Blue corn tortilla chips: pretty, but not the most intense corn flavor.
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KAREN HOCHMAN is Editorial Director of THE NIBBLE™.
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May 2007
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Gourmet Tortilla Chips:
In Search Of The Best Chips
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CAPSULE REPORT: In our small-scale search for tortilla chips—we tried only a dozen brands—the best were made, probably not surprisingly, under the label of two different Mexican restaurants. The supermarket brands, compared to the specialty brands, were dreadful: Salty and dusty with no corn flavor, we couldn’t get them off the table fast enough. The price differential is modest: If you’re chipping away at perfection, go for the specialty brands.
Who would have thought it would be so difficult to find a good tortilla chip? A tortilla chip is made simply by frying wedges of corn tortillas (sometimes they are referred to as corn chips). Perhaps our perspective is warped: We mostly eat chips at better Mexican restaurants, where they are either made in-house or purchased fresh from specialist suppliers, and served unsalted. They are so good—and the homemade salsa fresca so much more refreshing than the very good jarred varieties we eat at home—that we’d be happy just to have two baskets of chips and salsa for dinner.
Our foray into packaged chips was a different experience entirely. Half the brands tasted dusty—the taste on the palate was dry and powdery. Half were overly salty and several had both flaws. Some—especially supermarket brands—were so dusty and salty as to be unenjoyable, the excessive salt burning our lips (a new and unpleasant experience) and making us want to wash away the salt and the dusty taste with lots and lots of beer. But, this being the middle of the work day, we soldiered on.
We read the ingredients on each bag. It’s interesting how such a simple product—most of the better chips used stone ground corn and were fried in canola and/or sunflower oil, then seasoned with salt—taste so different. Lime juice added to some brands, presumably as a flavor enhancer, was not discernable, and the brands with the added lime juice were not the “winners.”
We tasted only plain chips, by the way, not flavored varieties (Chili & Lime flavor, Guacamole flavor, e.g.). We did include a brand that mixes corn with whole wheat and rice, or beans. But, when making simple products—burgers from ground round, linguine from durum wheat or tortilla chips from ground corn—seemingly similar base ingredients do vary widely in quality, as do production techniques, and result in remarkably different end products.
Chip Notes
- The chips in our survey range from 130 to 150 calories per ounce. On the low side are Frontera Foods, because they are cooked in water with a bit of oil, rather than fried in oil.
- Having tasted so many brands of blue corn chips at once, we have concluded that blue corn chips are more of an aesthetic notion than a savory one. They are dusty-tasting and more bland than chips from the same manufacturer made of yellow or white corn (or a mixture of the two).
- Our favorites: Frontera Foods and Rosa Mexicano. Frontera Foods, based in Chicago, is partially owned by acclaimed Mexican chef Rick Bayless, owner of Chicago’s Frontera Grill and Topolobampo Mexican restaurants. Rosa Mexicano has three restaurants in New York City plus restaurants in Washington, D.C., Atlanta and Palm Beach Gardens. Their guacamole, made at tableside with a basket of warm chips, is a highlight of the menu.
- Prices will vary: Those listed are a mixture of chips that can be ordered online from the manufacturer, and those that were purchased at various specialty food stores in New York City. Even among the New York stores, we found a price differential of 20 percent for the same item. And, of course, prices are verified at publication but are subject to change.
If you have a favorite chip, we’d love to know about it—especially if it’s nationally distributed or available online. Click the comments balloon at the top of this page.
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Comments |
Cape Cod™
All Natural White Corn Tortilla Chips
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- Decent but would have preferred a bit more corn flavor
- Average thickness, thankfully not salty
- Ingredients: Stone ground organic white corn flour, canola oil and/or sunflower oil, salt
- 8.5-ounce bag, $2.99*, CapeCodChips.com
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Frontera® Foods
Blue Corn Chips
Yellow Corn Chips
Certified Organic
by QAI
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- A tie for first place. Consistently, our favorite line of chips. Numerous flavors—we’ll do a full review of the line next month. All are excellent; not surprisingly, the blue corn chip was the best one we tasted.
- Ingredients: Organically grown corn (yellow/white or blue), soybean oil, salt. The blue corn is cooked in water with just a trace of soybean oil.
- 9-ounce bag, $3.50*, FronteraFoods.com.
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Garden of Eatin’®
Blue Corn Chips
White Corn Chips
QAI Certified Organic
Certified Kosher by Kof-K |
- Third place winner (White Corn Chips): beautiful texture visually, good mouthfeel and basic corn flavor, thicker chip, good for break-free dipping. The White Corn Chips have more corn flavor than the Blue Corn Chips.
- 18 other flavors.
- Ingredients: Organic blue or white corn, expeller pressed canola oil and/or safflower oil, sea salt.
- 9-ounce bag, $1.99, 16-ounce bag, $3.46*
GardenOfEatin.com.
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Plocky’s
Three Grain
Black Beans ‘N Rice
Red Beans ‘N Rice
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- Plocky’s is a specialty chip producer. Adding other ingredients to corn chips creates a more attractive appearance, but dilutes the flavor. Lots of crunch, but we couldn’t tell what we were crunching.
- Ingredients: All-natural corn,brown rice, non-hydrogenated soybean oil, natural turbinado sugar, sea salt, plus (for Three Grain) cracked whole wheat, (for Black Beans) black beans and seasonings, (for Red Beans), chili beans, beet powder, seasonings.
- 7-ounce bag, $2.59†, Plockys.com (no online sales).
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Rosa Mexicano*
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- Best corn taste, larger chip size, medium thickness. Tied for first place with Frontera.
- Ingredients: Stone ground whole kernel yellow corn, sunflower oil, water, salt and trace of lime.
- 14-ounce bag, $3.95*, RosaMexicano.info.
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Xochitl Topos de Maíz
Yellow Corn
Blue Corn
USDA & QAI Certified Organic
Certified Kosher by Kof-K
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- Overall response: bland. The Blue Corn is even more bland than the Yellow Corn.
- An ultra-thin style chip. The delicateness works against dipping, and also results in a lot of broken chips at the bottom of the bag—not what you want at this high a price (or any price). One tester said: “It’s like crunching on air.”
- This “Mexican style” chip may reduce chip calories, but otherwise the style was not preferred to the heftier “American style.”
- Ingredients: Stone ground corn, water, lime, non-hydrogenated cottonseed oil, salt.
- 16-ounce bag, $5.00*, Salsa Xochitl.com, (online sales plus store locator on website).
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*Online price †Standard Retail Price from manufacturer
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