15 Popular BBQ Potato Chip Brands Ranked

The potato chip just might be the most perfect food, and it's certainly universally popular. Beautifully and deliciously simple, a chip is but a thin slice of a hearty potato, deep fried in oil and then salted. Crispy and savory, chips pair perfectly with most any kind of sandwich, and they're as much of a snacking favorite as they are a lunchtime staple. Regular, normal, unadorned potato chips are also a foundation, able to handle and to even be improved by experimentation. While there are dozens of flavors widely available in stores across the United States, only a few varieties have earned a spot as a collective favorite. At or near the top: barbecue chips, which combine the flavors, vibes, and sweet-meets-spicy-meets-tanginess of dry rubs and gooey sauces from a number of American culinary traditions.

There are so many barbecue chips regularly produced, sold, and consumed, and some are certainly better than others. The Takeout gathered 15 of the most famous and best-selling barbecue chips and taste-tested them, looking for the best flavors, authentic barbecue sensibility, texture, and mouthfeel. Here then are 15 well-known barbecue potato chips and crisps, ranked from worst to best.

The first flavor that East Coast stalwart chip-maker Herr's introduced was a barbecue variety in 1958. In the 2020s, it more robustly distributes nationally to grocery, drug, and dollar stores a version of that chip that's a mashup with Stubb's, a well-liked mass-market barbecue sauce. Herr's Stubb's Original doesn't taste anything remotely like that imaginative and original barbecue flavor, nor does it bear the taste of Stubb's sweet, spicy, and bold sauce. It actually doesn't taste anything like the other leading potato chip brands.

Herr's Stubb's Original aren't reminiscent of barbecue sauce, nor sauced meat. These chips aren't smoky, and they taste like green, raw potatoes, or a bite of a leftover potato casserole that went bad. The thickly ridged design theoretically allows more sauce and flavoring to get into the mix, but it's unfortunate that what's used is so foul. Herr's makes some of the best cheese curls around, but its barbecue chips smell and taste like kitchen garbage.

It's perplexing why Ruffles Flamin' Hot BBQ chips are even presented as a barbecue chip. It's extremely reductive to suggest that barbecue sauce is ultimately just a combination of ketchup and moderate spice, but that's apparently the idea that the food scientists behind this chip worked from. The initial bite brings with it a powerful and disconcertingly accurate taste of ketchup; and although Canada's terrific ketchup chips should be everywhere, Ruffles Flamin' Hot BBQ is not the place for the unadulterated condiment.

At least the ketchup dissipates almost instantly. At that point, the taste turns hot, leaving a hefty level of spice on the top of the tongue, and then the sides of the tongue, before escalating into a full-on burning in the back of the mouth and into the throat. These chips are such a shade of firetruck red that they promise heat, but it's so intense that one hopes it will bring a depth of flavor, too. But Ruffles Flamin' Hot BBQ don't do anything of the sort: They're hot for the sake of hot, and any barbecue flavoring that might be in there gets totally lost.

A big tub of Utz Cheese Balls may reign supreme, but the beloved snack company faltered as it leaned into the "honey" when it endeavored to make its Honey Barbecue potato chips. It really filled a niche that nobody knew needed to be filled with this product, likely the world's first dessert potato chip. Utz Honey Barbecue potato chips are just that powerfully sweet, tasting strongly of artificial, imitation honey, with the most obvious corollary of that fake honey sauce that KFC hands out for use on its biscuits. 

All that is to say that Utz Honey Barbecue chips carry next to no barbecue flavor, and it seems weird or unfair to rank them among the slew of other barbecue chips because it's just not part of this snack foods arms race. The only time that something close to a familiar barbecue chip flavor profile is imparted is in the aftertaste, when a tomato-like tanginess briefly cuts through the majorly sweet honey-adjacent flavoring. It's overall an ingratiating and off-putting flavor — potatoes and sugar — that makes the consumer want to eat only one.

This relic of early 2000s convenience store snack foods is apparently still in production, quietly lurking on supermarket shelves alongside the more expensive and authentic potato chips and stuff like Pringles, to which it is a second-rate competitor. Arriving in a thick plastic can that doesn't seem to do much in the way of preserving the freshness of the product inside. Lay's Stax crisps are an imitation of chips, and its Mesquite Barbecue flavor a failed take on better-crafted barbecue chips.

