Lay's Kettle Cooked Original Extra Crunchy Potato Chips Review

One night, a few weeks ago, I bought myself a sandwich from a fast food restaurant that I took home for dinner. Normally I don't buy chips with my sandwiches because I'd rather buy sweets than chips. But on this particular night, I wasn't in the mood for anything sweet, I was craving a bag of potato chips, but I didn't want the kind the restaurant served because I'd tried them before and they sucked.

I was in the mood for a plain bag of salty and crunchy chips, so I headed to Walgreen's to buy a plain bag of Lay's. When I saw that Lay's made Kettle Cooked Original Chips, I decided to buy a bag, because I really love kettle cooked chips when they are made correctly.

I'm really late, but I had no idea that Lay's made Kettle Cooked Potato Chips because I never buy them, but I didn't think they'd be that great because Lay's is such an ordinary potato chip company. Usually the kettle cooked chips I've seen are made by smaller companies that take their kettle cooking seriously, I guess it's an art form.

Nonetheless I was totally surprised by how much I enjoyed these chips. First they had a really great taste, I've had kettle cooked chips in the past that were dry and lacked flavor like a dried out potato would, but the Lay's chips were salty and oily and delicious, like their regular plain chips. But the regular chips are light and wimpy, and the Kettle Cooked chips are hard and crisp. They are still thin in the center, though, so while they are very crunchy and firm they also have a light quality.

After I ate and enjoyed a 2 ¾ oz bag of the Lay's Kettle Cooked Original Extra Crunchy Potato Chips I thought for sure that the ingredients would be horrible since the chips were so good. But I was surprised to see that there were only three ingredients listed, potatoes, sunflower oil, and sea salt, no preservatives, no trans fat, and nothing unnatural.

A normal serving is only supposed to be around 1oz but I ate the whole bag. The entire bag of chips has 420 calories, 22g of total fat, 3g of saturated fat, 6g of polyunsaturated fat, and 13g of monounsaturated fat. There are also 310mg of sodium, 50g of total carbs, 3g of fiber and 5g of protein. The chips also contain iron, thiamin, niacin, phosphorus, and Vitamins C and B6.

I didn't know that I ate that many calories from that one bag, but these chips were delicious so it was worth it. The only brand of Kettle Cooked chips that I really loved was by the White Hen Pantry, but they were discontinued a few years ago. Since then I've tried other brands that were too hard and over-cooked, too thick, or just too bland. And while I feel like the Lay's Kettle Cooked Original Chips could have been cut a little bit thicker, they are the only chip that tastes close to the White Hen Pantry's brand, so I will definitely be buying these again. I give it 4.8 out 5 stars.