What do native English speakers call chips/fries that are no longer crispy? [closed]
I am looking for a term commonly used to describe chips (BrE)/fries (AmE) that are no longer crispy, and need to be re-fried to give them back their crispiness and proper taste. It should be quite a simple word to find, but I cannot find one.
Crisps that have gone soft are often labeled 'soggy'. Here are three links that tell you how to make soggy crisps palatable again:
Wave goodbye to soggy crisps: Simple bag sealing trick
Never Have A Soggy Crisp Again With This 30-Second Hack
Stale bread and soggy crisps: How to bring old food back from the dead
UPDATE: The original question asked about crisps. Since then the OP has clarified that he or she is actually asking about chips (BrE) / French Fries (AmE). The word 'soggy' fits the description the OP is after for chips/fries too:
This is how to reheat those soggy chips from yesterday’s takeaway and make them delicious again
Fish and Chip Monger Solves Soggy Fries Dilemma With Dry Vinegar
How do you revive soggy French fries?
Physicist reveals the best way to revive your soggy french fries
BrE Crisps = AmE Chips and they go stale (chewy or even slightly rancid because the oil on them goes bad) Frying them will not help because they will just burn
BrE Chips = AmE Fries and they will become soggy (lose their outer crunch from moisture escaping the inner part) and eventually dry out (not sure there is a word for that though, I would probably not say "dessicated fries") Frying them again will bring back some crunch as a outer layer of the chip / fry has moisture removed to make it crunchy/ crispy.
Generally speaking a Crisp/Chip is a packaged food sold in a store and eaten cold whereas a Chip/Fry is a fresh food served hot and eaten immediately. In American English it would be illogical for a Chip (crisp) to be soggy since a few hours time has no effect. The only exception would be if water were poured into a bag of chips (crisps.) Likewise it would be illogical in American English to refer to a fry (chip) as stale because it is eaten fresh and would never be left long enough to undergo becoming stale (assuming it was a tasty fry/chip.) The only exception might be if the potato it was made from was too old but then the term would more likely be rancid or rotten than stale.
Notes:
In Australian dialects and creoles, the terms are much muddled and therefore it is hard to predict how speakers of those dialects would describe this situation.
There is some gray area concerning what Americans may call "pub chips" these are thinner slices of potato more similar to the British crisp, though I believe the BrE term is "sliced chip." Though
I'd use stale. It may be particular to my region maybe.
stale
(of food) no longer fresh and pleasant to eat; hard, musty, or dry. ‘stale bread’
Oxford Living Dictionaries
I'm an American. Here's what I have to say about this:
"Soggy" fries are cooked at the wrong temperature, and absorbed too much oil. "Stale" fries are old and not crispy anymore.
I've never, ever referred to chips/crisps as "soggy"; they are always "stale". Usually they go stale from exposure to moisture, and I bake them for 5 minutes at about 200F to fix them.
"Soggy" also refers to cereal that's been sitting in the milk too long.