REVIEW: Trader Joe’s – Somewhat Spicy Dill flavored Kettle Cooked Potato Chips

Rating: ©©©©-1/2 chips  (lip-smacking)

We really appreciate how Trader Joe’s just loves keeping their packaging light, and a little quirky!  With these latest chips we get an orange haired young chap, who is apparently dressed for his St. Patty’s Day party or something, and is reflecting to himself – “Everything changed the day I discovered…”
We have to assume that this reflection is in regards to the day he discovered these chips.

Well, we’re not going to go so far as to say that everything changed the day that we discovered….. these Somewhat Spicy Dill flavored Kettle Cooked Potato Chips.  But, we can guess that things would certainly change for us if we wore an outfit such as the one this guys is wearing!

The Spicy Dill variety is not necessarily a new combo in the chip flavor game, but it is one that has not really picked up steam with the “big” brand companies.  Most of the chip companies willing to venture into this tangy flavor realm seem to be a bit more of the independent sort.

Most certainly our all-time favorites from this flavor combo variety are Grippo’s Hot Dill Pickle Potato Chips.  It is very likely that these are no longer available, but our memories of these herbal-y-spicy thin cut potato chips were forever live on!  We are also huge fans of Zapp’s, and Deep River’s potato chip versions.  We are happy to report that Trader Joe’s Somewhat Spicy rendition can be added to that list of favorite versions!

TJ’s medium-thin cut kettle cooked potato chips are fantastic!  Perfectly crispy, with just the right amount of mouth pleasing body.  We couldn’t really taste any potato flavor underneath the powerful seasoning blend, but that was just fine since that seasoning was a delicious recipe.

Joe’s seasoning recipe reminded us a lot of McClure’s Bloody Mary chips.  First, comes the tongue tingling spicy acidic-chile burn.  The acidic burn attacks the throat and the nasal cavity sort of harshly, but then quickly subdues to the moderate chile burn that resides in the mouth!  The one-two spicy punch.  The fragrant dill herbal notes flutter there in the background, bringing thoughts of pickles to the mind.  Garlic is also very present.

The flavor combo works deliciously well!  If you are a fan of spicy chips, or pickle flavored chips, then we’re fairly confident that you would be fans of these as well.  Make sure to let us know your comments below regarding these chips, or the day everything changed when you discovered…..what?”

For another take check out What’s Good at Trader Joe’s review.

As always, these are our thoughts, we would love to hear what you think. Agree or disagree, let us know.

Discovered at Trader Joe’s (of course); La Grange, Illinois

Trader Joe’s Official Website

Chip Ratings Scale:

(1/4 increments)

© – return to sender

©© – tolerable

©©© – notable

©©©© – lip-smacking

©©©©© – “A” list

REVIEW: Kettle Brand – Pepperoncini Potato Chips

Rating: ©©©© chips  (lip-smacking)

We always become a little giddy when one of the big chip brands, and long-time favorites, decides that it is time to release a new flavor (in this case THREE new flavors).  Immediately we were drawn to one flavor in particular.  A strinkingly bright, yellowish-green bag with a single flavor word: PEPPERONCINI!!  We love pepperoncini!  What’s that, you somehow do not know what pepperoncini are…huh?  Well, first of all, shame on you, and secondly, pepperoncini are a variety of ever so slightly sweet, and slightly spicy peppers, made in both Italy and Greece. The peppers are bright greenish-yellow, and most often sliced into little rings, pickled in a brine and jarred. The pickled peppers are used on everything from pasta and sandwiches, to pizza and salads. Here at Chip Review we love them on practically anything (Frosted Flakes, we’re looking at you…), and as far as we are aware, no company has ever attempted to make pepperoncini flavored chips. We have an exciting new flavor first!!

So, to say the least, we had very, very high hopes for these chips. And, as often times is the case, we may have built these up in our minds to something greater than they could have ever possibly become… In other words, they were destined to fail even before we ever tasted that first chip.

All in all, we are sort of torn with these chips.  On the one hand, they are really good chips.  They have a unique flavor combo, sort of like a zippy, slightly sour and tangy, jalapeno flavored potato chip.  With some notes of garlic and onion thrown in to help to round out the overall flavor profile.  They exhibit a light touch of chile heat, but in the end, and on the other hand, we simply wanted more. We needed more.  We wanted pepperoncini!

Just to make sure that we weren’t misjudging these chips unfairly, we did the only clear and reasonable thing we could think of to do.  We put them up against the real thing!  We went back and forth between pepperoncini potato chip and pepperoncini ring.  You know what we determined?  Our initial assessment remained true.  These chips simply did not fully evoke thoughts of real pepperocini.  They needed more commanding sour, more of that potently zesty pickled chile pucker conviction!

