The Best Tortilla Chips

Tortilla chips were first popularized in the United States in the 1940s by a Mexican American woman named Rebecca Webb Carranza who ran a Los Angeles tortilla shop. She cut up and fried some misshapen corn tortillas instead of discarding them—and they were an instant success (see “Who invented tortilla chips?” below for more information).

In the test kitchen we love tortilla chips with salsa and dips, for layering in nachos and casseroles, for topping bowls of chili, as a binder in black bean burgers—and maybe most of all, just for eating out of hand. To find our favorite tortilla chips, we researched top-selling national brands as reported by the Chicago-based market research firm IRI and tasted them plain and with salsa. To assess whether they could hold up to a sturdy dip, we also dragged each chip through guacamole and rated their scooping ability. Here’s what we learned.

All the chips we tasted were made of just three main ingredients: corn, vegetable oil, and salt. So why were they so different in flavor and texture? To find out, we spoke to an expert in snack processing: Dr. Mian N. Riaz, professor of food science and technology at Texas A&M University. He said that while the overall method of making tortilla chips is established, even the smallest changes at “each step will affect the quality.”

The (very simplified) process is this: Corn is nixtamalized (soaked in a mixture of hot water and calcium hydroxide, also called pickling lime), ground into a paste called masa, rolled into thin sheets, cut into chips, baked briefly to set the shape, deep-fried, salted, and bagged for sale. 

Everything from the corn to the bag is a variable that affects the final flavor and texture, Riaz said: the variety of corn; how much starch and moisture it contains; how it’s cooked; the type, quality, and quantity of the pickling lime; and even whether the manufacturer starts from whole corn or purchases prepared masa. Grinding is also a factor: Steel rollers can grind more finely than traditional stone (brands will brag that their corn is “stone-ground” on their labels, Riaz said; two of the products in our lineup were stone-ground, but those chips weren’t our favorites). With either type of grinder, the space between grinding plates determines the texture of the corn, leaving larger or smaller particles in the chips.

The shapes of the chips we tasted varied: Most were shaped like triangles, resembling a corn tortilla cut into wedges, but one chip was round. Our tasters had a slight preference for larger triangles, which were easy to dip. 

Several brands claimed to be “restaurant-style” or “café-style,” a growing trend and mindset shift, according to Walsh. “Consumers are now thinking of tortilla chips as part of the meal, an appetizer with dip, rather than a snack to tide you over between meals,” Walsh said, so “manufacturers are putting the restaurant in the bag,” making what consumers might view as more “authentic-type chips that are thinner, and unflavored”—only salted—“to mimic what you would get at a Mexican American restaurant.” Sure enough, our tasters liked crunchy chips that were just sturdy enough for dipping, neither too fragile nor hard. 

We tried measuring chip thickness with calipers, but their surface variations made this impossible; that said, our tasters preferred irregular, bubbly surfaces that gave the chips a texture of layered crispness. Riaz agreed: “Chips with no bubbles look artificial. It’s all about presentation.” He added, “You can make the bubbles intentionally.” For the same reason, chips may be cut into slightly irregular shapes. Thinness is limited, however, since chips in our lineup contained only corn, which has no gluten that could bind the dough together and keep superthin chips from crumbling to pieces. “You can’t make [them] overly thin,” Riaz said. “One millimeter is about it.”

Did the frying oil matter? Probably, but there’s no way to tell, Riaz said. While all the chips in our lineup were fried in vegetable oil, most of the bags listed combinations, such as “corn, canola, and/or sunflower oil.” Riaz said this allows manufacturers to switch oils based on what they can source at the best price at any given time, although some use proprietary blends to achieve desired flavor and textural characteristics or to help the frying oil last longer before breaking down. As a result, it was impossible for us to link oil type to our preferred flavor and texture.

Saltiness did factor into our preferences. The chips in our lineup ranged from 65 milligrams to 160 milligrams of sodium per serving, a huge difference. (Servings averaged about 10 chips.) The chips with the least and most sodium in our lineup sank to the bottom of our preferences. We liked a moderate level: 90 to 115 milligrams.

Chips sold in thicker, multilayered bags of foil, paper, and/or plastic tasted better than those with thinner, single-layer plastic bags that were partly or mostly clear. Riaz confirmed that packaging plays a huge role in preserving crispness and freshness by creating an effective barrier against moisture, oxygen, and light that will spoil the chips. Some companies flush oxygen out of bags with nitrogen. “Since it’s harmless, this is not indicated on the label,” he said. “You can tell [if it was nitrogen-flushed] once you open the bag: The product is very, very crunchy.” Our favorite chips stayed remarkably crispy, even after we’d opened the bags.

In the end, we recommended all but one brand of chips, but we did have favorites. Our top chip was Tostitos Original Restaurant Style Tortilla Chips. Its large, crispy, well-seasoned triangles tasted good with salsa but also on their own and stood up well to thick guacamole. We also loved Tortiyahs! Superior Dipping Chips Restaurant Style Sea Salt, which tasters called light, airy, and crisp, with especially appealing toasty corn flavor.