It looks like the barbecue seasoning agent was painted on with a dry brush, because not very much makes its way onto the average Lay's Stax crisp. That saves money on the production, as does the fact that these snacks are even thinner than Pringles. As far as the barbecue goes, they don't taste like that at all, more like a spicy ketchup, and most of that winds up on the fingers instead of the crisp.

Proclaiming that its chips aren't merely some run-of-the-mill, pedestrian, and predictable barbecue-flavored variety, Miss Vicki's promises that its entry into the popular potato snack sub-genre is applewood-smoked. That would suggest a slightly different take on the barbecue chip, or at very least, that each bite could pack a lot of barbecue-reminiscent flavor. Surprisingly and disappointingly, Miss Vicki's Applewood Smoked BBQ potato chips don't taste much like any of the other brands' attempts, nor do they offer a lot of taste at all.

There's a brief hint of a Lay's-like flavor, but it hits so quickly and then disappears almost instantly that it's hard to even gauge. When the chip is gone, it leaves behind a faint essence of ketchup that wasn't there before. And while Miss Vicki's Applewood Smoked BBQ chips are suitably thick, they're not all that crispy and are tough to bite through.

There's a whole collection of snack foods featuring Chester Cheetah, mascot of Cheetos, that are an exercise in branding for the budget conscious. With a declaration of "$2.99 only" on the bag, one of several non-Cheetos offerings isn't quite a potato chip, but rather Honey BBQ Potato Crisps. A potato chip is a slice of real potato; a crisp is pressed and formed out of rehydrated potato flakes, and it's a segment pioneered by Pringles. Chester's Honey BBQ Potato Crisps are a Pringles knockoff but they don't look anything like potatoes, nor do they have the texture of any well-known potato product. They're ultra-thin to the point where they're transparent and holey, as if they've been air-fried or put through the same process that makes pork rinds.

Chester's Honey BBQ Potato Crisps are absolutely coated in barbecue rub, as if to cover up the unpleasant taste of potato remnants. That barbecue flavor is initially pleasant and subtle that lingers for a few seconds, and it doesn't taste of chemicals the way one thinks such an obvious factory-based fabrication would. They so strongly reek of barbecue spice that this is probably the source of most of that taste.

What sets kettle chips apart from regular potato chips? They're cut thicker and fried for a longer period of time in that specialized vessel to result in an extra-sturdy chip that's slightly oilier in feel and taste. Lay's Kettle Cooked products, particularly the Mesquite BBQ style, are so thoroughly kettle-cooked that each one bears inflated bubbles of trapped air, and they're so twisted that they resemble pork rinds more than potato chips.

Also, like a pork rind, Lay's Kettle Cooked Mesquite BBQ chips are far too crunchy. If one is expecting that and wanting that, then they should go for the barbecue dust-coasted pork rinds available just down the aisle from the chips. Also, these barbecue chips don't much taste like barbecue sauce or chips. They have a sensibility more evocative of ketchup, or a marinara sauce made awkwardly spicy with the addition of red peppers. They're also very sweet, which stays around as an aftertaste for many egregious minutes.

Many snack food makers have extended their reach with a brand extension that was a flagship project but less of it: a chip or cracker with less fat or less salt while promising to maintain the flavor and integrity of the original item. Lay's Honey Barbecue potato chips taste like FritoLay tried to make a lighter, healthier, less sodium-packed version of its regular Barbecue chips (see below), but couldn't get the nutritional numbers to budge.

Lay's Honey Barbecue chips taste a little like Lay's Barbecue chips, but they also taste like nothing. It's as if the workers down at the potato chip factory took all the flavor off of the standard barbecue chips, added half of the allotted amount back on, and then put in just a little bit of sugar. That's only noticeable in the aftertaste, however, which is stronger than the actual taste of the chip. From a textural standpoint, Lay's Honey Barbecue Chips are interesting, seemingly thinner, crispier, and fresher-seeming than its mass-produced brethren.

Lay's produces a number of slightly different barbecue-style potato chips, and it's commendable that it tried to make a specialized flavor if only as a nod to how American barbecue culture is not monolithic. While Wavy Lay's Hickory BBQ chips don't really taste like they spent a day soaking up the smell and taste of that particularly flavorful and nuanced wood of choice specifically, they do have a much smokier profile than other Lay's barbecue chip offerings, and they're noticeably sweeter, too. 

