TESTED: Santa Maria Potato Pops
I can easily finish a bag of tortilla chips all by myself. I know: they’re fatty & salty and not healthy. The new Santa Maria Potato Pops are 60% lower in fat than regular chips, or so the promise goes. ‘But with 100% flavour and the best crunch!’ – according to Santa Maria. Santa Maria Potato Pops come in different flavours. Are they as delicious as promised? We tested them for you.
Santa Maria Potato Pops are made from potatoes that are puffed in hot air and then pressed into light and crunchy chips. So no deep-frying is involved.
Three different flavours
Santa Maria Potato Pops come in three different flavours: Supreme Cheese, Sweet Chili and Sea Salt & Butter. We subjected all three to a taste test with a team of four chip lovers, including one teenager who basically eats everything. The good news: the Sweet Chili is a deliciously light chip with the taste of sweet chili. Easy to munch away.
The only downside: you miss the fatty chip flavour of fried chips, and we’re just being honest about that. 60% less fat than regular chips may be a ‘healthier’ choice, but if you’re going to indulge, do it properly. And of course it isn’t actually a healthier choice, because the sweet chili seasoning consists of a mix of fructose, salt, sugar, maltodextrin, flavouring (vinegar) and three different E-numbers (E296, E330, E262)…
Right, then the Supreme Cheese chips. They have a genuine cheesy chip flavour. They pass muster, but they don’t exactly have us dancing the conga.
Is this a joke?!
Then it really goes downhill…. We find the Potato Pops Sea Salt & Butter chips impossible to eat. Honestly, we don’t know how something like this passed quality control. We love butter, but this is simply disgusting. Nauseating. As if you’re unwillingly having your face pushed into a puddle of melted butter that’s just a little too old. The worst part: even the teenager (suspected of having a tapeworm) refused to eat any more after one chip.
‘Irresistibly good chips and a slightly better choice in the snack aisle! Potato Pops chips are also delicious when combined with a dipping sauce’ – according to Santa Maria themselves. We’d rather buy a bag of nacho chips. Fattier, saltier, but much tastier.
Buying Santa Maria Potato Pops
Want to try them yourself? The new Potato Pops are available at Albert Heijn. A bag (100 grams) costs 2.39 euros.
Also read:
- 4x the best tips for perfect loaded nachos
- Trend alert! Have you tried the nacho table yet?
- Crazy delicious: how to make apple pie nachos
