we take potatoes Very Seriously here at Cup of Joe, that’s why we enlisted casey elssus – Recipe developer and food writer extraordinaire – to help us find the best potato chips. Casey has worked on over 20 cookbooks, and when it comes to party snacks, no one does it better (she’s the guy behind Mosaic Jell-O and hot-fudge goodies). With his astute genius, he came up with a plan to rank five grocery-store chip brands. And the winner surprised us all…
Contender:
Five widely available potato-chip brands – only the basic salty flavors. I also eliminated cut chips or any specific type of chips.
modus operandi:
Like our previous taste test, I prepared blind samples, each numbered and coded according to a key that I kept with me. Sliced cucumber and plain sparkling water were available to cleanse the palate between tastings. In addition to ranking the samples, I asked Casey to note the saltiness, crunchiness, and flavor of the potatoes.
The Duds
5th place: utz
4th place: zap’s
We’ll start with the bad news: both the Utz and the Zap were complete flops. Casey said, “Utz tastes of potatoes and nothing else.” “There’s not much salt, and it’s quite dry – like a potato cracker.” Zap’s chips tasted very stale, even from a freshly opened bag. “They taste like they’ve been sitting outside,” Casey said. “Plus, for me, they’re too crunchy.” The good news for both of these brands is that we all love them for their other work: zap’s voodoo chips One of a kind, no one else does Pretzel Like Utz. We’ll let them stick to that, and leave the potato-chip business to our top three, which are…
the saltiest
third place: manner
It seemed a little too salty at first: “The chip of my dreams is salty, but salt should be a secondary flavor. With this, it’s instant.” But the sensible chips were on Casey (and me – though I kept my thoughts to myself during the proceedings!). It was one he kept coming back to revisit, and was a strong contender for second place. Until…
silver medalist
2nd place: Boulder Valley
Who knew?! These chips have been around for about 30 years, but are still comparatively new to the century-old American potato-chip industry. “Hmm!” Casey said he was clearly amazed when he tried them for the first time. “It’s very light – crisp, but in a tangy way. And it has a good balance of potato and salt.” These chips were so good that Casey almost gave Boulder the crown. He cleansed the palate, then did a side-by-side comparison with his other top picks, just to make sure. And in the end, although the Boulder chips were excellent, the winner, without a doubt, was…
slam-dunk favorite
1st place: Lays
“Yeah, that’s it,” Casey said. “They have the perfect crispiness, and the flavor progression is ideal: oil, potato, salt. They look so light that you expect them to be very airy, but the crispiness is just right.” After sampling them, Casey suspected they might be specifically Lay’s. Because Of that subtle perfection. “If you’ve ever been to Italy, the big thing there is ‘Aperitivo,’ which is a pre-dinner ritual where you have a spritz and some small snacks. And I’m almost sure everyone in Italy is serving lager.” Although I can’t confirm Casey’s aperitivo theory, I believe in it. I always thought Lay’s was full of oil, but this test proved me wrong (as our colleague Alison said, “It’s shocking how much better these are than the others”). On overall satisfaction, lays were – to official And Unofficial Tester – Most Favorite. When the taste test was over, we sat in the garden and finished the entire bag.
Thank you very much for your expertise, How! So friends, do you agree with these findings? And what snack, dessert or ingredient will we test next?
PS Many more taste tests, and the best summer desserts.
(Thanks to Alison for letting us use her garden!)
