This Limited-Time $2.69 TJ's Find Will Make It Into My Cart All Summer Long
During the summer, Trader Joe's brings back this limited-time snack I finally got to try. I am a huge fan, and my kids love them too.
When I pick up a bag of BBQ-flavored potato chips, I typically expect one flavor, no matter the brand. Unlike brisket, ribs, chicken, and pulled pork, potato chips have a vaguely smoky flavor. Until now! Trader Joe’s has paid homage to South Carolina-style BBQ with its Carolina Gold Style BBQ Ridge Cut Potato Chips ($2.69 for a seven-ounce bag).
Carolina Gold sauce is made from a base of yellow mustard and vinegar, giving it a unique flavor and color. As BBQ legend has it, this variation came to be thanks to German immigrants who settled in the area, bringing their beloved mustard with them.
Unlike other sweet BBQ sauces, the combination of piquant yellow mustard and cider vinegar cuts through the richness of fatty cuts of meat, letting the complex smoky BBQ flavor shine. But how would that taste on a chip? I had to find out!
I’m not exaggerating when I tell you there is no chip variety at TJ’s that my family has not tried. We have a few favorites (like these super spicy ghost pepper ones). I am the proud mom of two dedicated chip snackers; they’ll eat almost any flavor, but their favorite is salt and vinegar (weird, I know). Considering their affinity for bold flavors, just like me, I thought they’d like the tang of these Carolina Gold BBQ chips.
In the least shocking news of all time, they loved them. On one particularly infuriating stretch of bumper-to-bumper summer traffic on I-95, these hard-to-stop-eating chips became their new favorite car snack.
I originally doling them out stringently, but as our GPS arrival time kept creeping up, all bets were off. We devoured the entire bag.
These are substantial chips, not super thin, so they hold their shape well in the bag. They are the perfect combination of sweet, salty, tangy, and umami, and unlike other styles of BBQ chips, they didn’t leave my kids' hands too messy. I’ll be packing these in our beach bag all summer long; maybe one day, they'll even make it all the way to the actual beach!
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