Food companies love to have the most something of something. The spiciest something, the chocolatiest something, the cheesiest something and yes, the most expensive something. It might not actually mean that they’ve got the tastiest something, but at least it gives them a reason to write a press release and get some attention to their brand.
Enter Swedish beer-makers, St. Erik’s Brewery. While it might make sense that they’d create something like the world’s most expensive beer, no, they went in another direction and created the world’s most expensive potato chip. With just five chips to a $56 USD box, you are paying about $11 per chip.
So, what makes the chips so fancy? If you guessed that the potatoes were watered exclusively by the tears of 1,000 virgins, you’d be wrong. It’s all in the uber posh ingredients:
Matsutake
With a taste similar to that of mature cheese, matsutake is one of the world’s most sought-after species of mushrooms. The matsutake in the chips comes from pine forests in the northern region of Sweden and was picked by hand using cotton gloves in order to preserve their quality.
Truffle Seaweed
As the name suggests, truffle seaweed has a flavor reminiscent of truffles. The seaweed grows in the form of small tufts on the brown alga known as Ascophyllum nodosum, which is only found in cold tidal waters. The seaweed used in the world’s most expensive chips comes from the waters around the Faroe Islands.
Crown Dill
To achieve the distinctive dill flavor, the creators of the chips investigated varieties of Swedish crown dill. The crown dill used was hand-picked on the Bjäre Peninsula in southern Sweden and selected for its fresh, yet powerful flavor.
Leksand Onion
For a balanced onion flavor, we used the much sought-after Leksand onion, a specific variety of the onion family that grows just outside the small Swedish town Leksand. One reason for its excellent flavor may be the fact that the onions are always planted on the eighteenth of May and harvested on the tenth of August, whatever the weather.
India Pale Ale Wort
During the process of brewing beer, the barley malt is converted into a sweet aromatic liquid known as wort. To add a hint of sweetness to the chips, freeze-dried wort was added, of the kind normally used to brew S:t Eriks India Pale Ale.
Ammarnäs Potatoes
The potato in the chips comes from the potato hillside in Ammarnäs, a steep, stony slope in a south-facing location where almond potatoes are cultivated in very limited numbers. The slope is difficult for modern agricultural machines to access, which means that all potatoes are planted and harvested by hand.
If you really feel like ordering these chips, you can click HERE. Better yet, spend $3 on a bag of Cape Cod Waffle Chips and donate the rest to charity. Or just burn it. Either way, you got a great bag of chips out of the deal.