Kettle Brand – Ranch Potato Chips

There’s a bit of a running joke that to the world outside of the US, ranch dressing is about as American as it gets. And honestly, it’s kind of hard to argue against it; ranch is a super popular salad dressing over there and it’s an integral part of their cuisine, like mayo. It’s hard to argue against it though, despite not being a huge fan of it. It’s quite tasty, has a fairly flexible range of ingredients and recipes and goes well on a salad or as a sauce for dipping various food items. The options really are endless.

I’m not sure what happened to me, but at some point I actually was really into ranch to the point where we had a bottle in our fridge. I would use that with anything I could find, chips, fries, salads, you name it. At some point I guess I kind of outgrew the dressing. I’m not sure if it was so much the dressing itself, or ranch as a flavour. These days I tend not to use sauces or dressings a whole lot, so I’m guessing I grew out of ranch by extension. The flavour just comes off too strong for me sometimes, so I’m a bit wary of this flavour.

Thankfully the smell isn’t too overpowering, and leaves my nostrils relatively undamaged. It definitely smells like ranch, that tangy, mayo like quality to it. I am by no means a ranch aficionado, so I don’t know if this supposed to be the standard ranch dressing flavour, or buttermilk ranch. What I can tell you is these are quite flavourful but not overpowering as I sometimes find ranch. It has a nice onion flavour with a decent amount of tang, and I get a certain creamy, or dairy quality to the flavour. I was kind of expecting a stronger ranch, but I’m glad it’s not as strong as I was fearing, and the onion flavour is strong but tasty enough that this could also pass for an onion flavour.

The texture is nothing that deviates from the standard kettle style chips – they are thick, crunchy and have a nice substance to them. a lot of the chips have noticeable air bubbles, so it makes the overall texture slightly softer then if it was otherwise just a flat chip. I personally prefer them to be thicker and harder, and the folded over chips are usually my favourite.

While I don’t prescribe to the cult of ranch, I have enough humility to admit that these are pretty good and may convince me to give ranch dressing another try. I probably won’t, but I’m that much closer after having these chips. So you can imagine how tasty these would be if you actually enjoy ranch.