The pepperocini seasoning blend paired rather well with Kettle Brand’s deliciously greasy and crunchy, kettle cooked potato chips!  But, you know what we think would have paired even better?  Accurately seasoned PEPPEROCINI flavored chips!!  We like’em, we just don’t really love them!  Here’s hoping that the new Red Curry flavored chips are better than these.

As always, these are our thoughts, we would love to hear what you think.  Agree or disagree, let us know.

Ordered from Kettle Brand

Kettle Brand Official Website

Chip Ratings Scale:

(1/4 increments)

© – return to sender

©© – tolerable

©©© – notable

©©©© – lip-smacking

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REVIEW: McClure’s – Bloody Mary Kettle Cooked Potato Chips

Rating: ©©©©-1/4 chips  (notable)

Small time pickle company, turned big time pickle company, who then turned potato chip company, huh!?!  Well, if McClure’s can crank out chips that are this lip-smacking, then it works for us!

We have been fans of McClure’s pickles for quite a while now (probably ever since Ted Allen mentioned them on the Food Network), and it was over a year ago that we reviewed McClure’s other two potato chip flavors – Spicy Pickle and Garlic Dill Pickle.  Both of those potato chips came in crinkle cut form, and these new ones are not only NOT crinkle cut, but also now kettle cooked.  Changing things up are we McClure’s?!

Oddly enough, as we passed around this ruby red bag of crunchy kettle cooked chips at Chip Review, not a single one of our tasters actually claimed to be fans of the classic bloody mary beverage.  Obviously, we understand that we are likely in the minority here, who doesn’t love the zippy, tomato-ful, brunch and hang-over beverage champion?!  Well, apparently Chip Review doesn’t!!  Luckily, we’ve tried nearly a handful of Bloody Mary flavored chips along the way, and as a whole, have rated them all rather favorably.

If real bloody mary’s tasted as fantastic as these chips do, maybe we would actually be admirers!!  We were very surprised to like the seasoning as much as we did.  In the end, we’re pretty sure that McClure’s may have just combined a lot of the major ingredients from the two other flavors.  First, comes the tongue tingling spicy acidic burn.  Not to be confused with the traditional spicy chile burn that envelops the entire mouth, and lingers for quite some time.  No, the acidic burn attacks the throat sort of harshly, but then quickly subdues to a moderate burn in the mouth, and gently coaxes you to want more!  The other major flavor component here is garlic.  So, you can see what we were saying about combining their two other flavors – spicy and garlic.  Well, the flavor combo really works when sprinkled on some crunchy and salty kettle cooked potato chips!

So, these are delicious, but do they necessarily taste like real bloody mary’s to us??  Nope, not at all.  They have that tangy acidic sour aspect, and certainly deliver the heat, but we could not detect any real tomato flavor.  Which, as we recall, is the predominant ingredient in the bloody mary, correct?  Or, has it been too long since any of us tried one??  Nope, we just looked it up, we were right, bloody mary’s contain tomato juice.  We do see that both tomato and paprika are listed among the ingredients, but it seems like they were both there more to add color, than to add flavor.  Maybe, just maybe, we could detect a small amount of sweet and tangy tomato powder from behind the powerful garlic and heat, but it certainly would not have been enough for us to call these blood mary flavored in a blind taste test.

The potato chips themselves are textbook kettle cooked.  They are medium thickness, a good hearty crunch, decent level of oil, plenty of salt, and of course twists, and turns, and folds, and crevices.  A great delivery medium for this spicy garlic flavor!  That’s right, these chips are delicious, but we’re not going to call them blood mary flavored!

As always, these are our thoughts, we would love to hear what you think. Agree or disagree, let us know.

Discovered at Macy’s – Oak Brook Center; Oak Brook, Illinois

McClure’s Official Website

Chip Ratings Scale:

(1/4 increments)

© – return to sender

©© – tolerable

©©© – notable

©©©© – lip-smacking

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REVIEW: McClure’s – Spicy Pickle Crinkle Cut Potato Chips

Rating: ©©©-3/4 chips  (notable)

Comments:

We’re pretty sure that it was Ted Allen, of Food Network’s ‘Chopped’, who chose McClure’s hand sliced pickles as one of the ‘Best Things (he) Ever Ate’, and thus turned us onto McClure’s pickles for evermore.  So, you can only imagine our excitement when we learned that the gurus behind some of the world’s greatest pickles, decided to take what they knew about pickles, and apply it to the greatest snack flavor delivering medium in the world – CHIPS!!

