.

Emeril Lagasse Freezes His Chips, Too

As it turns out, I’m not the only one who’s noticed this phenomenon—Chef Emeril Lagasse’s favorite guilty pleasure snack is Zapp’s Original Potato Chips, straight out of the freezer!

Why is this the case? Even though the chips are stored in the freezer, they don’t actually freeze. The water content in the chips is too low for that; the chips just get really cold. However, the chips contain oil from the frying process, and these fats solidify in the deep cold, slightly changing the texture of the chips. In an interview with Grub Street, Lagasse spoke of this with his frozen Zapp’s chips, saying, “It coagulates the peanut oil.”

So even if you don’t really need to make your bag of chips last for weeks and weeks, you should still try freezing them to see how they taste. Dig them out from between the bags of frozen peas and tater tots, and eat your chips the Emeril Lagasse way: really cold!