You may have noticed some new and interesting potato chip flavors in the grocery store recently. These flavors are a result of a contest that Lay’s recently held called “Do Us A Flavor. The contest had 3.8 million entries with the winners being chicken and waffles, cheesy garlic bread, and sriracha. The contest winner will receive $1,000,000 or 1% of net revenues from the sale of their flavor.
We were lucky enough to receive samples of these flavors to test, and after a very difficult potato chip ‘taste off’, we have our findings.
Out of these three flavors, the one that tasted the best to me was the cheesy garlic bread flavor submitted by Karen of Land ‘O Lakes, Wisconsin. I have to be honest. I could sit in front of the TV with a bag of these chips and finish the whole thing before I knew what hit me. They were delicious. This flavor is close to what one might expect from a potato chip. To me they were not innovative, but they sure were tasty. They would be delicious with any of the typical dips we currently use with potato chips. I am going make sure I buy more of these before they are gone.
The next flavor we tried was sriracha submitted by Tyler in Lake Zurich, Illinois. To be honest, this one scared the daylights out of me. I enjoy sriracha, but only a little at a time. I gingerly took a bite out of the first chip. It tasted like sriracha, but it tasted more like a spicy BBQ potato chip. I loved it. I tried it with some ranch dressing as a dip and the cool ranch flavor cooled the spicy flavor of the chip. They were fabulous. I could imagine using crumbled sriracha chips as a crust for baked chicken breasts. That may be on the menu this week if we can stop eating the chips.
We were most excited to try the chicken and waffles flavor since that flavor was submitted by a local woman, Christine of Phoenix. I have to say that the chip tasted as ‘different’ as it sounded. For me, I did not enjoy the maple flavor of my chip. However, my husband loved it. I could not imagine what dip would go well with that chip, While I did not love this chip in the typical way, I kept imagining the chicken and waffle chips crumbled on top of a casserole of sweet potatoes, ham and possibly pineapple. If I develop a recipe, I will be sure to post it.
Overall, these new flavors were unique, exciting, a delicious. They are available for a limited time only but the winning chip may be available longer.
If you want to purchase any of these chips, they are available at Albertsons, Safeway and Fry's in the Phoenix area.
See our interview with Chef Stephen Kalil, the Frito-Lay Executive Research Chef where we learned about the contest, the history of potato chips and a whole lot more.
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