Kettle Chips for chip enthusiasts

If there’s a snack food difficult to resist, it’s certainly the potato chip. I happen to not be particularly partial to most North American brands, but of course, they’ll do when that craving hits.

As it happens my mouth easily suffers lacerations when eating hard foods like kettle-cooked chips, especially those chips that curl and fold when fried making for even harder edges. 

So when a new brand landed in Ottawa shops, I had to try them. Kettle Cooked Chips come to us from Denmark and it’s one of the best chips I’ve had in years. 

They may be kettle cooked but what you’ll find is that almost every single chip is flat and not curled and for me that’s a blessing. They’re certainly crisp but not as hard as your standard kettle chip and the flavour is superior.

This is a clean label product and the potato flavour, to this palate, is just nicer than that of North American brands. 

These come in six different flavours: Sweet BBQ, Salt and Vinegar, Sea Salt, Jalapeno, Balsamico-Tomato and Sour Cream and Onion. Try the Balsamico-Tomato and tell me if this is not what all ketchup flavoured chips should aspire to be.

They are currently available at Farmer’s Pick at a sale price of two 150 gram bags for $5.  A delightful bargain for this quality snack.

As with the Danish chips, Brets are a clean label product and once again, it’s the flavour of the potato that stands out. There are hundreds of potato varieties throughout the world and it’s nice to have a change from the bog standard North American potato flavour. 

Brets boasts more than 30 flavours in their line up and once I’d tried their butter (yup butter) flavoured chip I realized I’d eaten, what must be, one of the finest chip inventions of all time. Plain chips the world over should immediately have real butter added as it’s a most logical pairing. With the right application, Brets butter flavoured chips might even qualify for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Okay, that might be overstating things a bit but this company obviously takes the snack thing very seriously and they do a terrific job offering unique flavour combinations that taste like the name on the package.

Brets are available at various shops throughout Ottawa but be careful as to where you buy. La Bottega in the ByWard sells these at $4.99 a bag but I’ve seen shops try to get away with charging as much as $8.99.