Citric Acid Is The Best Way To Achieve Tangy Dill Pickle Potato Chips

"Dill pickle" isn't a potato chip flavor that's quite as iconic as "sour cream and onion" or "barbecue." Even so, in the past decade sales for these green bags of pickle potato chips have risen, and popular brands like Lay's have introduced the flavor. The taste is sharp and tangy not unlike salt-and-vinegar flavored chips, except the dill flavoring adds an herbal, citrusy quality to it.

If store-bought chips aren't your thing, or if you just want to experiment with making your own, getting that acidic flavor right is key to a batch of your own dill chips. Generally homemade potato chips are made from (of course) russet potatoes, canola oil, and salt. Homemade dill pickle chips would naturally need a healthy amount of dill weed, and citric acid is a good, sour ingredient to recreate the vinegar flavor of pickles.

Extra ingredients like black pepper and onion powder will round out the taste of the chips. Dill and citric acid are both pungent, so there's little need to worry about other ingredients overpowering the dish.

Citric acid is naturally found in fruits like lemons, limes, and oranges, but you can buy containers of pure citric acid powder at grocery stores. If the name sounds intimidating, it may help to know that the Food and Drug Administration deems manufactured citric acid to be completely safe as a food additive. Some people like to call it "sour salt." You shouldn't eat it raw, just cook or sprinkle it with other foods.

A batch of chips made from two potatoes shouldn't need more than three-fourths of a tablespoon of citric acid powder, per Taste of Home. The powder and the rest of the herbs and spices will garnish the chips after the potatoes are done cooking. Typically you cook the thinly sliced potatoes in an oven or air fryer (although it is possible to cook potato chips in your microwave). Once the thinly sliced potatoes are cooked until they're brown and crunchy, you coat them with the mixture afterward.

It can also help to soak your sliced potatoes in pickle brine before you cook them. Pickling your raw tomatoes for about an hour or two is just another way to add more sour saltiness to the final product, and if you're making dill pickle chips in the first place, then sour saltiness is likely what you're after. The longer you let them sit, the more of that flavor the chips will absorb from the brine, and then you can take them out and add everything else and cook your spuds.

What else can you add to dill pickle chips? Some like to add hot sauce if there isn't enough of a kick in your chips already. Red pepper flakes can give you the same effect. If you're looking for dip, ranch goes well with pickled foods. Or, while the topic of dipping potato chips in ketchup is an oddly controversial one, ketchup and potatoes mix well and there's no reason why you should feel ashamed to try it.