I am something of a fan of Kettle Chips (a fact that you may have figured out from this post about my family's road trip days and potato chips). I love that small batch, thick cut, darkly cooked taste that they have. It's so different from the rest of the national, mainstream brands that it's hard to even think of them as they same type of snack.
Recently, I got my hands on a bag of the Death Valley Chipotle potato chips, winner of the Kettle Peoples' Choice contest earlier this year. The winning flavor of that contest each year then joins the product line (at least for a while, depending on its popularity) so this is a flavor that is now on store shelves.
My feeling about the Death Valley Chipotle chip is that it's good, but not great. I prefer the Thai Spice over this heat profile (which might be because I'm not a huge fan of smokiness and these are definitely smoky). However, they were still tasty enough that I had a hard time not finishing the bag the first night I opened it. If you like a smoky, spice chip, then you should definitely add this flavor to your cart the next time you see it.
Oh, and one last, cool thing about this chip. The folks at Kettle have partnered with the Death Valley Natural History Association (DVNHA). They are donating $1 to the DVNHA for every Facebook user who downloads a special Death Valley temperature gauge that monitors the desert heat. If you want to grab that application, click here.
At AOL Food, we are currently conducting a flavored potato chip taste test. In order to ensure that we received a national breadth o' crispy taters, we hooked up with Anchor's Chip of the Month Club, and man alive did those chiphounds deliver! Among their mysterious inclusions, I found California Chips' "Earthquake" Potato Chips.
Earthquake? Um, huh? My mind went in a couple directions:
These chips are actually plain (erroneously placed in the "flavored box"), but they have such a hardcore crunch that when you bite down, your teeth and skull shatter, much like your Grandma's Ming during an earthquake.
These chips are so obscenely spicy that the burning tongue'n'throat pain can only be accurately captured with comparisons to undue destruction. (Although in that case, a more apropos disaster descriptor might have been "1871 Great Chicago Fire.")
These chips are flavored with sedimentary salt and damp peppercorns, evoking an air of rubble and must.
These chips are, simply, naturally disastrous.
It wasn't until a co-worker suggested, "Maybe it just means that a bunch of spices are all shaken together, like an everything bagel." Oh. Well isn't she rational! Rational and, as it turns out, correct.
According to California Chips, Earthquake is "a mixture of several of our most popular flavors all together." Indeed, upon braving the Earthquake, I discover the smoky sweetness of Honey Barbecue, the slight bite of Creamy Chipotle, the cool herb of Sour Cream & Onion, and the tongue-tingle of Salt & Vinegar - all sublimated into one deliciously nonsensical flavorsphere. For someone like me, who doesn't discriminate against any chip flavor, these Earthquake chips will make grocery shopping a breeze. But I still maintain they need a more appropriate name. Like "Stonehenge."
Do you have a food that came to symbolize a period of time in your life? For me, that would be Zapp's potato chips. The chips came to be a symbol of my college years, and all the time I spent hanging out with friends in local bars.
Before I started going to the bars downtown, I had never heard of Zapp's. Those chips just happened to be ubiquitous to the bars in Athens, GA, where I went to college. However, as they were the some of the only food available at the bars, I did munch down my fair share of them. The chips, with names like Spicy Cajun Crawtators and Cajun Dill Gator-tators, are pretty good, though not the best. The flavors are on the unique side and they are always nice and crunchy.
I haven't had Zapp's in a very long time. I've had them since graduating from college, but I don't eat much in the way of potato chips as part of my long term health goals. Even though I don't eat them, just seeing a bag takes me back to the good times I had, hanging out with friends at the local pub. Do you have a food memory like this?
For years, I avoided potato chip flavors other than the occasional dip into sour cream & onion. And then I found Miss Vickie's, which have quickly become my guilty flavorful snack. Instead of just the classic concoctions, the Canadian brand looks outside the box with combinations like lime with pepper, roasted red pepper grill, sweet chili with sour cream, and my simple favorite: Honey and Roasted Garlic.
I half love this brand because the flavors are so intense that it keeps me from eating more than a handful or two. But that's not quite the case with the honey/garlic variety. It's an incredibly smooth-flavored chip that has the potent taste of garlic that's cut with the vaguely there sweetness of honey. If you're a garlic fiend, these chips should be crispy, garlicy heaven.
Merge that with some tasty dip or maybe some sharp cheddar, and the whole thing is even better.
For the longest time, the only onion and garlic flavored chip I could find at my supermarket was the Wise brand. Which was fine, since I like Wise chips, but I never understood why no one else was making them. Now, obviously, this was probably a regional thing when I was growing up, and I've since found other companies that make onion and garlic chips (including Utz and Boyer's).
