We Style-Examined 19 Tortilla Chips—Right here Are the Winners

This week, I gave my colleagues the very tough job of tasting baggage and baggage of tortilla chips. And in return, they left me with the equally difficult job of deciphering their responses. It seems that almost all of my colleagues actually like tortilla chips, whether or not eaten on their very own, dipped into salsa or guacamole, or used to make nachos, taco pizza, and soup. As I parsed by their responses, I got here throughout notes like “I like chips” from our affiliate editorial director Megan and “effective, I suppose?” from our editorial director Daniel. Merciless as it might be to power my colleagues to select a favourite tortilla chip, it needed to be executed. 

To search out the perfect tortilla chip, our editors sampled 19 completely different tortilla chips you’re more likely to discover at your native grocery store or on-line. We positioned every in bowls, then sampled them in random order with out understanding which chip was which. After tasting our means by 19 completely different chips, we tabulated the outcomes and topped an general winner, together with a number of runners-up that we’d be joyful to maintain in our personal pantry.

The Standards

Nice tortilla chips needs to be crispy and flavorful: they need to style like masa—dough comprised of nixtamalized corn—which is what’s historically used to organize corn tortillas. The chips needs to be earthy and nutty. They need to be sturdy sufficient to dip into guacamole or salsa with out disintegrating, however not so thick that they’re tough to chunk into. And whereas salt is important, they shouldn’t be overly salty—simply nicely seasoned sufficient so that you just’d be joyful consuming the chip by itself.

Total Winner

Siete Maíz Corn Tortilla Chips With Sea Salt

Daniel gave these chips a excessive rating and left just one notice: “good.” Megan, our resident chip lover, thought these chips had a “good toasty corn taste” with a stable crunch. Like Megan, I assumed these chips had a definite taste in contrast to the others we tasted. It had a pronounced and deeply earthy corn taste that jogged my memory of good-quality tortillas comprised of freshly floor masa.

Runners-Up

• Backyard of Eatin’ Yellow Chips
• Kirkland Signature Natural Tortilla Chips
• On the Border Café Fashion Tortilla Chips
• Que Pasa White Corn Tortilla Chips
• Que Pasa Yellow Corn Tortilla Chips

Whereas no model actually gave Siete a robust run for its cash, all the tasters loved the chips from every of those manufacturers. If you cannot discover Siete, set these out in a bowl subsequent to some home made guacamole and salsa and no one goes to complain. (In the event that they do complain, go forward and present them to the door.)

The Contenders

• 365 by Complete Meals Market Natural White Corn Tortilla Chips
• Bowl & Basket Chunk-Dimension Tortilla Chips
• Backyard of Eatin’ Yellow Chips
• Good & Collect Natural White Corn Tortilla Chips
• Good & Collect Natural Yellow Corn Tortilla Chips
• Kirkland Signature Natural Tortilla Chips
• Late July Natural Tortilla Chips With Sea Salt
• Mi Niña Natural Sea Salt Tortilla Chips
• On the Border Café Fashion Tortilla Chips
• Que Pasa White Corn Tortilla Chips
• Que Pasa Yellow Corn Tortilla Chips
• Santitas White Corn Tortilla Chips
• Siete Meals Maíz Corn Tortilla Chips
• Merely Tostitos Natural Yellow Corn Tortilla Chips
• Tostitos Restaurant-Fashion Tortilla Chips
• Dealer Joe’s Natural Yellow Corn Tortilla Chips
• Dealer Joe’s Really White Corn Tortilla Chips
• Vista Hermosa Totopos Tortilla Chips 
• Xochitl Salted Corn Chips (Mexican Fashion)

In Conclusion

Our winner, Siete Meals Maíz Corn Tortilla Chips, is the one model that specifies that it makes use of nixtamalized corn in its elements checklist. Nixtamlization is the method of soaking and cooking dried corn kernels with an alkali ingredient like calcium hydroxide (slaked lime); as Daniel touches on in his corn tortilla recipe, this removes the corn’s bran and makes it simpler to grind into masa and, crucially, makes the corn extra flavorful and nutritious. Given how a lot this course of impacts taste, we recommend you retain a watch out for one more model that makes use of nixtamalized corn if you cannot discover this model. 

Most chips are made with yellow corn or white corn. Of all of the tortilla chips we tasted, our winner is the one model that makes use of a mix of yellow corn and white corn for its chips, which seemingly contributes to its extra complicated taste. Curiously, these chips are additionally made with only one type of oil—avocado—as a substitute of the same old mix of oils used to make tortilla chips, like sunflower, safflower, vegetable oil, and/or canola oil.

Whereas Siete Meals rose to the highest, our workforce of tasters did not actually dislike any of the chips. We would be joyful to eat any of them, particularly with salsa or one other dip.

Our Testing Methodology

All style assessments are performed with manufacturers utterly hidden and with out dialogue. Tasters style samples in random order. For instance, taster A could style pattern one first, whereas taster B will style pattern six first. That is to stop palate fatigue from unfairly giving anyone pattern a bonus. Tasters are requested to fill our tasting sheets rating the samples for numerous standards. All knowledge is tabulated and outcomes are calculated with no editorial enter with the intention to give us essentially the most neutral illustration of precise outcomes attainable.