Potato Chip Review

Taste testing chips: A couch potato's dream job

Think salty, crunchy potato chips are guaranteed to please? Think again. After reading more than a dozen potato-chip taste tests and reviews, we discovered that critics often dismiss classic potato chips as greasy and/or soggy and new-wave chips, which come in flavors such as Chinese Five Spice and Jerk Chicken, as too weird or too bland to enjoy. Critics even downgrade one chip for being too crunchy. But they reserve their real venom for baked potato crisps, which are said to be tough, with strangely sour flavorings.

David Rosengarten, a former Food Network host, tastes far more potato chips than any other reviewer. His 2005 tasting is helpful, if gushy; for instance, a chip's not fried; it's "roused to geometric passion by its violent demise in the fry pot." Unfortunately, many of Rosengarten's top-rated chips are difficult to find in stores, and the cost of shipping can turn what should be a cheap, accessible snack into a pricey indulgence.

AOL Food tests 100 kinds of flavored potato chips and several dozen plain varieties, but frankly, we're a little skeptical when nearly one-quarter of the chips tasted reach the "top of the heap." And, unfortunately, AOL Food doesn't discuss its tasters' credentials.

The editors of The New York Times' Dining section crunched through 60 bags of potato chips, but they don't list the chips that failed to impress. Maxim recruits magician Penn Jillette to sample 62 bags of potato chips, but he admits to an idiosyncratic preference for chips that are a little bit "mushy" and can be crammed into the mouth by the handful.

We also read smaller roundups of about a half-dozen chips in Cook's Illustrated, Slate.com and Consumer Reports. Editors at Cook's Illustrated are exacting, detecting "fishy flavors" and stale odors in some of the chips they tried. They explain that very hot canola oil can impart "off" flavors to chips. Although we don't question the food science that underpins their findings, it's worth noting that no other testers noted "fishy" or stale flavors in potato chips.

We also found a few fun articles on "cult" chips in Esquire and Serious Eats. To see what consumers are saying about potato chips, we read candid reviews posted to Amazon.com and Taquitos.net, which The New York Times has called a "paradise" for the snack-obsessed.

Unlike many prepared foods, including pasta sauce and salsa, the quality of commercial potato chips usually exceeds that of homemade. The ingredient list may be short, but chips must be sliced uniformly, fried at a constant temperature and carefully drained of excess grease -- a messy, challenging task for the home cook. What's more, chip producers have the time and resources to test dozens of potato varieties and permutations of cooking times and temperatures.

Flavored potato chips are more likely to disappoint than unflavored varieties, according to credible reviews. Seafood-flavored chips earn some of the most venomous reviews at Taquitos.net. The Original Atlantic Lobster Flavoured Chips (*est. $3 for about 6 oz.) are "awful," and what's worse, reviewers say, they don't taste anything like lobster.

Most reviewers prefer super-crunchy, kettle-style potato chips to classic-style chips. While both types of chip may be made from the same variety of potato, kettle-style chips are "sliced more thickly and the slices are not rinsed -- two moves that keep more starch on the surface. That starch, the slightly thicker cut and a lower oil temperature give the chip a serious crunch," explains Kim Severson of The New York Times. Kettle-style chips are also said to taste more strongly of potatoes than classic chips.