Stay on Target, Market Pantry!

One thing I didn't think about when I decided to try all of the salt & vinegar potato chips in town was that there'd be a plethora of house brands sold by the big chains. I figured I'd go to the grocery store and buy one bag a week of the precious chips and, when I'd tried them all, I'd be forced to jump on a plane to seek out more brands in exotic lands such as Pennsylvania. But no. My local supermarket doesn't have a house brand so it was out of sight, out of mind for me.

But I quickly noticed that Hy-Vee had a house brand. As did 7-11 and Kwik Trip. So now I find myself poking around the snack aisles of any store that has one in search of new chips. An old find made new again due to my procrastination was at Target with their Market Pantry brand.

I contacted their customer service to inquire as to who made the chips for them and was asked for a UPC code in exchange for that information. Since the bag had been tossed in the trash already, I guess I will never know who makes them. I wonder if this is simply mindless bureaucracy at work or if multiple companies make the chips so they need the code to determine which one fried up these particular potato slices. If I recall correctly, Kwik Trip asked for a UPC thingy as well before they'd divulge any info while Hy-Vee, I believe, was happy to tell me that Old Dutch made their chips.

Harumph.

These smelled pretty good with the oil being most noticeable but there was some vinegar tang to be had as well. Definitely tangier than most salt & vinegar brands. The chips looked like you'd expect. Cut to normal thickness and a creamy off-white, they had a mostly uniform color with only the odd brown spot.

Ooh, they had a really fine crispness - perfect for the thickness. They were a bit light on the salt and, curiously enough, the vinegar. Considering that I could smell the vinegar fairly well, I was surprised at how little I tasted. This did allow a very rich, sweet potato flavor to take center stage. As I got to the bottom of the bag, however, I did taste more tang so I guess the vinegar particulate matter settled in packaging.

Market Pantry went the adulterated route as the label notes lactose, sodium citrate, malic acid, and sodium diacetate in addition to 4 kinds of oil. Sodium diacetate is a "a salt of acetic acid" which makes it vinegar adjacent, I suppose. I think they just need some food glue to keep the vinegar, the malic acid, and those -ate's on the chips.