But no other brand tastes like the Wise brand. Both the onion and the garlic are strong. It's not one of those chips that taste like someone just dusted the surface with onion and garlic, this is deep down taste (you will want to brush your teeth before you talk to/kiss anyone or go to bed).
If you're from New England, then Cape Cod Potato Chips are probably a staple in your cupboard (or wherever you may keep your chips). The original kettle chips are quite tasty, but let's talk about the various flavored chips that Cape Cod also sells.
The Sea Salt & Vinegar chips are strong and crunchy, while the Beachside BBQ chips taste a little different than other BBQ chips, as they have molasses and chili pepper. The Jalapeno & Cheddar chips are very strong when you open the bag but taste great. The Cheddar Jack & Sour Cream are so flavorful that you don't need any kind of dip to go along with them (Cape Cod also makes a new Honey Dijon chips and Buttermilk Ranch, but my local store was out of them).
T.G.I. Friday's actually makes a bunch of snack foods that you can buy in supermarkets, including Baked Onion Rings, Quesadilla, and Mozzarella Sticks. But the only one I've ever latched onto are the Cheddar & Bacon Potato Skins.
These things can't be that great for you (cheddar, bacon, and salt in a chip form?), but who cares? They're very baked potato-ish and hearty, perfect to have with a sandwich. I usually have plain potato chips with a sandwich (not sure why, maybe I don't want any competition between the flavors of the sandwich and the chip), but I make an exception for these.
These aren't easy to find, at least in my area. I usually have better luck finding them at CVS or Rite-Aid than I do the big supermarkets.
From up north (Canada) come these delicious chips that I didn't even know about until this year: Miss Vickie's! I'm addicted to their Country Onion and 3 Cheese (which, oddly, I can't even find on their site).
Actually, Miss Vickie makes some other great flavors, some rather unique chips you a lot of other companies don't make, including Roasted Red Pepper Grill (which my local supermarket never has for some reason), Sea Salt & Malt Vinegar, Honey & Roasted Garlic, and Lime and Black Pepper. But it's the onion and cheese flavor I'm most drawn to. It's the type of chip that tastes like it has dip on it, and the flavor is very strong (but not that fake taste you often get with potato chips).
When I was a kid, I was hopelessly addicted to Munchos, the chips that Julie wrote about earlier. I still like them, but my current love affair has turned to Natural Lays Thick Cut Potato Chips with Sea Salt.
These fantastic chips are shelved (in my supermarket, anyway) in the aisle with the other "fancy" or gourmet chips: Kettle, Terra Red Bliss, and others. I'm not really sure why. There's nothing particularly different about them (unless you count orgasmic taste as different) and they're not exactly healthy (sorry, the "Natural" in the title is probably very true, but that doesn't mean these are low fat or low calorie). They should probably be in the regular chip aisle. Then again, if they were, more people would buy them and my store would probably run out and I'd be upset that night.
When we set out to find the best of the bunch, we don't go spuddin' around. With the help of Anchor's Chip of the Month, AOL Food's panel munched, crunched, nibbled and gobbled our way through nearly 5 dozen kinds of plain potato chips in search of the tip top chip in all the land. See if you agree with our findings, or if we totally skipped over your favorite tater.
(Note to folks who are writing in saying they can't find the winner -- just use the arrows to navigate through the gallery. The results are ranked down from 15-1. And we hear ya! Cape Cod will definitely be in the next batch of reviews.)
The flavored chip tasting will follow in a few weeks, after our sodium levels normalize.
I don't have much of a relationship with potato chips these days. I consider them a guilty treat, to be eaten at parties but never at home. It's like having soda in the house -- if I buy it, they will eat it. And if they eat it, chips, I mean, they'll be hooked, and I'll never hear the end of it. The best I can offer my kids is the occasional package of tortilla chips, something to dredge up the salsa with.
Ah, but I have a past. And my past is filled with processed foods of the sort that I'd never let my kids near, lest they come to understand the dark pleasures of Hostess products.
My parents had no such compunction with me. I grew up on Wonder Bread and TV dinners and Uncle Ben's Converted Rice. I ate a Hostess Fruit Pie almost every day. But among my most treasured taste memories: Munchos brand potato chips.
I grew up in a household that was nearly devoid of junk food. My sister and I each got a single box of sugar cereal each year (on our birthdays), Halloween candy was strictly rationed and bread was dark and made from whole wheat. Potato chips were very definitely a special, once-in-a-very-great-while kind of treat.
