To say that you have industry experience is one thing, but to say that you were ‘born into the industry’ gives a totally different meaning to your credibility and its something The Chip Group’s new business development manager, Aaron Mok is very proud of.

Mok’s background is as the son of an immigrant family who moved here in 1986. His dad was a Chinese chef from Hong Kong who brought his cooking techniques to a country about to discover international cuisine at restaurant level.

Young Mok played and worked in restaurant kitchens from an early age learning skills from the ‘master’ that would take him onto his own hospitality experience working in an Auckland restaurant while studying at university and then specialising in coffee running a café for one of New Zealand’s renown coffee roasters.

Skills honed, he used his industry knowledge to gain a position as an account manager for Southern Hospitality, a national supplier of catering and foodservice equipment. Calling on clients, he was able to assess their operation and offer suggestions by seeing things from a different perspective.

Mok says being born into the industry has given him a deeper understanding of every aspect and his industry experience gives him up-to-date knowledge, a combination he is hoping will be useful to the many hot chips sellers he will visit in his new role.

He’s about to take to the road and to get to know those in the industry. With plenty of industry contacts already, it will seem like ‘catching up’ but he’s not shy when it comes to meeting people and he’s only too happy to share ideas and experience along the way. Ultimately though, his first aim is to get as many people as possible to become members of The Chip Group.

“There is a lot to be gained by doing so,” says Mok, expressly that you will qualify to enter the Best Chip competition. But there are loads of benefits too in being a member.

Mok says The Chip Group is not about ‘policing’ the industry but rather helping them through information and support. “We are there to re-educate passionate people who are already in the industry.”

“My attitude with this role is to educate and share the knowledge I’ve gained over the years. And in general help hospitality businesses, because I know how hard they work and there’s so little time for them to go out and explore what the options are. One of the roles I really took on for myself was to go in and say ‘did you know you could do this or that you could use this machinery and it would save you a bit of money’ and it really helped a lot of those places.

“That really ties into my role of being in The Chip Group because obviously I’m not shy about going into people’s businesses and quite often I could add a lot of value into what I do. It doesn’t have to be chips; I might have ideas of how to maintain their machines and so on.”

“In my travels I’ve found that no matter what culture they are from, they need someone to explain what is going on. I come from a very traditional Chinese background so I understand about having to explain things the European way.”

But back to being a member of The Chip Group.

Mok says not only will it allow you to enter the Best Chip competition, it will give you greater buying power from affiliated members and a brand awareness that your customers will seek out; all very value bonuses to your business.

But first he hopes to catch up with you for a chat and quite possibly a taste of your chips.

“I think I’ll be eating a lot more chips! But I like hot chips, especially if they are crunchy on the outside, soft and steamy on the inside with tomato sauce and lightly salted.”

Click here for Chinese translation

Crunch time – is this your chip’s golden moment?

Your customers might queue out the door for them, but do your hot chips have what it takes to be named the best chip in the land?

The Chip Group Best Chip Store Competition 2011 is the ultimate challenge. Many may fall by the waste bin but in the end only one ‘chippie’ will reach the coveted podium position and receive all the glory, huge sales boost and media hype it deserves.

Many past winners have been overwhelmed by the lengths people will go to, to buy their chips and all past winners experienced substantial boosts to their sales.

“It got to the stage where our vats couldn’t handle it and we had to put in extra ones,” says Paul Francis, manager of Oceanz Seafood in Silverdale, Auckland which won the 2009 Best Chip competition.

This year’s winner will receive a plaque for their store and a footpath sign proclaiming their win, $1700 in sponsors’ products, a major article in That’s Life magazine and in Food & Beverage Today - the industry newspaper. And chances are local and national media will also want to celebrate the win with coverage.

How to enter

In order to enter The Chip Group Best Chip Store Competition 2011 you will have to become a member of The Chip Group, an association of industry people passionate about seeing every chip consumed is the best it can be. Only members of The Chip Group will be able to enter.

