Once again I picked up two crazy looking flavors, and surprisingly, I thought that these two chips would be very similar in taste, but they ended up being pretty different. Both in the intensity of the hot sauce hot, as well as the overall flavor.

First up are the Hot Sauce chips from Herr’s, and the description on the bag perfectly describes these chips, which is chips with a coating of dried hot sauce on them. You maybe get a little bit too much of the vinegar flavor, that you would have with a cayenne based hot sauce (such as Texas Pete or Franks.) But in actuality it’s the cayenne and vinegar that make these hot sauces who they are, so you really can’t fault Herr’s for trying to capture the full essence of a hot sauce on a wavy potato chip.

Lastly we have the Ruffles Molten Hot Wings, and these chips kind of surprised me, since I was expecting them to be close in flavor to the Herr’s chips, but they really weren’t. With the key difference being that the Ruffles have not only the hot sauce flavor, but they also have some chicken bullion added in, so that you actually kind of think that you’re eating a buffalo wing, even though you are eating a potato chip. I wouldn’t necessarily say that the flavor is “molten”, but they are mildly hot, and quite interesting for a chip flavor.

Unfortunately in the end I thought this challenge was going to be more like apples vs. apples, but it turned out to be more of apples vs. oranges. Both chips overall have a good flavor, it’s just that with the addition of the chicken flavor on the Ruffles, it puts them in the same category in my mind as the Baby Back Ribs chips from Herr’s, due to the addition of a “protein” flavor on the chips. But really, if you are looking for a chip with hot sauce flavoring, either one is more then adequate to satisfy your desire for hot sauce. I know it did for me.

But these chips ending up being very interesting for a number of reasons. Number One, is that these are not a “sweet BBQ” style chip, so that a bonus for me. Number Two, is that you actually get a bit of a “porky” taste on these chips, even though there is no pork listed on the ingredient list. But don’t confuse this with the bacon flavor on chips, since these taste more like ribs (un-cured pork) and not bacon (cured pork). And Number Three is…..smoke. Oh yes, smoke, and plenty of it….so much in fact that when I first opened the bag, I thought that I had opened the lid on a vertical smoker. It wasn’t until about a week after opening the bag, that the smoke aroma mellowed out.

Overall, I would get these chips again. But I just need to be in the mood for some smokey BBQ beforehand.

So it’s pretty surprising to think that just a little bit of seasoning can totally change a potato chip. But that’s the situation we have on our hands with the Krinkle Cut style. Since the Sicilian Style has a wonderful flavor from the garlic and Parmesan, and then when you remove those two flavors you pretty much get a boring chip in the Plain Krinkle Cut.

Better Made makes a couple of different cuts of their plain/salted chips; Original, Wavy, Krinkle Cut and Kettle Cooked Original. Out of those four chips, I have yet to kettle cooked style, so I don’t have an opinion on those. But out of the remaining three, the Plain Krinkle Cut is at the bottom of the list. There really is nothing special about the Plain Krinkle Cut, since if I was going to go with a dipping/fancy cut chip, I’d rather have the Wavy style from Better Made. Since the Wavy is like a Ruffles, but with a better taste compared to Ruffles.

So for the Sicilian Style, those get two thumbs up in my book.
While the Plain Krinkle Cut, gets a sideways thumb leaning toward down. Since you are better off getting the Plain Wavy instead of the Plain Krinkle Cut.

From the base of Mt. Fuji, this dragon, a symbol of luck, had brought DORITOS one of Japan’s most intense flavors.

And with only one bite the enigma was solved, and all the clues then made sense. So what do you think the flavor is? Give up?

Wasabi

And I’ve got to tell you; these are some pretty damn good chips. And for once I’ll give Frito-Lay some “props” for coming up with an original flavor and some pretty cleaver packaging to boot. Because after you have a chip you realize, “Oh the pale green color of the bag is pretty close to the color of wasabi” and “Oh now all those Dragon and Japan references make sense.”

As kind of an interesting side note on the ingredients, the bag lists both horseradish and wasabi as ingredients. And you can really taste both flavors on the chip, the horseradish more so then the wasabi. But I have a feeling like they added in the horseradish to keep the costs down, as well as the intense heat down from just “100% real wasabi”. So I’m not going to fault them for going down this road, since 100% wasabi would have been unbearable on these chips.

Overall these chips are a winner in my book.

