Turn Instant Mashed Potatoes Into The Best Chips With This Hack

Just when your socials seem to cool down from one viral food phenomenon, the fever lights up again with another. While the buzz around potato chip mashed potatoes — a kind of back-of-the-envelope recipe that results in exactly what it sounds like — has quieted, you might have noticed a new spud sensation sweeping the internet: instant mashed potato potato chips.

We know, the phrasing in both cases can take half a second extra to unpack. To be clear: the potato chip mashed potatoes of yore more or less turned potato chips into instant potato flakes, and ultimately into mashed potatoes. (You can serve them with this potato chip-coated fish for a theme-y pair!) In something of a switcheroo, instant mashed potato potato chips — you guessed it — transform those fine, store-bought flakes into the crunchy, also typically store-bought snack chip we all know and love. Instant mashed potato potato chips essentially take a classic short cut (like making tasty mashed potatoes without all the peeling and titular mashing) and flips it to make the resulting chips, which are usually a grab-and-go convenience item, homemade-adjacent. The world wide web is as much of an ouroboros as ever, and we're eating it up.

A popular post by Instagrammer lilsipper combines an instant garlic flake variety with water to achieve that super-smooth mashed potato texture. You can dollop small spoonfuls onto a parchment paper-lined baking sheet that's sprayed with oil, or use a proper piper or big resealable plastic bag with one corner snipped off to distribute the mix. Cover those mounds with another layer of parchment, and then flatten them into a typical chip thickness with the bottom of a glass, another baking sheet, or any large, even plane. Take off the top parchment paper, and bake at 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Start checking for doneness, evidenced by a bit of browning, after around 10 minutes.

One potential perk of this otherwise somewhat puzzling anti-hack is that you can flavor your chips in all manner of combinations in your own kitchen without having to figure out how to dispose of any pesky, messy cooking oil. Ground spices like cayenne, cumin, or even onion powder sprinkled on top before smashing work best.