Fish and Chips, and
Fish and Chips...
No really, that's all I've had this past two weeks, for tea at least (that's what my scottish heritage host family calls the evening meal). The reason being that Callum, the son of the house, has a science experiment going on, testing different types of packaging for delivering Fish and Chips.
So for the sake of science, we've been Fish and Chips. Callum had set up 5 different contraptions for packaging/wrapping the chips
- Pre-heated Crock-Pot
- Aluminum foil
- Woolen sweater
- Polystyrene box (aka Thermocole or Flamingo)
- Control (whatever packaging the shop supplied, a paper bag basically)
Upon the arrival of the Fish and Chips we would sit and wait for 5-10 minutes for Callum to measure the temperature as it was falling in each of the 5 wrappings and eventually we would get to eat and rate the transportation methods and their impact on the quality of our chips.
Consistently, the aluminum foil kept the chips hot, but soggy as there was no way for the water to escape the packaging. The polystyrene box was quite big, and seemed to keep the item warmer, and crunchier than regular packaging, but not a practical solution. The pre-heated crock-pot, would have the same effect as the aluminum foil when closed. However, if the original packaging was broken (happened on one occasion by accident) the chips would stay warm and crunchy, really good. The one solution to win the award of the best solution for keeping chips warm and crunchy however goes to the woolen sweater. While temperature was slightly lower than the pre-heated crock-pot, the chips stayed crunchy and most importantly: It's practical and requires no effort.
The control performed terrible: Crunchy but cold after just 5 minutes.
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