Because of the chip control that went on during my childhood, the moments when they did appear on the scene remain present in my memory, even 20+ years later. They became especially associated with roadtrips for me, as my dad would insist that we have some "car snacks" and my mom, who actually loves potato chips, would cave to the special occasion energy.
We'd make a stop at Trader Joe's or some other local natural foods store for thick-cut, kettle cooked potato chips (Kettle Chips play a prominent role in my memories, but the TJ's Hawaiian-style chips also showed up fairly regularly). Handfuls would be carefully doled out to my sister and me in the back seat of the station wagon and we'd slowly crunch our way through our portions. Raina would suck all the salt off the chips before eating, where I'd nibble along the edges, trying to make the treat last as long as possible. We'd ask for seconds and would get them, until my mom determined that we'd all had enough (typically determined by her own salt/grease satiation level), and folded up the bag, tucking it down by her feet for safekeeping.
These days, I occasionally buy a bag of Kettle Chips (I had a salt and vinegar phase during college) but I am untrustworthy around open bags of potato chips. They call to me until I surrender and crunch my way through the entire bag. However, while I do enjoy them, potato chips now are never quite as delightful as those measured handfuls of chips that we'd eat while criss-crossing the highways of the west coast.
With potato chips, you can go in a few different directions -- thick, plain potato chips with dip; skip the dip and serve flavored potato chips; or get all kinds of flavor-crazy and serve flavored potato chips with dip!
I am fickle when it comes to potato chips, so I actually do need to have several different options available. Sometimes I love those horrible Lay's potato chips that are nothing more than pieces of potato paper, but most of the time, I love thick, hard, crunchy kettle-cooked potato chips with an obscene scoop of French Onion Dip. You can make it from scratch, but I have to confess that I have a soft spot for the French Onion Dip made from dried soup mix and sour cream.
When I was growing up, we didn't get much in the way of junk food. My mother didn't believe in keeping chips, cookies or baked goods around the house. The only time we got the crap we craved was when there was a picnic or party. On those occasions, my parents would buy Kettle Chips, thinking that they were in some way healthier than all the others available.
Because of those once-in-awhile indulgences, I always think fondly of Kettle Chips (especially the Yogurt and Green Onion flavor). They've currently got five new flavors on the market and are asking consumers to taste and vote for their favorites. You can choose between Mango Chili, Orange Ginger Wasabi, Death Valley Chipotle, Wicked Hot Sauce and Jalepeno Salsa Fresca. What's your new favorite?
How did I miss this holiday all the way until September 20th?! Oh well, better late than never.
Potatoes are one of the great things on Earth, and that includes television, blue jeans, and Jessica Alba. You can do so many things with them: baked potatoes, potato chips, french fries, mashed potatoes, potato salad. The list is endless. And they're pretty healthy too.
I am something of a fan of Kettle Chips (a fact that you may have figured out from this post about my family's road trip days and potato chips). I love that small batch, thick cut, darkly cooked taste that they have. It's so different from the rest of the national, mainstream brands that it's hard to even think of them as they same type of snack. 
For years, I avoided potato chip flavors other than the occasional dip into sour cream & onion. And then I found Miss Vickie's, which have quickly become my guilty flavorful snack. Instead of just the classic concoctions, the Canadian brand looks outside the box with combinations like lime with pepper, roasted red pepper grill, sweet chili with sour cream, and my simple favorite: Honey and Roasted Garlic.
For the longest time, the only onion and garlic flavored chip I could find at my supermarket was the 
If you're from New England, then 
T.G.I. Friday's actually makes a bunch of snack foods that you can buy in supermarkets, including Baked Onion Rings, Quesadilla, and Mozzarella Sticks. But the only one I've ever latched onto are the 
From up north (Canada) come these delicious chips that I didn't even know about until this year: Miss Vickie's! I'm addicted to their Country Onion and 3 Cheese (which, oddly, I can't even find on 
This is a love story.
I don't have much of a relationship with potato chips these days. I consider them a guilty treat, to be eaten at parties but never at home. It's like having soda in the house -- if I buy it, they will eat it. And if they eat it, chips, I mean, they'll be hooked, and I'll never hear the end of it. The best I can offer my kids is the occasional package of tortilla chips, something to dredge up the salsa with.
I grew up in a household that was nearly devoid of junk food. My sister and I each got a single box of sugar cereal each year (on our birthdays), Halloween candy was strictly rationed and bread was dark and made from whole wheat. Potato chips were very definitely a special, once-in-a-very-great-while kind of treat. 
Cakes so amazing they'd be hard to cut into
Fruit juice: An invitation to diabetes?
Morbid thoughts? Have a cookie
