My sister and my niece brought me a surprise from their Trader Joe’s. Wasn’t that nice of them?
This is the first Trader Joe’s product I’ve ever tried, as far as I know, and Trader Joe’s press is nearly universally glowing. So I was excited to get home and get into them. Note that they are kettle chips (which I prefer) and lattice-cut, which is something of a rarity in a bagged grocery store snack.
So what do we have here?
Ingredients: Potatoes, sunflower oil, ghost pepper seasoning (maltodextrin, spices [black pepper, cumin, ghost chili pepper, green chili pepper, jalapeno, parsley], dextrose, sugar, onion powder, garlic powder, yeast extract, torula yeast, citric acid [for flavor], vinegar, natural chili pepper flavor, natural capsicum flavor [soy], natural smoke flavor [natural smoke flavorings derived from mixed hardwoods, maltodextrin, autolyzed yeast extract, dextrin]), sea salt.
It’s a lengthy list, but nothing out of bounds for a processed snack food. There is a fair amount of MSG lurking behind a couple of these names, so if you believe yourself sensitive to MSG, be aware.
I expected the chips to be red, or at least reddish. They aren’t. They’re unsuspecting potato chip color. (I’d have realized that had I read the ingredient panel before I poured them out.) The crunch is quite satisfying. Kettle-cooked chips are generally more robust in this department anyway, and the increased surface area from the lattice cut may be a minor contributor as well. There’s enough oil to deliver a very slight melt on the back side of the mastication, but not so much that it is excessively heavy.
It’s a tasty chip. Salt hits first, and the spice mix is appealing, if surprisingly vague. For the ingredient list, there’s really not a lot of complexity here. There is some chile, some garlic, and a whisper of onion. I would enjoy these with a burger or a ham sandwich, and that’s probably how I’ll dispatch the rest of them. I’m not sure there’s enough here for the chips to carry themselves in a solo consumption.
The heat is disappointing. There is no other word for it. I can’t taste any ghost pepper at all, and there is very little of the gradual build that is so characteristic of Capsicum chinense cultivars. Nearly all of what I taste is black pepper and jalapeno, and I snarfed that entire plate without a beverage. Flamin’ Hot Nacho Doritos are unambiguously hotter. Actually I remember more heat even in Golden Flake Hot chips. I guess I thought a Trader Joe’s snack pitching heat front and center might be a little more daring than this.
Let’s call these munchable but unremarkable.
6/10
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