We must admit, our hopes were very high for these chips, and in the end, maybe, just maybe, too high.  McClure’s Spicy Pickle potato chips are good, they just aren’t great.  Unlike their pickles that exude crisp, hand packed, original flavors, these potato chips are a bit boring, simple and straightforward.  They were simply missing that wow factor that some of our favorite spicy pickle chips like Grippo’s, Zapp’s, and Deep River always provide!

Probably the best aspect of McClure’s chips are the large, mostly unbroken, wide ripple and potato-flavorful chips themselves.  Their crunch was a bit too soft and subtle in our opinion, but the nice rustic, dark, charred edges added a great dimension and flavor to the chips.  The seasoning blend coating these chips is short lived with a quick, but fleeting burst of vinegar (citric acid), followed by a good amount of dill and just a bit of heat that catches the back of the throat.  The seasoning combo just didn’t seem to come together cohesively for us, each one of the three facets above was working on their own, and in the end our mouths could tell.

As always, these are our thoughts, we would love to hear what you think. Agree or disagree, let us know.

Chip Ratings Scale:

(1/4 increments)

© – return to sender

©© – tolerable

©©© – notable

©©©© – lip-smacking

©©©©© – “A” list

RATING: Grippo’s – Hot Dill Pickle Potato Chips

Rating: ©©©©© chips  (“A” list)

Chip Ratings Scale:

(1/4 increments)

© – return to sender

©© – tolerable

©©© – notable

©©©© – lip-smacking

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REVIEW: Zapp’s – Cajun Dill Gator-Tators Kettle Potato Chips

Rating: ©©©©-1/2 chips  (lip-smacking)

Comments:

We are really big fans of Dill / Pickle flavored chips at Chip Review.  In fact, it is probably fair to say that it is consistently among our Top 5 favorite chip flavors.  That being said, we are always extremely happy when we find a brand that elevates the flavor, or at least executes it impeccably.

Well, that just happens to be the case with these Cajun Dill Gator-Tators, along with many of Zapp’s potato chips.  Zapp’s has composed a wonderful combination of flavors that includes an herbaceous dill aroma with a sour-vinegary pickle, plenty of salt and some spicy Cajun heat.  These chips remind us a bit of Deep River Snack’s New York Spicy Dill, that we recently reviewed, except for Zapp’s Gator-Tators are a bit creamier, or fatty, or rich.  Basically, their flavor just felt more developed and natural.

Like we’ve said before, as far as the potato chips themselves go, Zapp’s knows what they’re doing.   Their Cajun Kettle Recipe makes for some really fresh, crunchy, semi-thick potato chips, that we could munch on all day.  Combined with this near perfect Cajun Dill flavor recipe and we’re left with some really great chips, that may just make Chip Review’s Best Dill Pickle chips of all-time (stay tuned, list coming soon)!

P.S. – not quite sure what Gator-Tators are/mean?  Maybe Zapp’s is simply going with their Louisana Cajun theme?

As always, these are our thoughts, we would love to hear what you think.  Agree or disagree, let us know.

Chip Ratings Scale:

(1/4 increments)

© – return to sender

©© – tolerable

©©© – notable

©©©© – lip-smacking

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REVIEW: Deep River Snacks – New York Spicy Dill Pickle Kettle Cooked Potato Chips

Rating: ©©©©-1/4 chips  (lip-smacking)

Comments:

Is New York known for its spicy pickles?  Are they any different than North Dakota spicy pickles?  Either way, these are some tasty, tasty potato chips.  The spicy dill pickle combination is definitely an under-utilized flavor if you want our opinion.

These chips are loaded with herb-y dill flavor, but don’t pack too much of a vinegary pickle zing (in fact, these could use a bit more in our opinion – a little too subtle).  The addition of spicy heat really adds a nice touch and depth to the dill pickle flavor.  We’re not quite sure what combination of spices, or ingredients ,were used to add the heat, but whatever it may be, it really does the trick because our entire mouths were feeling it.

The potato chips themselves were on the thicker side and really very crunchy.  For being kettle cooked chips they were not oily at all, in fact, they almost seemed a little dry (if that’s possible?), or lacking that creamy, rich, fatty mouth feel that the really great chips have.

We have yet to see this flavor from Deep River Snacks on our local shelves, but if you happen to spot them, do yourself a favor and grab a bag or two!

As always, these are our thoughts, we would love to hear what you think.  Agree or disagree, let us know.

Chips provided to Chip Review by Deep River Snacks for review

Chip Ratings Scale:

(1/4 increments)

© – return to sender

©© – tolerable

©©© – notable

©©©© – lip-smacking

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