How to Turn Corn or Potato Chips into a MacGyver-Style Emergency Candle

Not having power sucks. It can be fun for the first few hours, but if it lasts any longer than that, most people run out of things to do pretty quickly (i.e. the batteries in all their devices die).

One thing that's awesome about outages is they're a great excuse to light a bunch of candles. If you don't have any candles, there just so happens to be tons of other stuff you can set on fire to provide yourself with some light.

Crayons, cooking oil, and even butter can be used in a pinch as makeshift candles, and it turns out, so can Doritos.

Pringles are also great makeshift candles, or pretty much any kind of fried chips made of corn or potatoes. The oil in the chips makes them burn slowly, and you only need to light one because as it burns, the others will eventually catch fire, too.

Chips apparently make great kindling, so it's not really surprising that they also work as candles.

They do burn pretty slowly, as you can see in the video below.

All you need to make your "candle" is a heat-proof container (like a ramekin dish) and some dirt or sand. Skaie Knox of HomeJelly points out that the larger the container and the more chips you use, the longer it burns.

What kind of corn or potato chips have you had success with? Share your secrets!

Photos by Skaie Knox