In a recent comment section on an article about starting fires, a friend of 3BY (and future contributor) stated that corn chips can be used as an emergency fire starter.
Since 1) we know he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to all things outdoors (he’s a personal friend of Spice & Salty) and 2) Salty likes to eat corn chips, we decided to put the snack food do the test.
Do corn chips burn? Can they be used as an emergency fuel for a firestarter? Are the worth prepping for that purpose?
Let’s find out.
Corn Chips
The first part of our test required buying a bag of corn chips. Since we are cheapskates and all corn chips pretty much taste alike, we went to a local Dollar General and bought a $1 Clover Valley brand bag for this test.
This brand is not our “normal” brand of corn chips, Salty generally gets Frito Lay Scoops brand chips when he gets a “hankerin” for the little yellow heart-attack inducers (corn chips are not health food).
Brands
We suspected it didn’t matter as far as flammability goes what brand of corn chip one chooses, so we just bought the cheapest chips we could find.
Having said that, Salty bravely did a “quality control taste test” and found that the Dollar General house brand actually tastes a bit “lighter” and less oily than the Frito Lay brand does.
So… in order to be scientific (you know we always try to test things scientifically) we compared nutritional labels between the Clover Valley and Frito Lay brand chips
OK, so we are talking about 10g of fat overall… how about the Frito Lay chips?
They look very comparable when looking at a one-ounce serving size nutritionally, so we exepect if all other things are equal, the cheap chips and the expensive chips will burn about the same.
We are, however, too cheap to go out and spend $1.69 on a bag of Scoops to test our theory. Our dedication to science only goes so far.
Salty’s Note: Health wise, choose the Scoops over the Dollar General brand. Both are horrid nutritionally, but the Scoops have a bit less of a catastrophic sodium level than the Clover Valley chips do.
Flaming Corn Chips – Philosophy Of Use
When we came up with the idea test corn chips with a torch, we had several thoughts about the Philosophy Of Use (POU) for corn chip immolation.
First, we thought that people might do this just to amuse their friends and show how smart they are. That’s a totally legit POU. Some of the greatest things in life we do just to impress our friends. Unfortunately, some of the worst things in life are done for the same reason (these worse things generally start with the statement “hold my beer and watch this”).
Secondly, our POU for corn chips as a fire starter is that you are camping, and need to start a fire, and forgot to bring kindling… but you did pack the corn chips. Will they work for this purpose?
Our third potential POU for corn chips aflame is as a prep… is it worth keeping a bag of corn chips around (or a small, waterproof bottle filled with corn chips) to use as a primary fire kindling material?
Burn Corn Chips Burn!!!
Enough talk, lets burn some corn chips!
First up, corn chips right out of the bag:
Spice held the torch up to the chips and tried to light them as I stood by taking pictures and making snarky comments.
Did we get ignition?
Yes we did!
After fiddling around a bit to figure out the best way to light a corn chip on fire, it turns out that they are best set aflame by lighting the edge, just like a piece of paper.
The chips took right off and burned strongly.
The truth of the matter is they lit about as well as some cardboard, but not as well as a normal scrap of paper, dry straw or wood shavings.
Time To Throw A Curve Ball Into The Test
We found it relatively easy to light full chips, but if you’ve ever carried corn chips around you know you don’t have big, full chips for long.
You end up with corn chip crumbles.
Do they burn well enough to use as kindling?
The sad truth is that you CAN eventually get them on fire, but it takes about 30 seconds worth of propane out of the torch to get them going. This is far, far worse than anything I would consider “good kindling”
Spice’s theory was that, if corn chips were effective as fire starters, you crumble them up and put them in an old pill bottle and keep them on hand for starting fires. The only downside to this is that, due to the high organic oil content of chips, they would likely grow rancid in a short amount of time in the heat and be a smelly mess when opened.
Turns out they didn’t burn well enough crushed to even consider storing them in a bottle.
Do Wet Corn Chips Burn?
No.
Wet corn chips do not burn.
We gave them a nice water bath then tried to light them…
Flameproof when wet.
Sorry to disappoint everybody who might have been envisioning a great all-weather kindling material, but we not only found during our testing that wet corn chips do not burn, wet corn chips also don’t remain corn chips for very long… they fall apart quickly into a big pile of goo.
The Bottom Line
Let’s go back to our three POU’s we looked at earlier:
- Burning corn chips to impress your friends with your folksy woods knowledge. Yes, they do this very well. Your buddies will be amazed and you won’t have to do anything that will end up on YouTube as a “hold my beer and watch this” blooper.
- If you are camping and forgot to bring your kindling but you did bring a bag of corn chips, then yes, using corn chips to start a fire works decently well… as long as they are not mushed corn chips or wet corn chips.
- Are they worth keeping as a fire-starting prep? Absolutely not… corn chips have a short shelf life, turn rancid, and at their best are only a moderately decent kindling. For the same space as a bottle of chips, you could keep a container of all-weather flammable petroleum jelly, something that has other good uses as well.
So there you have it, our corn chip test. It does make me wonder something, though… are chili cheese corn chips more flammable than regular flavored chips?
Hmmm…. we may have to find out…