Shops can register now - and registration packs will sent out about mid-June so shops will have all the right signage when the competition kicks off on July 1.   All stores that are registered will be listed along with their individual store code which you will need for text voting www.thechipgroup.co.nz.

This year registrations will be divided into six regions: (1) Northland to Auckland’s North Shore, (2) the rest of Auckland; (3) Waikato to Wanganui/Hawke’s Bay; (4) Manawatu to Wellington; (5) Nelson/Marlborough to Christchurch and; (6) Timaru to Southland, and up to three stores from each region have the chance to become regional finalists.

From July 1 the competition kicks off with consumer text voting and mystery judging. Your chip-munching fans will be able to vote your store using the store code displayed in your shop so make sure you let them know you are entered!

Text voting closes on July 31 but that’s not a signal to ease up as mystery judging could take place at any time up until August 31.

Remember, the mystery judges will be checking that you display The Chip Group Certificate, your chips taste good and are of good quality, you operate to the industry standards of frying chips (see page 15 for Tips for better chips), your store is clean and that you offer good customer service. Your chips will also go under the microscope, so to speak, with laboratory analysis to gauge their fat content.

Fish Boys (2006 Best Chip winner) owner Peter Cleaver says being named the country’s best is recognition of a lot of hard work put into the shop by both him, his family and staff. “It’s a fantastic thrill to win, after only having been open for the past two months.”

Once the 18 regional finalists have been named it will be back to the mystery judges to choose six regional winners before the grand national winner is announced as The Chip Group Best Chip Store Competition 2011.

The Chip Group Best Chip Store Competition 2011 is sponsored by The Heart Foundation, Bakel’s Edible Oils (NZ) Ltd, McCain Foods (NZ) Ltd, Mr Chips Ltd, Groenz Ltd, Potatoes New Zealand, Food & Beverage Today, Catering Plus magazine and That’s Life magazine.

For more information see: www.thechipgroup.co.nz

To join the Chip Group - English - Chinese

Chips – a brief history

Chips have a rather interesting history. Though invented by the French (hence their other name, ‘French fry’), they are better known for being a British dish; and thought to have been introduced here in 1854, when the cookbook Shilling Cookery ran a recipe for ‘thin cut potatoes cooked in oil.’ Another early mention of chips was in Charles Dickens’ 1859 novel, A Tale of Two Cities, which refers to ‘husky chips of potatoes, fried with some reluctant drops of oil.’ The idea of combining chips with fish came about soon afterward, with the first-ever ‘chippie’ appearing in London in 1860 – here, a Jewish proprietor named Joseph Malin sold fish cooked in the Jewish manner, with chips. Skip forward more than a hundred and fifty years, and chips are served in countries all over the world; some with their own unique twist. In many areas of the UK, for example, they are served with condiments such as curry sauce or sweet chilli sauce; in Canada, they are coated in gravy, curds and other toppings to form a dish known as poutine; and in Belgium, they are served with mayonnaise. Meanwhile, in Indonesia and the Philippines, chips are often covered in powder flavoured with cheese, sweet corn and other foods.

The Chip Group – past and present

The Chip Group was formed around 15 years ago when concerns began to surface around the growing number of overweight Kiwis and the high rate of heart disease, and foods such as deep-fried chips started to come under scrutiny. However, with approximately 120,000 tonnes of deep-fried chips consumed in New Zealand each year, key figures in the industry knew this was a market that needed protecting. So, with the aim of improving the nutritional value of deep-fried chips by reducing their total fat, saturated fat and salt content, The Heart Foundation joined with several other companies to form The Chip Group.

Today, Chip group has six gold corporate members, and many other supporters  including potato growers, chip manufacturers, equipment suppliers and oil makers. It has some health and government members, too, such as The Ministry of Health and the New Zealand Food Safety Authority.

As part of its work, The Chip Group has developed industry standards that cover the key points needed to produce high quality deep-fried chips. It encourages all involved with the frying of chips to follow them, and even provides training for the standards through its website.

