Grocery Review: Trader Joe's Onion Chips

Here's a fun fact about me: I grew up living a pretty onion-less life until I was in high school. My dad hates onions and we never had them, or even onion powder, in meals I ate at home. I only really realized I liked them when eating vegetable lo mein at a Chinese restaurant with my friends. From then on, I became a true onion lover, which led me to grabbing these Trader Joe's onion chips on my last trip to the promised land.

These chips are made from three ingredients: onions, rice bran oil, and salt. Once you pull the first one out of the packaging, its true-to-form plainness is abundantly clear. But plain does not mean unimpressive, yucky, or bad. In this case, it's truly something to behold. They figured out how to slightly puff up an onion, then crisp it up, with only three ingredients! And no crazy or horrifying ones at that!

What is rice bran oil?

Surprisingly it's not horrible for you. It is a byproduct of rice milling, so using it is actually good in regards to more of a "nose to tail" use of rice. It also contains vitamin E and unsaturated fats (the kind that are good for you in moderation). So don't be alarmed by rice bran oil, we may be seeing it used a lot more in the future, considering how much rice is milled.

What do Trader Joe's onion chips taste like?

Straight up onion but without the sharp bite of raw onion. It's like eating a chip with onion dip on it, but the whole thing is a dry crunch instead of having the contrasting creaminess of the onion dip. If you like Trader Joe's caramelized onion dip on chips or crackers, you'll love these. But you'll probably want to love them alone, they definitely make you smell oniony after enjoying them.

I also wouldn't recommend eating a whole bag a once. These are definitely not like potato chips in that regard. If you've ever eaten too much onion dip in one sitting, you know the havoc it can wreak on your digestive system!

These would be great crumbled on a salad, on onion dip, in soup, and anywhere else you might use croutons. I haven't tried it yet, as I will need another bag for that because these are so good I ate them all... just not at once.