I believe BBQ potato chips are the crème de la crème of fried, sliced potatoes. The smoky, sweet seasoning and the fatty, oily chip are a true match made in heaven. I eat them by the fistful, so I was thrilled (and highly qualified) to lead this BBQ potato chip taste test.
We were looking for a chip that packed a massive punch of barbecue flavor and also had extreme crunch. Whether it’s sweet, salty, or spicy, a BBQ chip should be full of flavor, like a big slab of ribs from the smoker. After trying a plethora of potato chips, we awarded these seven blue ribbons.
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- Deep River Mesquite BBQ Potato Chips
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If you’re looking for a BBQ chip with an unimaginable amount of BBQ flavor, grab a bag of Deep River Mesquite BBQ potato chips. These chips are so saturated with seasoning, my mouth is watering just thinking about them. They’re salty, sweet, smoky, and zesty—they truly tap every taste bud on your tongue. I cannot understand why every chip on Earth doesn’t have this much flavor.
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- Hawaiian Crispy & Crunchy Luau BBQ Kettle Style Potato Chips
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Hawaiian brand chips are so elite and underrated. They’re super crunchy, perfectly greasy, and absolutely coated in seasoning. And while I’m such a massive fan of their Maui Onion chips, I didn’t even realize they made a BBQ chip. Lucky for me, we ordered them for this taste test and now I’m hooked. They start out sweet and finish spicy while maintaining a smoky, salty taste throughout. They were definitely the most complex chip we tried and that nearly sent them to the top of the list.
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- Late July Organic BBQ Potato Chips
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If you like a BBQ chip that isn’t sweet, reach for Late July’s Organic BBQ chips. They are super savory and have a great BBQ taste without any sugary notes. One of the most prominent flavors is garlic, which I love because I am, of course, a “garlic girl.” The chips themselves are huge and would be perfect for dunking into ranch dip or stacking on a sandwich. I always considered Late July to be a tortilla chip company, but now I will think of them as a BBQ chip company.
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- Kettle Bourbon BBQ Potato Chips
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A little booze does a BBQ sauce good, and I was happy to find out that also the case with BBQ chips. I don’t think these really taste like bourbon, which is fine because why would you want a potato chip to taste like bourbon? They do, however, have the flavor of a sweet and sticky bourbon BBQ sauce. And not that I need to mention this because if you’ve ever had a Kettle brand potato chip you already know this, but these chips are sensationally crunchy.
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- Lay’s Barbecue Potato Chips
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I’ll be honest with you, Lay’s BBQ Potato Chips aren’t for me personally. But I can’t deny that they taste good and are an absolute classic. While I prefer a crunchier, kettle-cooked chip, the light crunch of these Lay’s is almost (hear me out) refreshing? I know it sounds weird to describe potato chips as refreshing, but in their own weird way, these are! If Deep River chips are the Dr. Pepper of chips, these are the water of chips—light, quenching, and mild. If you like a thin, airy potato chip that is light in flavor, these are for you.
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- Fritos Flavor Twists Honey BBQ
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More grooves mean more flavor retention, as any pasta aficionado can tell you. That doesn’t just apply to pasta though. Chips with more grooves hold more seasoning. Exhibit A: Fritos Twists Honey BBQ. These Fritos are so BBQ-y and delicious. They coat your fingers in seasoning, creating my favorite post-Fritos snack: Frito fingers (when your fingers become covered in Fritos powder and you get to lick it off). One final thought: Why aren’t we making Fritos chili pies with these?
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- Miss Vickie’s Smokehouse BBQ Flavored Kettle Cooked Potato Chips
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They sell the variety pack at Sam’s Club. They stock them at Jersey Mike’s. Even my high school cafeteria had these. Miss Vickie’s chips are always around and always good. Of course, this includes their BBQ chips. They’re super, super crunchy, which I love. They also have—and I know this sounds weird but I love it—a bunch of folded chips in each bag. The folded kettle potato chip is god-tier. I have no statistics or science to back up the above-average folded kettle chip ratio in Miss Vickie’s bags, but in my experience, they are always full of them!
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Best of the Best
Best Spicy
Best Savory
Best Sauce-Inspired
Best Classic
Best Alternative Chip
Most Reliable
Other Products We Tried:
365 Kettle Cooked BBQ, Siete Chipotle BBQ, Clancy’s BBQ, Tangy BBQ Pop Chips with Ridges, Signature Select BBQ Popped Chips, Boulder BBQ, Pringles BBQ, 7-Eleven BBQ, Zapps BBQ, Dirty BBQ, Middleswarth BBQ, Lay’s Mesquite BBQ Flavored Kettle Cooked
Have you had Lay’s Honey Barbecue potato chips? They blow regular Lay’s barbecue out of the water. Very good and worth a try if you’ve never had them. Sad I didn’t see them in the list of chips that were tried.