The Chip Group is also responsible for launching the annual Best Chip Shop Competition. This is the only event of its kind in New Zealand, and judges chips on their quality, taste, fat and salt content. Consumers vote for their favourite chip and it is great that they much prefer chips that are not greasy - chips that are lower fat chips always get the most votes.

With each of these initiatives, the overall goal of The Chip Group remains the same – to provide better chips. Its hope is that by making chips lower in fat and salt, it can in turn make the population healthier.

Increase your chances of winning through online training

Producing the perfect chip just got a whole lot easier with free online training at www.thechipgroup.co.nz

Once you have registered on the website you can begin completing the online training which is broken into nine modules covering: chip size, oil temperature, cooking/deep frying, basket drainage, oil maintenance, filtering and cleaning, salt, frying oils and chip portion size.

The training, which is based on The New Zealand Standards for Deep Fried Chips, is available in English and Chinese and is simple and fast to complete – each module takes around 10 minutes. You can complete all the modules in one section or as time allows.

Each module will explain what you need to learn, show you a 2-4 minute video, recap on the key points of the video and then ask you 8-10 questions on the topic. All the answers are given in the information provided in the video and in the recapping.

As an example let’s look at the first module, chip size. The module covers:

which chips save you money and why

why straight cut chips are best

what size your chips should be

Using a chip that is cost effective and healthier for your customers has to be good for your business but how can you tell which chip is best?

When it comes to chips, size really does matter because the more surface the chip has, the greater area for fat adsorption. Thick straight-cut chips (13mm or ½ an inch) are far healthier than skinny-cut chips or crinkle-cut chips because their thickness means they have less surface to absorb fat. In fact in one study, 13mm straight-cut chips contained approximately 10 per cent fat, whereas skinny-cut chips contained 15 per cent fat. That’s one and a half times the amount of a straight-cut 13mm chips!

With the average portion of chips containing over half our daily fat intake, it is The Chip Group’s aim to reduce the average fat content to 9.2 per cent, which would remove 2500 tonnes of fat from New Zealanders’ diets each year - equivalent to 632 elephants!

But did you know that by using 13mm thick straight-cut chips you will actually cut down on the amount of frying oil you use? With less fat absorption you will have to top up your fryer less frequently, and that will save you money. So 13mm straight-cut chips are a healthier and more profitable option. What chips are you currently using?

By completing The Chip Group online training you will learn a lot more information about chip production, which has to be good for your business and better for your customers.

You can register today at: www.thechipgroup.co.nz and don’t forget, it’s free.

Potatoes, smashingly good whatever the occasion

Big, bold, cute, and round, even oversized is okay when you are a potato and we’re not too particular about the colour of your skin either.

So whether you are of the original Andes stock, a little Irish or even an indigenous Kiwi potato we love you and we eat tonnes of you to prove it.

World-wide potatoes are equally as popular. In fact the United Nations declared 2008 The Year of the Potato to highlight their versatility and their role in feeding the world’s population. United Nations reported that the world production of potatoes in 2008 was 314 tonnes, now that’s a lot of spuds!

Solanum tuberosum as they are botanically-known are of the same family as tomatoes, and deadly nightshade, but don’t let that put you off because they are bursting to the skin with nutrition. In fact even the skin is a great source of fibre so leave it on when cooking if you can. One medium potato gives about three grams of fibre which equates to around 10 per cent of your daily intake per serving.

Did you know that potatoes will help you ward off colds? Potatoes are really high in vitamin C and most New Zealanders get around 30 per cent of all their vitamin C from potatoes. But how much potato will you need? A medium sized potato (175g) can supply around half your recommended daily intake.

As well as vitamin C and fibre, potatoes provide an important source of minerals, especially magnesium, potassium and iron. They actually lead all other produce as a source of potassium and outperform other fruit and vegetables, even those with a reputation of being a great potassium source, like broccoli and bananas.

