Red Hot Riplets
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Red Hot Riplets are a kind of potato chip sold in St. Louis, Missouri by the Old Vienna Snack Food Co.. Red Hot Riplets are ridge cut chips with a sweet and fiery hot barbecue seasoning. They are labeled as being made with "St. Louis Style Hot Sauce". The chips are sold all over town at many local businesses, from mom and pop stores to chains like Schnucks.
Red Hot Riplets used to be fried in partially hydrogenated vegetable shortening, but they are now just fried in liquid vegetable oils. This gives the chips a richer potato flavor and makes them marginally more healthy, but they are still just as hot as they ever were. Old Vienna has also made Red Hot Thins with thin potato chips, Cheesy Red Hot Riplets with the addition of a cheese powder, and Red Hot Pork rinds.
In 2004 Esquire magazine included Red Hot Riplets in their article and list "Best Potato Chips You've Never Tasted" [1]. The chips are also known outside of St. Louis because of the rapper Murphy Lee. He wrote a song "Red Hot Riplets" (from the album Murphy's Law) that mentions them in the chorus and when he was included in the Rap snacks line of chips he had them duplicate the Red Hot Riplets recipe as his flavor of Rap Snacks.
Old Vienna Snack Food Company was founded in 1936 by Louis Kaufman in St. Louis.
