French Fry Diary 725: Lay's Milk Chocolate Covered Potato Chips

We've talked about chocolate covered potato chips before. Usually it's a special or gourmet thing. Here a major potato chip company, Lay's, has them, of course in limited edition just for the holiday season.

Now I got the Wavy Milk Chocolate, but they are also available in Dark Chocolate, and Milk Chocolate with Almond Bits. These are decisively decadent, but it is worth mentioning that the Dark have less calories. That said, they're not too bad. Just don't eat a few bags in a sitting, even though they're just fifteen chips per bag.

The chips are thin, but not completely covered with chocolate so you get a good portioning of both the salty and the sweet. These are really good, they almost melt in your mouth, and they just might be a bit addictive. Yeah, that's a recommendation. Good thing they're only around for a limited time.

French Fry Diary 647: IKEA Potatischips Saltade

Those of you who remember my first FFD adventure to IKEA know it's not my favorite place to eat. Hang out and shop? Oh yeah, I love it, but for eating? Um, no. On a recent shopping excursion I saw something in their grocery that caught my interest - potato chips - so I figured I'd try again.

Packaged and sold by IKEA, they're called Potatischips Saltade, assumedly potato chips salted in Swedish. I like the bag, 5.3 ounces or 150 grams, very colorful, and the ingredients are very simple - potatoes, canola oil, and salt, and a lot of that last one.

Once opened, the bag yielded small but thick chips. They have a big crunch that usually only kettle chips have, and they're very salty, perhaps too salty. Of course, that said, they're also quite addictive. Their thickness and saltiness might make them perfect dippers for something cold and seer like ice cream.

I liked these a lot, and definitely a lot more than IKEA French fries.

French Fry Diary 588: Kettle Brand Real Sliced Potatoes

Last time I reviewed a Kettle Brand product (the Sweet & Salty Potato Chips which absolutely rocked) I got into trouble on the Twitter with someone arguing the actual healthiness of the potato chips and/or the oil they were cooked in.

Let me be clear. This is a foodie blog about French fries, potato chips, onion rings, and junk or fast food. We're having fun and not being all that serious. It's not rocket science. If a potato chip has no transfats, no preservatives, no GMO, is gluten free, and made from natural ingredients - that's about as healthy as potato chips get. To be healthier, you would need to NOT eat the chip. Got it? A health food blog this is not, and if you're looking for nutritional advice here, you have much bigger problems.

That said, I was excited by a new Kettle Brand chip I saw at Whole Foods called Real Sliced Potatoes so I decided to try them. For the record, they are gluten free and all that stuff I said above. Add to that low sodium and no cholesterol. And they are not all that new. These are Kettle Brand's baked chips with a cool new rebranding. It does however beg the question of if these are real, are the others fake sliced potatoes, but we'll just let that slide. The rebranding worked, and caught my attention.

Real Sliced Potatoes come in different flavors like Sea Salt, Sea Salt & Vinegar, Hickory Honey Barbeque, the intriguing Cheddar & Roasted Tomato, and the new Olive Oil. Guess which one I tried? If you know me at all you know it was the BBQ flavor.

These chips are awesome, crispy, sweet and spicy, and have a good thickness, great for dipping. They are very similar to Trader Joe's Baked Hickory Barbeque Potato Chips, which I also love, but these are better, sweeter, just awesome - I think I've found a new favorite potato chip. Recommended.

French Fry Diary 586: Archer Farms Potato Chips

Just to be clear, Archer Farms is really neither a potato chip maker nor distributor as we usually think of them. Archer Farms is Target, and you'll only be able to get these chips at Target - it's their store brand. The last time I was in Target, looking for Kettle Brand Sweet & Salty chips, because the website said mistakenly they were there, I ended up walking out with these.

I was attracted to the lattice cut first and then had to double down when I saw they had Sweet & Spicy Barbecue flavor lattice cut. Sold. I've been waiting for Herr's or Cape Cod to do barbecue for a while, but it seems Target did it first. It just seems like a natural next step to me, but then I love the barbecue flavor and the lattice cut.

As excited as I was to try them, I mucked up opening the bag. I ended up just cutting it open with a scissors. Of course had I taken a moment, I would have figured out how to properly pull the tab on the front to open the ziplock reclosable bag. It's easy once you know about it, but if you don't examine the bag closely before attempting to open, well, they might as well have come from Whole Foods or Trader Joe's.

The potato chips are thick and twisty as a kettle chip should be, and that along with the lattice cut make them just perfect for dipping. The barbecue flavor has all the traditional ingredients but with a bit more kick than usual. The molasses in there gives it just a tinge of sweetness. I dig these a lot, thumbs up.

French Fry Diary 584: Kettle Brand Sweet & Salty Potato Chips

I am easily tempted by new flavors of potato chips, firstly for the opportunity to write about it here, and secondly because I like potato chips. It's nicer though when said new flavor also sounds like something I might like. Such is the case with Kettle Brand Sweet & Salty Potato Chips.

Being Kettle Brand they are appropriately healthy with no preservatives, no MSG, no transfats, and no GMOs. They also all natural, gluten free, and were cooked in safflower and/or sunflower and/or canola oil. That last part had me a bit worried… don't they know what kind of oil it is? …but I'll let it slide.

These kettle cooked chips have as flavoring the fairly obvious sea salt plus sugar and dried cane syrup. Hmmm, that should make for an interesting taste. They are salty but the sugar overwhelms the salt, but not unpleasantly. These are very tasty and addictive potato chips. I would say they would be good for dipping but I wouldn't want to take away from the actual taste of just the chip. The are very good, recommended.