Clancy’s Big Dippers Tortilla Chips

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The tortilla chip is the foundation of many Mexican — or, maybe more accurately, Tex-Mex — meals. Nachos aren’t nachos without tortilla chips. Same with taco salad. Whether you go to a ballpark or a church potluck, there’s a good chance tortilla chips will make an appearance at some point.

Said chips see a variety of uses. Sometimes you’ll find them layered underneath a pile of beef, salsa, sour cream, jalapenos, and, most importantly, cheese. Other times you’ll find them off to the side of, say, salsa, guacamole, queso, or some other dip like spinach artichoke.

Different uses can call for different chips. What works for taco salad might not be ideal for spinach artichoke dip. The shape, in particular, can be important, with some uses calling for circles, triangles, or even strips.

And while nearly all tortilla chips get pressed into service as a makeshift utensil, some of them are more crucial to the task than others. Enter the dipping chip: the tortilla that is shaped more or less like an irregular spoon. The dipping chip is adequate enough for a dip like queso, but its real value is when it’s got to net other things, like multiple ingredients in a taco mix or meat-queso blend. This chip can scoop up a lot more than a triangle or circle could.

Aldi, in its array of tortilla chips, sells a dipping version, one you can pick up at all times of the year.

Clancy’s Big Dippers are an Aldi Regular Buy, which means you can find them in stores every day. They come in a 10-ounce blue bag and cost $2.09. At around 21 cents an ounce, these are very inexpensive compared to other dipping chips available at Walmart, including being slightly cheaper than Walmart’s own house brand dipping chips. On the other hand, they cost more than the 15 cents an ounce you’ll pay for Aldi’s budget Clancy’s White Rounds Tortilla Chips.

As chips go, these are pretty straightforward. There are four ingredients: white corn, vegetable oil, toasted corn germ, and salt. Each one-ounce serving has 7 grams of fat, 100 milligrams of sodium, and 17 grams of carbs. Because most people will eat more than an ounce of chips, I prefer these in moderation.

Nutrition information and ingredients. (Click to enlarge.)

What can I say? They do the job. They’re deep enough to scoop what I need but not so deep that they cause a problem. They work, holding up against the force of lifting what they need to lift. The taste and texture work, too: they’re not homemade, but they are fresh and have the crisp texture and salty / tortilla-y taste that you expect from most store-bought chips.

The Verdict:

When it comes to dipping chips I look for two things: a chip that 1) does the physical job of scooping while 2) tasting like I would expect a tortilla chip to taste. This chip does both. It also does it at a textbook Aldi price — namely, less than what you can currently find at Walmart. Aldi sells budget chips for less, but if a dedicated dipping chip is your game, these deserve a try.