what you should know
In 1950, tortilla chips originated in Los Angeles as a tasty solution to an imperfect tortilla problem.
Rebecca Webb Carranza took misshapen corn tortillas from her family's new automated tortilla factory, cut them up and fried them to a crisp for a party. Soon, the chips were the company's best selling product.
changeable crunch While tortilla chips are most common as an envoy for salsa and other dips, they can easily make their way into eggs, soups, and muffins. (They also figure prominently into a well-known hangover remedy.)
not your cheese Top your chips with melted cheese or place them around a pile of chile-braised pork shoulder, and you have nachos. If you're a true enthusiast, consider attending the International Nacho Festival in Mexico.
sweet treats Tortilla chips don't have to be confined to salty snacks. For something sweet, try a homemade cinnamon tortilla chip, or pick up a bag of Chocolate Tortilla Chips from Food Should Taste Good.
what you need
Making homemade chips? Start with corn or flour tortillas -- some are bound to be misshapen -- and then pick up one of these.
Have tortilla chips everyday by cooking Mexican Everyday.
The best way to serve chips and salsa? Keep it nice and simple with this dish.
Want to combine chip topping ideas with some Spanish lessons? Try a bilingual cookbook.
Salad tastes better in an edible bowl. Make your own with this tortilla mold.
what you should do
Chips out of the bag are easy, but deep-frying them at home is also easy and so much better.
Use your tortilla chips to make cornbread for skillet spoonbread cobbler.
For a gluten-free alternative to tortilla chips, try this brown rice version.
As an appetizer for many or a lunch for a few, scoop up some bites of layered chicken-avocado bowl.
Layer tortilla chips with cheese and veggies and you'll get Karina's nachos fabuloso.
Featured: With a creative spin on matzo brie, soaked tortilla chips and eggs make a savory breakfast dish. Congratulations to Olga of Mango & Tomato, who submitted this week's Root Source Challenge featured recipe.
A croquette is a culinary invention with a cute French name that shows up in cuisines around the world.
Basically, you can make just about anything into a croquette, which essentially consists of a sweet or savory mixture of ingredients bound in a thick sauce, shaped into bite-sized, usually cylindrical pieces, coated with egg and breadcrumbs, fried in oil until crisp and golden, and served hot.
The classic French savory mixture includes minced cooked poultry, game, veal or other meats, mushrooms and Madeira combined with reduced velouté or demi-glace sauce, egg yolks and butter. Other popular ingredients include potatoes, cheese or salt cod. Rice- or custard-based sweet croquettes may be made with things like apricots or chestnuts. Traditionally, croquettes are served with a sauce.
What's the difference between a fritter and a croquette?
What's the difference between a fritter and a croquette?
Fritters and croquettes are both bite-sized sweet or savory morsels that are deep fried and served hot. You can make fritters and croquettes out of everything from seafood to apples.
Traditionally, a fritter is a piece of food that is dipped in batter before being fried, although many fritter recipes involve chopping up ingredients and mixing them with or without batter into a very soft dough before frying.
A French croquette classically consists of a sweet or savory mixture of ingredients bound in a thick sauce, shaped into bite-sized, usually cylindrical pieces, coated with egg and breadcrumbs and fried in oil until crisp and golden.
A fritter is a catch-all phrase for a little cake-like morsel of food that's traditionally doused in a batter (or chopped up and combined with batter) and deep-fried.
You can eat fritters as a main course, a side, a dessert or a snack. Fritters can be made from just about any main ingredient, but crab, corn or apples are popular ingredients.
The British are particularly fond of drowning unlikely foodstuffs in batter -- pizza, or Mars bars, for example -- and frying the hell out of them. Fish and chips, no stranger to the deep fat fryer themselves, are often accompanied by additional battered fried fritters that can range from pineapples to peas.
We eat them with hamburgers, the French serve them with steak, the Belgians like them with mussels.
What Americans call French fries (in Britain, Australia and New Zealand, often thick-cut deep- or "French-fried" potatoes are referred to as chips) are called pommes frites -- or just frites -- in France. So why do we call them French?
Some say it's because of the "French" cut of the potatoes; others, the "French-fried" cooking method; or that the name caught on after English-speaking World War I soldiers ate fries in Belgium, naming them "French" because that was the official language of the Belgian army. The Belgians are generally considered the originators of the French fry, although at least one historian argues that fries were first introduced in Spain.
