I’ve finally broken down and tried Grandma Utz’s potato chips; they’re notable for being cooked in lard rather than some sort of vegetable oil. I love the idea of chips fried in lard, and I have fond memories of Mcdonald’s fries cooked in tallow, but in practice I have to confess that I’m not real thrilled with these chips. The “meaty” flavor is just a little too intense and tends to hide the potato flavor, and if you eat too many (like I just did) the mouthfeel is kind of weird. I suspect they’d be better if they were warmed in the oven, though.
I love Utz sourcream and onion chips. Best out there.
I have enjoyed those too, but the OP is talking about a special lard-fried line, which AFAICT is available only in plain and barbecue flavors.
OP: check out – http://www.potatoroll.com/pages/snacks.asp
Question: Is this something you decided, or something that was just… obvious to you when you ate them?
I also found these a tremendous disappointment. They may be the only bag of potato chips I’ve left unfinished in my life.
Blasphemers. You are forbidden from entering Pennsylvania!
(Note: Per wiki, their chips are fried in either cottonseed or peanut oil. Can we get a cite on that lard?)
Nice! Thanks.
(Yum. Lard.)
I like Utz chips (as well as their other tasty snacks). Never tried the lard-taste kind, though. Doesn’t really sound like something I would really go for, as I’m a much bigger fan of peanut oil for potato chips.
I wouldn’t be a good Ohioan if I didn’t plug Mumford’s and, to a lesser extent, Shearer’s.
Bonus points for topping your chips with Cooper’s chutney, relish, or hot pepper butter.
Update: I put some in the oven for a few minutes to warm up. The results were actually kind of interesting–the “meaty” flavor was intensified, which resulted in a qualitatively different reaction to the chips; they seemed to move from the “snack food” category to the “side dish” category. On the whole, though, I still can’t say that I’m a real fan of these things.
I do enjoy the regular Utz chips, though.
A little of both. It’s one of those situations where you’re exposed to a new flavor profile and you can’t quite decide whether you actually like it or not, so you need to mull it over for a bit. The meaty flavor is really up-front at first, but after a few chips you get desensitized to it, but if you wait a few minutes it becomes more obvious again. So I needed to decide whether it was just a bit too much for me or if I genuinely didn’t like it. I’ve decided that it’s the latter.
I don’t like Grandma Utz’s either, but the regular Utz chips are the snack food of the gods.
Whoops, missed this post before…I occasionally had the “Nibble with Gibble’s” chips as a callow yoot, but never really became a fan of them.
I can definitely imagine them tasting better out of the oven. Almost every potato chip tastes amazingly better when warm, preferably having just been fried. If deep-frying weren’t such a PITA, I’d make my own potato chips all the time.
Dern you all. Now, I’m jonesing for some Utz chips.