And while red coloured fruits and vegetables are recommended as a good source of antioxidants, potatoes - the coloured varieties, red skinned and yellow fleshed, supply even more antioxidants such as phenolics and carotenoids (vitamin C is also an antioxidant).

When you compare antioxidant activity of potatoes with other common vegetables on a per serve basis red potatoes rank second only to kumara. White potatoes, whilst lower than watercress are about equal to broccoli and red lettuce. We constantly hear that broccoli and watercress are super antioxidant sources, and on an equal weight basis they do outstrip potatoes, however potatoes rank very highly when you consider how we eat them, you simply do not eat a serve of 175g of watercress – but you do potatoes!

Add to that list the B Group vitamins, in particular B1 (thiamine) B6 and folate supplied in very significant amounts in potatoes, and the high quality protein consumed in each potato and you soon get the picture that potatoes are definitely a super-food.

So while you may think eating hot chips is not a healthy choice, with the right cooking techniques and the right cut of chip you will actually be meeting a reasonable amount of your daily nutrition needs without consuming too much fat. And if you make sure you use potatoes in their many cooked forms, you’ll find they are a smashing good choice of food for any occasion.

Equipment: no small fry

In order to produce outstanding chips and other fried foods, you must invest in a good-quality deep fryer. The following companies will be able to provide you with just that – they offer deep fryers in a variety of shapes, sizes and other specifications; while some also stock complementary equipment like filtration systems and oil disposal units.

Moffat Limited

Moffat Limited has long been recognised for the quality and performance of its fryers, available in 450mm or 600mm single or twin pan versions. Gas units feature Moffat’s unique Vee Ray technology, incorporating patented infrared burners for industry leading frying output and recovery. All fryers are available with either mechanical or digital controls. Digital control models offer precise temperature control and three product timers as well as time and temperature digital display. Twin pan models have independent digital controls for each pan and six product timers. All Moffat fryers feature stainless steel fryer tanks; they are easier to clean and last longer than mild steel tanks, plus they come with a limited 10 year warranty. Moffat’s Filtamax Filtration System is the ideal easy-to-use companion for their fryers because it enhances flavours by removing particles from the oil that would otherwise burn and taint the food. For more information, call Moffat Limited toll-free on 0800 MOFFAT (663328) or visit www.moffat.co.nz

Burns & Ferrall

Celebrating more than 60 years in the kitchen business, Burns & Ferrall stocks an extensive range of fryers suitable for commercial use. Most of these are made by the Frymaster brand, which offers such models as the Protector, specifically designed for oil-conserving, high-volume cooking; and the Fryer, specifically designed for cooking chicken, fish and breaded products. Other Frymaster products that those in the foodservice industry might find helpful include the Portable Filter, specifically designed to maximise oil life, and the Shortning Disposal Unit, specifically designed for safe and easy removal of waste oil from the kitchen. For more information, visit www.burnsferrall.co.nz

LYC Hospitality Equipment Limited

LYC Hospitality Equipment Limited is steadily gaining a reputation as a one-stop shop for a huge range of local and imported products, including the New Zealand-made Smart2-E Series of electric fryers. The Smart2-E electric deep fryer applies the laws of gravity to allow a mixture of water, which is heavier, and oil which is lighter, to combine its principles in a unique way to achieve a perfect golden fried product while maximising huge oil savings and longevity .With its new technology, cooking can be done at a lower temperature therefore saving on power.

Available in single tank, twin tank or triple tank options, Smart2 are specially designed for use in takeaway shops, supermarkets and the like. According to LYC, this unique combination gives a much better performance than regular fryers in terms of energy efficiency and oil usage, making it a cost-effective option. Furthermore, all Smart2-E Series fryers extend oil life by 50 per cent, eliminate mixed flavours between foods, maintain the original flavour of the food being cooked, have a lower cooking temperature and offer the same food quality as traditional deep fryers. For more information, visit www.lyc.co.nz