March 2023

Lay's "Sour Twist"

Frito-Lay

At first I thought the concept of a sour potato chip was a little weird. When I first hear “sour” on a treat, my first thought goes to something like Sour Patch Kids or Tear Jerkers. Most of these sour treats tend to go a little more towards the fruit flavours as opposed to the savoury. While I’ve had some luck with sweet potato chips, it can be a little weird. After looking at the package and thinking about it for a little while, I realized that there is a fruit that works really well with savoury treats, and that’s lemon or lime. Not only do these citrus fruits work with savoury foods, they also give a nice balance to spicy foods too.

This is important because apparently the twist in these chips is chilly. I would actually say that these are more twist than sour. While some people would be pretty happy about this, I actually prefer sour over spicy, so I was a little disappointed with the strength of the sour. I’ve had corn chips in the past that had a pretty strong lime kick to them, but these did not. I would describe these as a slightly tart flavour with a heat that builds the more you eat. I imagine this is preferred in a place like Thailand where these are sold, but my taste buds would have really liked a strong kick of sour instead.

Speaking of corn chips, I feel like the use of a potato chip didn’t work as well as it would have had it been a corn chip. Potato chips have a more subtle flavour than corn chips and a delicate texture as well. I feel like these needed something to balance out the lemon and chilly flavour, and I think corn would have worked well. Potato is a bit more subtle, and a lot of the flavour you get is from the oil. Corn on the other hand has a stronger flavour and this would have balanced out better with the lemon and chilly. Flavour wise these tasted like I was eating lemon and chilly in oil. While I know this is an important component in Thai cooking, it needs more to balance out these flavours.

I appreciate this effort, and it worked to some degree. I just think it needed more sour and something else to balance it out a little bit.