We Taste-Tested 9 Supermarket Potato Chips—Here Are Our Favorites

When’s the last time you chose your potato chips? The answer is: never! You don’t choose potato chips! Potato chips choose you. They come for you at some point around the first of your grandma’s annual Labor Day barbecues that you remember and then you’re drawn, moth to flame, to the same [redacted, crunch-less bite-sized paper bits] each time you find yourself in the chip aisle.

*Whispers* It doesn’t have to be this way... The world of potato chips is vast and nuanced. You can change things for your children by making better choices/picking up a different bag of chips for this year’s gathering. Be!! The change!! You want to see!!!!! In the world!!!!!!

And so, out of this deep-rooted sense for public service, the Serious Eats team recently pulled together nine brands of original-flavor (a.k.a. plain, unflavored, but not unsalted)  potato chips you're likely to find in your local supermarket and methodically, empirically, scientifically! tasted its way through them all in a quest to identify the very best. And we loved every minute of it…while complaining throughout that we should’ve made tuna melts to go with these piles of chips and also that  salt & vinegar is a better time than plain chips!

The Criteria

A good original potato chip is—and let me be the first one to say this—crunchy. Yeah, I said crunchy before I said “potato-y!” The crunch and the salt matter more than the potato of it all!! You’ll know you’ve encountered a quality potato chip when the following series of events occur, exactly in this order:

1. You and the person across the table hear a crunch upon first bite. 
2. You immediately know that chip won’t be your last in this sitting. 
3. You see or feel no need to wipe your hands of grease before you reach for a second chip.
4. You eat the second chip; you let slip involuntarily, from the bowels of something deep and unknown inside of you: “Oh god, I’m in love with these.” The person across the table from you confirms: “Oh god, I know, same.”
5. You unwittingly slap at a pile of napkins after chip four to clear that delicious afterthought of grease.
6. You find that 12 fluid ounces of a soda in the vicinity quenches you exactly of your thirst.

Anyway! To level the playing field of ALL AVAILABLE CHIPS, we zeroed in on original flavor, non-ridged potato-only chips. No other veggies, no other flavors—just potatoes and just salt (and the oil the potatoes were fried in, of course). If you end up liking this particular batch of nonsense, we will move on to other (better) flavors and textures. Just say the word, my angry, DM-happy sweets!!

A few notes on our overall findings before we get on to the rankings: This group had a very clear-cut preference for a kettle-cooked, sea-salted chip. While I've listed the ingredients for each brand, I couldn’t correlate any particular frying oil to “a better chip,” though it’s worth noting that the only instance of avocado oil in the whooole bunch landed itself at the very bottom. I found nostalgia played less of a role than it seems to have in previous tests, which was fun!! Maybe everyone is generally feeling better about things? Hahahahahah!!

OK. Whatever. The chips! 

The Contenders

• Cape Cod Original Kettle Cooked Potato Chips 
• Deep River Snacks Potato Chips, Kettle Cooked, Original Salted
• Hal’s Original Flavor Chips
• Herr’s Potato Chips, Crisp ’n Tasty
• Kettle Brand Sea Salt Potato Chips
• Lay’s Classic Potato Chips
• Siete Sea Salt Potato Chips
• Utz Original Potato Chips
• Wise Potato Chips, Golden, Original

Overall Winner

Kettle Brand Sea Salt Potato Chips

Imagine a potato chip being so bold as to taste like a…potato! Et voila: these!! Each taster remarked on the pervasive-in-a-nice-way potato flavor, oftentimes noting in subsequent options that that same crucial flavor was lacking. These kettle-cooked chips were substantive, slightly greasy (Amanda said she’d expect to want to wash her hands after a handful of them), and LARGE. The latter prompted Genevieve to write in her notes: “These are practically the size of my palm! (Is this Kettle??)” Classic Genevieve. Classic potato chips!

Ingredients: Potatoes, vegetable oils (canola and/or sunflower and/or safflower and/or soybean), sea salt.

Runner-Up

Hal’s New York Original Flavor Chips

Perhaps the only instance in which the immediately notable presence of oil felt correct rather than icky. They were “oily, but together with the super crispiness, it’s not a bad thing,” wrote one tester, while another called the oil "just right.” Now that I’m rereading these notes, I see no comments in the realm of saltiness or flavor, so…we’re going to call Hal’s (also kettle-cooked!) a fantastic option for those who like to ruin people in the vicinity’s lives via satisfying crunching and also don’t have time for more than a quick hands-to-pants wipe.

Key Takeaways and Conclusion

Most potato chips are made with just a handful of ingredients: potatoes, oil, and salt. Some brands use a blend of oils, such as canola, corn, cottonseed, soybean, and/or sunflower oil. Our winner, Kettle Brand Sea Salt Potato Chips, is made with a blend of safflower and/or sunflower and/or canola oil, while our runner-up, Hal's Original Flavor Chips, is made with sunflower oil. 

Generally, our editors preferred thin, crisp, and salty potato chips that tasted very much like…well, potatoes. The very best chips had just enough salt to enhance the potatoes' natural flavor. Although almost all of the brands we sampled used the same ingredients, the chips varied widely in thickness, greasiness, and chewiness. Overall, however, we would have been happy to snack on any of these chips, even if they didn't meet our criteria for the absolutely perfect chip—because how could you hate a salty, crispy potato chip?

Our Testing Methodology

All taste tests are conducted with brands completely hidden and without discussion. Tasters taste samples in random order. For example, taster A may taste sample 1 first, while taster B will taste sample 6 first. This is to prevent palate fatigue from unfairly giving any one sample an advantage. Tasters are asked to fill out tasting sheets ranking the samples for various criteria. All data is tabulated and results are calculated with no editorial input in order to give us the most impartial representation of actual results possible.