If you’ve never made your own potato chips before, you’re missing out on a whole world of explosive flavor combos. You can make homemade potato chips in the air fryer, but if you don’t have one, you can also use the microwave method for easy homemade potato chips. Or, pop them in the oven for crispy oven-baked potato chips. You can even fry ’em up in oil yourself, if you really feel daring. The important part is what you add after they are cooked. In this case, let’s talk honey butter. Honey butter is exactly what it says on the tin: a simple spread of softened butter and honey, usually made at a 2 to 1 ratio of butter to honey. You can make your own super easily by taking your favorite butter, softening it to room temperature, and mixing in honey until it’s well combined. In this scenario, you might want to melt the butter rather than soften it, so that it’s at a pourable consistency for your chips.
Honey works beautifully with chips because both honey and butter suit the flavor profile of potatoes well on their own. When you salt your potato chips and add honey butter to it, or if you use salted butter in the mix, you’re creating a salty-sweet flavor combo. Humans love this combo because of something called the flavor layer effect. Basically, some taste cells on your tongue only activate in the presence of multiple flavors, so eating something that’s salty and sweet at the same time intensifies your overall tasting experience. You also get the added textural experience of the buttery glaze coating each and every chip, making for a more luxurious (albeit sticky) snacking experience.
Personalizing your honey butter potato chips
There’s no wrong way to make your honey butter potato chips, but you’ll want to change up how you tackle the recipe depending on what you want out of it. For example, if you’re really craving some intense honey butter flavor, you should probably just dump your chips directly into your bowl of honey butter (melted together on the stove top until both ingredients are incorporated, of course). If you want to retain more of your chips’ crispness, then opt for drizzling your melted and slightly cooled honey butter over your cooked chips. Toss the chips after to get an even, thin coating. You want to do this while your chips are still warm in both cases, and toss some salt onto your freshly coated chips to finish the dish.
The best part about making honey butter potato chips from scratch is the amount of control you have over the recipe and the end result, too. Do you like your chips sweet? Add more honey. Want a more pronounced salty kick? Toss on some extra flakey sea salt after the honey butter glaze is on. You can cut your potatoes into super thin slices or leave them kinda thick for a chunkier, crunchier, more rustic-feeling chip. You can even change up the potatoes you use and see what differences it makes. These honey butter potato chips are so tasty that you’ll be making them over and over, so you’ll have plenty of time to experiment and find your favorites.
