There isn't much Chinese food that I don't like. I'm not a fan of crab rangoon but pretty much all of the rest of it is delicious. I'm also quite fond of potato chips. I don't really like plain salted chips, it's the specialty 'gourmet' chips I enjoy. I recently came across a bag of Terra Kettles brand General Tso's flavored chips. You may remember General Tso as the nondescript 19th century Chinese aristocrat who's name is synonymous with a delicious sweet and spicy chicken dish. I'd never heard of anything other than chicken having the General Tso name attached to it... but I thought, "how bad could it be? I like General Tso's chicken and I like chips, so General Tso's chips should be awesome." As you may have read before, the transitive property can be pretty tricky.
These were a tough sell though, I wasn't predisposed to thinking that these were going to be awesome. When I think of General Tso's chicken, it's not so much the spiciness that I like, it's the sweetness. The sauce is clearly what makes the dish. So is it possible to make a sweet potato chip that tastes like it's been dipped in General Tso sauce? Well, no it isn't possible. That's not to say these chips were bad... they just weren't as General Tso-y as I'd hoped.
These chips were basically just spicy barbecue flavored. The were very salty, which is to be expected with kettle chips, but that is one thing that the chicken dish isn't. The chicken is sweet, not salty. I'm not sure if that'd be worth even trying with a chip...
So these chips weren't really worthy of the General Tso name, they were still pretty good. I probably would have liked them more if they were called "Really Salty and Kinda Spicy Barbecue Flavored Kettle Chips" because that's what they were. This got me thinking about what other foods could benefit from the General Tso flavoring... I think it's be pretty good on a McRib, seriously. Or maybe just a pressed chicken patty on a McRib bun...
Terra Chips presents Hydroponic Weed Flavored Snacks
I'd never heard of Terra Chips before, although I'd seen their chips a few times in passing at Whole Foods. It was only after polishing off the General Tso chips that I bothered to read some of the names of their other chips. It seems like they are trying to market their chips to potheads, just listen to some of these names:- Red Bliss
- Fine Herb
- Sweet Beat
- Yukon Gold
- Exotic Mediterranean