The Best Way To Revive Stale Chips To Crispy Perfection

Just imagine: you're feeling snacky and retrieve a half-finished bag of chips off the shelf for a crunchy treat. You unroll the bag ... and the chips are stale. Horrors! Not only are potato chips expensive but, as in the case of Trader Joe's discontinued Patio Chips, maybe you can't get your favorite anymore due to manufacturers and stores cycling new products in and out. That's why it's so important that you not waste partial bags due to them losing their crispiness. Luckily, there is a way to breathe new life into your stale chips, and it's probably sitting right on your kitchen counter.

Your air fryer is not only the best way to reheat pizza; it's also the quickest, easiest way to revitalize stale chips. Just one or two minutes in the basket at 300 degrees is sufficient. Any more than that, and you risk getting an undesirable char on your snack and messing up the flavor. Frequent check-ins are important — open the air fryer door every 30 seconds or so and test the chips by tasting them for flavor and crunch.

Potato chips go stale quickly due to their extremely low moisture content of just two percent water. If that moisture level rises just a bit, to four or five percent, the chip becomes noticeably less crunchy and will be unpalatable to the tongue. The air fryer revives stale chips by using circulating air to draw out some of that unwanted water content.

When you are adding chips to your air fryer basket, make sure that you don't overcrowd them. Overcrowding is perhaps the most common air frying mistake people make when using these machines, and it stands to really bite you when it comes to chips, since it's that current of flowing air that is going to re-crisp your snack.

Also, keep in mind that you may need to adjust your chips' time in the air fryer depending on their thickness and coating. A thick chip, like a kettle-cooked variety, may require a few extra seconds to re-crisp to perfection. On the other hand, something covered in powdered seasoning, like Cheetos, will burn very easily and therefore need to be watched like a hawk. Baked chips, tortilla chips, and even Pringles all benefit from air frying to remove staleness, so there's no reason for you to ever discard perfectly good chips again!