Our Test Kitchen Tried 10 Brands to Find the Best Potato Chips

About Best Loved Brands

When you’re looking for the absolute best, grocery shopping can be a real chore—dozens of brands, hundreds of choices. From cake mix to coffee, hot sauce to hummus, it can be daunting to make the picks that will make your homemade creations their best yet. That’s where Taste of Home comes in. Our culinary and editorial experts put 100+ products to the test. After undergoing a thorough review, our Best Loved Brands emerged. Find out which brands you should be grabbing at the grocery store.

Finding the Best Potato Chips

When it comes to snacking, you can’t beat the classic potato chip. They’re crispy, salty and taste great straight out of the bag—though we love them most paired with our favorite dips. Just because you’re dipping and dunking these chips more often than not, doesn’t mean that you should settle for any old chip. That’s why our Test Kitchen put ten different brands to the test. Our expert panel judged these brands blindly according to these standards:

Flavor
Saltiness
Crunchiness
Dip-ability
Appearance

As the king of snacks, there’s a lot to consider when it comes to chips—you can’t have salt but no potato flavor or crunch without a sturdy structure to hold up to all those dips. You have to have the absolute perfect combination of these five criteria if you want to have the best snacking experience. In fact, we think that the perfect chip is the secret to this sweet-salty mashup: chocolaty chips. You might think this one’s a bit crazy, but this recipe is a lot like chocolate covered pretzels, but with extra crispness. Now, to make this recipe really shine, let’s find out which chips ranked best in our Best Loved Brands blind taste test.

via aldi.com

First Place: Clancy’s

The chip with the highest marks across the board came from Aldi. Clancy’s, an Aldi-exclusive brand, ranked well in flavor, saltiness, crunch, appearance and dip-ability. It could be the perfect chip! What really stood out was how Clancy’s was able to balance a nice fried potato flavor with the right level of salt—not overwhelming but still satisfying. This chip also got the highest scores in our blind taste test for dip-ability, meaning it would be right at home alongside our creamiest dips.

Available exclusively at Aldi.

Second Place: Mrs. Fisher’s

For fans of perfectly salty and crisp chips, you’ll want to try Mrs. Fishers. This old-fashioned brand offered us exceptional crunch which kept us going back for more and more chips. This chip was a touch saltier than our other top picks, but our Test Kitchen knows that there are major salt fans out there that would enjoy that little something extra.

Available at select grocers nationwide.

Third Place: Old Dutch

When it came to appearances, we loved Old Dutch. This brand looked like the perfect potato chip. It tasted pretty much like the perfect potato chip too! We loved this chip for its nice potato flavor and satisfying crunch. These chips were a bit thinner than others—meaning it might not hold up to a huge scoop of your favorite dip—but moderate dippers shouldn’t have any problem.

Available at grocers nationwide.

What to Make with Potato Chips

We know what you’re thinking: You don’t need to make anything with chips! You’d be right, but why not turn your favorite salty snack into a new treat? Potato chips can be crumbled to make crusts and coatings for chicken and fish or even used in cookies for a salty-sweet combo. Just check out these creative ways to use up that bag of chips in your cupboard (though who has leftover chips—you truly can’t eat just one).

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