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The latest insights / blatherings from the Chipopedia team. Some half-baked ramblings, occasionally enhanced by the odd piece of potato-blessed insight.
Ready salted cartoon
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Why are crisps called ‘Ready Salted’

It’s one of those phrases you hear so often, you stop questioning it. Ready Salted. It rolls off the tongue like an old friend — familiar, unassuming, quietly comforting. But if you pause for a moment and actually ask, “Why are they called that?” or “What are they ready for?” the answer leads you into a little corner of crisp history that says a lot about how British snacking evolved. The salt twist that came before Before “Ready Salted” became a standard flavour, crisps weren’t actually salted at all — at least not in the bag. When Frank Smith, founder…
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Chips? Crisps?

Let’s get this out of the way first: I call them crisps. I grew up calling them crisps, buying crisps, arguing about crisps. I’ve muttered “they’re not chips, mate” under my breath more times than I care to count. I’m born Australian, but grown up English. I know the rules. But when it came time to name this website — a sprawling, salty archive of everything snackable, snackish, and unreasonably crinkly — “Crispopedia” just didn’t resonate. Don’t get me wrong, “crisp” is a fine word. It does what it says on the packet: sharp, clean, unambiguous. But “Chipopedia”? It has……