A vacuum packed food container has a vacuum packed inner bag and a clear or transparent outer container body. The inner bag within the container body has a food product therein. The food product is preferably a food chip, such as a potato chip or a masa based chip. A lid is detachably connected to the container body. The lid covers an opening that leads to the interior of the inner bag. The inner bag has a vacuum therein that draws the bag against the food product therein. When the lid is detached from the container body, the vacuum within the inner container is released while the vacuum in an air space around the inner bag is maintained such that the inner bag expands outward by atmospheric pressure entering the inner bag and moves towards the inner surface of the outer container body.

A potato skin product is prepared by comminuting raw potato skins into a thick runny soup, including an edible binder in the soup and cooking the resultant soup mixture to form a thin flexible cooked potato skin product. The raw potato skin soup may be sprayed onto a cooking surface in the form of a thin layer and baked to form a product. The thin product produced maintains its flexibility even upon freezing and the frozen product may be reformed into the cavities of containers. The potato skin product serves as a shell for cooked potato interiors and other fixings.

A method for producing french fried potato strips which includes washing and cutting raw potatoes into suitably sized strips. The raw potato strips are steam blanched, immersed in a hot brine solution, partially dehydrated in hot air, par fried in oil, and then frozen. After par frying, the strips have a solids content of about 20 to 45 percent by weight. The frozen french fries are reconstituted by finish frying, and have a sodium chloride content of about 0.5 to 2 percent by weight.

A method for making skin-on potato boats includes blanching whole potatoes to gelatinize the outer layer beneath the skin, cutting the potatoes in half to expose cut surfaces and in one embodiment abrading away the ungelatinized center portion of the potato halves. In a second embodiment, the center portions are manually removed with a scraping device. In either embodiment, the resulting hollowed-out potato halves may then be blanched, air cooled, parfried and frozen for later reconstitution. After parfrying, the potato boats have a solids content of about 35%-45%. Upon reconstitution the potato boats may be filled with condiments, such as cheese and the like, and served as so-called "potato skins."

A method for making skin-on potato boats includes slicing raw potatoes in half along their major diameter to form potato halves with exposed cut surfaces and removing center portions of the potato halves, leaving a potato layer adjacent the potato skin. The resulting hollowed-out potato halves are blanched, parfried, and frozen for later reconstitution. Upon parfrying, the potato layer has an integrated cellular structure. The reconstituted product has an oil content within the range of about 6-11%.