Here's How You Can Make TikTok's Viral Pasta Chips Even Better
If pasta chips are going viral on TikTok, a good portion of the credit should go to the efforts of the Feel Good Foodie who in the last week has contributed two new variations on the idea.
The first is salt and vinegar pasta chips. For these, you douse the pasta cooked to al dente with — guess what — salt and vinegar before air frying it. It goes well with sour cream and onion dip. The other is a churro-style pasta chip, which has you covering the pasta with cinnamon, brown sugar, and coconut oil. Finish with a sugar dusting and pair with caramel sauce.
Feel Good Foodie, of course, does not take credit for inventing the pasta chip. Credit, according to Today, belongs to Emily Chan, who uploaded the recipe to her account Boston Foodgram in April. The recipe sticks to a more traditional pasta with parmesan, olive oil, and onion and garlic powders doing the flavoring.
Viral, but not universal
The pasta chips are undoubtedly viral. After all, every piece that talks about them says as much. However, amongst the various pieces of prose caught in spasms of omg-ness, there are occasional objections lobbed.
The most common is reported by Nine.com.au. When Feel Good Foodie uploaded her first attempt at pasta chips, sarcastic responses surged: "Step one: soften the pasta, step two: harden the pasta again." Why, people wondered, would anyone want to eat what was close in texture to raw pasta. Feel Good Foodie did put out a PSA that eating raw pasta could break your teeth, but did not address questions of whether the pasta chips taste like hard, undesirable pasta.
A writer for Mashable, however, did find that the fried pasta turned out poorly. "Yes," they wrote, "the chips crunched. But it wasn't a crisp crunch like a good chip. It's a dry crunch, which then reveals a toothsome, overcooked noodle interior." Regardless of whether or not they turn out good though, pasta chips fall perfectly into the food hack genre of TikTok. They take something we all recognize and renders it strange in a visually striking way. And who knows, maybe the Mashable writer simply made a mistake during the frying. Feel free to try and fry for yourself.