Simply 7 Cheddar Quinoa Chips
At the risk of sounding like a new age hipster dude/health nut, I’ll admit that I actually like quinoa. Not at first mind you. Growing up in an Asian household, I was fueled by rice. So much so, that I attribute most of my crazy growth spurts to the sheer volume of rice I could eat. Seriously, I was like a garbage can, just putting bowl after bowl away. I was fortunate enough that I grew vertically, rather than horizontally from all that rice. I’ve always been a rice person, to the point that I feel a slight aversion to alternatives like noodles, if I know rice is an option. As I get older, I’ve tried to reduce my consumption of rice, mostly because it has nowhere to go anymore. I figure exploring new things and branching out is a sign of growth, so I’ve tried other things like quinoa.
It was honestly a bit of a struggle at first. I didn’t like how small and spherical they were, and I had a few choking fits from not being used to how easily they can be accidentally inhaled. Though that might of more been a me problem, as I shovel/inhale my rice at an alarmingly quick pace. But after a while learned to adjust my approach and discovered I actually liked the little grain. While I don’t think I’ll ever consider it a replacement for rice, it’s certainly a nice alternative. Not so much for any health reason, but more to switch up the variety of what the accompany my proteins and veggies with. It’s nice to change things up once in a while.
It only seems fair to extend that line of thinking to my snacks as well. I’d say I’ve tried a lot of…shall we say, interesting snacks so far. In fact, I did another review of another quinoa product from Simply 7 here. All in all I was quite impressed with how well quinoa translated into a snack, so I’ve got somewhat high hopes for this.
If you’ve ever had veggie chips or veggie straws, this basically has a very similar texture. It tastes like they took quinoa, ground it into a flour or starch, and then made a shape and fried it up. For the most part the texture isn’t going to change drastically between shapes, but certain shapes seem to hold flavour better. This wavy chip reminds me of sun chips, and the waves do a pretty decent job at catching that cheese powder. I myself have always been partial to spinach for some reason. Whether it’s the colour or the slight spinach taste the chips have to it. But quinoa is fairly mild and neutral. You probably wouldn’t even know it was quinoa unless someone tipped you off. Not that it matters much given how much cheese powder there is.
Speaking of the cheese powder, it’s a fairly standard affair as far as flavours go. Think of any other cheese flavour you get from a potato chip, and this is basically that. It’s not overly salty or artificial like the typical potato chip though, which is great because those ones end up cutting up my mouth or leaving it raw for some reason…These ones strike just the right balance in flavour.
The combination of the flavour and texture come together pretty well. It may not have as clean of a snap or crunch as a potato chip would have, but it’s still really tasty. Purported health benefits aside, as a snack on it’s own, I would get this again. It’s different enough that I would want to have this once in a while, but it’s also tasty enough that I wouldn’t mind having this in my standard snack rotation, whatever that means.
