AT 6 P.M. every night, my 2-year-old son requests that we play a “Jazz for Kids” CD of mostly food-focused songs. (Yes, we still have a CD player.) The 1952 number “Potato Chips,” from singer and multi-instrumentalist Slim Gaillard, contains the following refrain, a surprisingly relentless earworm:

“Crunch, crunch, I don’t want no lunch / All I want is potato chips.”

Having succumbed many a time to a bag of potato chips in place of a proper lunch, I know that what Mr. Gaillard craves is pleasurable in the moment but never wholly satisfying as a meal. As a garnish or accent, however, potato chips can bring real charisma to a dish. Whether Lays, Ruffles or a regional brand you grew up on (Charles Chips and Great Lakes for me), this salty snack food will lend a nice bite to dishes that might otherwise be rather one-note texturally.

CRUNCH TIME Grab a bag of potato chips and bring a distinctive salty crunch to all sorts of recipes.

Photo: Getty Images

In the cookbook “Midwest Made,” an ode to the baking of the north-central U.S., Shauna Sever doubles down on the chips in her Potato-Chip Chip Shortbread recipe. “They’re not just mixed in, they’re also on the outside, almost like a panko-crusted piece of chicken,” said Ms. Sever. “We didn’t have panko in Illinois in the early 1980s, but we did have potato chips.’’ She also crams chips into tuna fish sandwiches and mixes them into salads. “It’s kind of like a crouton,” she quipped.

Though steadfast in her devotion to the brand of her youth, Jays, from Chicago, Ms. Sever found that these chips didn’t have the right level of saltiness for her shortbread. After some experimenting, she landed on Lays. But when it comes to casseroles, she sticks to Jays.

Molly Yeh, cookbook author and host of the Food Network show “Girl Meets Farm,” sees things a bit differently. A resident of Grand Forks, N.D., Ms. Yeh is an expert in hot dish, the native subset of casseroles held together with something cheesy or saucy. “I think potato chips as a topper are complicated, because, while I really love them, they get soggy very fast. Or they run the risk of being sharp and cutting your mouth,” she said. (She opts for a hot-dish topping of Tater Tots instead.) Ms. Yeh finds chips do work, however, in less-saucy recipes, such as the one for green beans at right, where a finishing handful of potato chips retains its crunch and provides just the right textural counterpoint.

Still, I would encourage Ms. Yeh not to give up on chips in a saucy or creamy context altogether. In 2020, Ben & Jerry’s introduced a limited-batch ice cream called Chip Happens, a “Cold Mess of Chocolate Ice Cream with Fudge Chips & Crunchy Potato Chip Swirls.” When I tried the flavor, I was pleased to find that the swirls were indeed crunchy.

To better understand how that was possible, I reached out to food scientist Sarah Fidler, who has a title I’m pretty sure exists only at Ben & Jerry’s: Queen of R&D Euphoria. “The basic concept is that fat will act as a barrier to moisture migration,” she explained. “So if you have something that could get soggy, cover it in something fatty—chocolate, oil, etc.”

While you can always use chocolate-covered potato chips—recipe permitting—for extra crunch insurance, I’ve found that the slick of residual fryer oil on a plain chip will keep the crunch intact in a broad range of dishes. In the recipe below, crab cakes dredged in crushed potato chips deliver a shattering crunch that complements the succulent shellfish beautifully. My son loves them almost as much as the jazzy musical accompaniment that goes with them.

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