People may have different opinions on what makes for a classic American lunch. For my money, it starts with a a sandwich. Whether it’s PB&J, lunch meat, or even an egg salad or chicken salad sandwich, I’m a fan. But what to pair with it? For some people, it’s soup. For others, it’s salad. I’m fine with both of them. My favorite, though, is a classic potato chip. Not barbecue. Not even sour cream and onion. Just a potato chip.
It’s a bonus if that potato chip is wavy, because I find those do the best at scooping up my personal favorite dip, French onion dip.
Perfection.
No one is quite sure who invented the potato chip. What is clear is that, 1) it was likely invented sometime in the 1800s, 2) companies like Lay’s and Frito (now both part of the PepsiCo corporation) began selling them around the 1930s, and 3) potato chips today are a $10+ billion industry. Wavy potato chips — also called crinkle cut or ruffled chips — date back to at least the 1940s with the Ruffles potato chips, which were bought out by the Fritos company in the 1950s.
Aldi sells a number of chips and snacks, many of them under the Clancy’s private label. That includes regular potato chips and, better yet, wavy ones.
Clancy’s Wavy Potato Chips are an Aldi Regular Buy. That means you can find them in stores all the time. They come in a familiar plastic and aluminum bag. The 10-ounce bag currently costs $1.19, or about 12 cents an ounce. Name brand potato chips, wavy or not, cost 2-3 times that much, and even generic chips in my local regular grocery stores run more. These, then, are a good deal.
They’re also great chips. They are big, sturdy, tasty, and are excellent for dipping. They have that classic salty potato chip taste and a glorious crunch. They tend to be packaged pretty well, too, because I haven’t found many that are in bad shape. Top to bottom, these are just really good potato chips.
They’re also pretty simple in terms of ingredients: potatoes, oil, and salt. That’s it. Bear in mind that they’ve got some fat and sodium, and they’re pretty much all carbs, so they’re not healthy. But they’re also not full of unrecognizable ingredients, either.
Nutrition and ingredients. (Click to enlarge.)
The Verdict:
Clancy’s Wavy Potato Chips deliver the classic ruffled potato chip. They taste great and hold up well for those who like to put their chips in a dip. Best of all, they come with a typically low Aldi price. Recommended.
The Clancy Potatoe chip is really good, but I would like to see them come out with a low salt chip.
I was just about raised on potatoe chips, but now I’m paying for it, with all the salt, so a low salt would help me in my later years, going to be 68 in 11/ 2022
I bought a bag of Clancy’s wavy potato chips at our local Aldi’s and when I ate the first one it was so salty it was like pouring a salt shaker in my mouth. So salty I can’t eat them. Will not by them again.
I recently bought a large of Clancy’s wavy potato chips for a small family get together. I also got dip for them .
All I got in the chip bag was crumbs no hole chips. I’ll never buy chips at aldi’s again .