So onto the stand out flavor, which were the Jalapeno kettle chips. And talk about a winner in my book. The first thing that got me sucked in was the smell from the bag. Since the chips smelled exactly like a bag of fresh cut jalapenos. But for the smell being so strong the taste was very mild, and that kind of surprised me in a good way. In that the chips had a jalapeno/green pepper kind of flavor, but not very much of that jalapeno heat, so it made them very easy to eat. And because they are kettle style chips, the crunchiness of these chips kind of reminded me of Kruncher’s Jalapano chips. So notch these Jalapeno chips up of the totem pole, because I would definitely like to get them again.

Side notes for both of these chips:

1. The cartoon pepper on both bags is pretty funny, but it wasn’t enough to sway my decision on not liking the a la diabla flavored chips. I guess better luck next time Barcel.

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2. For both of these Barcel brand chips, of all the ingredients listed on the bag, one of the ingredients is MSG, and its listed in bold no less! I really don’t know how to react to this, other then with “oh well”. But I guess if your looking to go out of your way to get some potato chips with MSG, than check out the chips from Barcel.

As you are probably well aware, I’m basically game for trying any flavor (e.g. shrimp chips) or type of chips/crisps (e.g. Hawaiian taro chips). But after I read the back to the bag to find out what these Rainbow chips were all about. I have to tell you, I started to have second thoughts about what I just got myself into. But seeing how I had already bought the bag by the time I found out what these chips were all out, it was too late to back out.

So what did I think of these chips? To be honest, I’m on the fence with these chips, since it’s such a unique flavor. But calling it a flavor doesn’t really do these chips justice. Since you really can’t call it a burnt taste, since technically the chips aren’t burnt, it’s only due to the potatoes high sugar content that they darken while cooking. They are just slightly sweet from the caramelization during frying, but it isn’t the traditional kind of sugar sweetness that you would think of from maybe a brown sugar or white sugar. The only way I can describe the taste of these chips is that they are a complex taste not meant for kids, when you think that all they started with was just potatoes, salt and cottonseed oil.

Would I get another bag of these chips: maybe (leaning toward yes.) There is something about these chips that almost makes them the anti-chips of traditional plain chips, which is a tough concept to wrap your head around. Since traditional plain potato chips are paper thin, pretty salty, light yellow in color and slightly oily. While these chips are the exact opposite in that they are close to kettle cut thickness, not salty, dark brown and not really oily. In conclusion if you are at a Busch’s or Hiller’s Market in Metro Detroit go and pick yourself up a bag, and get ready to push the limits on the concept of what you think a potato chip should taste like. Nuff said.

Links:
Better Made – What are Rainbow Chips?

For some reason I thought that these chips were going to taste more like a caprese salad, which is usually what I think of when I see tomatoes and basil put together. But instead I got a mouthful of crunchy tomato basil soup. Overall I’m indifferent to this favor. Would I get them again, maybe. But I can tell you that I won’t be going out of my way to get a bag of these chips.

The thing is, its not that the Red Hots are that much hotter than the regular BBQ chips from Better Made. But with the addition of paprika and smoke flavor in the Red Hot’s, it really adds something different to these chips that you don’t get with Better Made’s regular barbeque chips.

Though I wouldn’t necessarily have these chips all the time, since I can only take so much barbeque chips. But if I still lived in Michigan, every couple of months I’d place these chips into the rotation to mix things up. But since I’m not in Michigan anymore, I’ll just have to settle for picking up a bag whenever I’m back in the state.

With a label of Flamin’ Hot, I was expecting nothing but heat and no flavor. But really the only hot component was the Flamin’ Hot Cheetos (review coming soon), and a lot of the flavor was coming from the Baja Picante Sunchips and the Salsa Doritos. The plain Rold Gold Tiny Twists were a nice intermission from all the other flavors going on in the mix. If anything the only thing that I would change, would be to maybe substitute the plain Rold Golds from maybe cheddar flavored Rold Golds.

The pretzel swap really isn’t a deal breaker for me, though I do wish that they would have added just a little bit more pretzels to the mix. I took care of this small issue with a handful of mini pretzel twists that I brought back from Michigan with me a few weekends back.

Overall, I would totally get this mix again, even though they are a bit on the pricey side with an 8 ounce bag for $2.50. But getting it every once in a while would be a nice little treat to add to the “chips rotation”.