But all those additions are too much, and they don't really gel with one another. The abundant artificial sweetness with a chemical approximation of smoke makes for a push-pull relationship rather than a symbiotic one. Strong notes of ketchup in the back end and in the aftertaste are unwelcome, and made even worse by how Wavy Lay's Hickory BBQ chips are so thick that you can't escape the taste of every last one of those missteps.

Even an avowed and ardent Pringles fan might be surprised to learn that the first name in canned potato chip re-creations makes a barbecue flavor. But there they are, hanging out on the shelves with all the other crisps and chips, just waiting to be discovered as one of the better examples of the product category. One can't help but notice the blanched and subsequently underwhelming appearance of Pringles BBQ potato crisps. They're pale like raw potatoes and topped with only a light spray of barbecue seasoning. But looks can be deceiving, as Pringles BBQ is a quite flavorful potato snack.

There's nothing out of the ordinary or inventive here, in that Pringles BBQ taste like the platonic ideal or average barbecue chip, although that signature Pringles texture and concentrated potato taste come into play. There's a slight aftertaste of a deep and meaty umami that the competition lacks.

There's a better Pringle than Pringles and it's The Good Crisp. Lighter, crispier, and bursting with more realistic potato flavor than Pringles, the Australian-born snack takes special care with the rubs and powders it uses to churn out different varieties, too. While other barbecue-style potato crisps seem to categorically have been haphazardly treated with a quick and sloppy dump of wrongly-colored flavor mix, each individual item in a canister of The Good Crisp looks like it had individual attention paid to it, so the seasoning is evenly distributed across every centimeter.

The Good Crisp Company's Outback BBQ variety offers a robust and layered barbecue flavor that tastes only a little artificial and more like other brands of barbecue chips than it does any particular barbecue tradition. But there's not too much of any one thing — the Outback BBQ crisps use the right amount of seasoning for a chip that's so physically light.

Back in the mid-1960s, FritoLay's Lay's, already one of the first potato chips available anywhere, became one of the first national brands to introduce a barbecue flavor. That has since become the gold standard and the most familiar to the masses example of what a barbecue chip should taste like. It's a reputation that Lay's has earned. The flavor is bold without being overwhelming, achieving a straight-down-the-middle, inoffensive taste. Lay's Barbecue potato chips are very salty and more tangy than they are sweet while remaining tomato forward. They don't really taste like barbecued meat or barbecue sauce, more like potatoes that have been treated with a slightly spicy dry rub. 

The Lay's Barbecue variety is the barbecue potato chip against which all other potato chips are judged, and which many appear to imitate, unlike the many discontinued Lay's chips no one wants to see again. There's a decided lack of real smokiness here, but the artificial flavoring does an admirable job. What Lay's perfected is the texture. These chips are light and crispy, never crunchy or chunky, and they nearly melt in the mouth. 

Kettle Brand Potato Chips is so confident in the satisfying crunchiness of its product, and in the simple taste of tuber and a little bit of flavoring, that it doesn't need to take the route of the competition and douse its Backyard Barbecue snack and side in a dusting of nuclear orange-colored powder. Like other entries in Kettle's line of category redefining chips, the Backyard Barbecue ones are just thick enough, unlike the mega-brands' that are so dense they threaten to break a tooth. Moreover, they also bear the signs they've been fried in a kettle, with all sorts of visible air pockets all over the chip, the heat contorting the final product so that the pieces are small and nugget-like.

With only a mild barbecue flavor present, Kettle Brand Backyard Barbecue potato chips are the only entry sampled that still taste like potatoes. That taste is complemented by and competes with the tangy, savory, sweet coating. This is a good barbecue chip to pair with a burger, sandwich, or backyard barbecued meats, because it never oversteps.

Utz controls Tim's Cascade, a West Coast maker of thick chips which in turn nationally distributes Hawaiian Brand Kettle Style Potato Chips, a line which pulls from Hawaiian flavors. The very best one of the bunch is the Luau BBQ flavor. One of the more expensive barbecue chips attainable in regular grocery stores, the Luau BBQ chips are worth the extra price because not only do they possess the precisely perfect level of substantial crunch, but they've got more, and more of a singular flavor, than all the other barbecue chips.

Hawaiian Luau BBQ potato chips are very sweet with a high-moderate level of peppery spiciness. Whatever paste or powder adding that flavor packs such a punch because it's deeply and literally embedded; it looks as if the spices were applied to the potatoes before they were fried, which then locked everything in. That final flavor tastes like a combo of gochujang, a key ingredient in Korean barbecue, with the regular barbecue chip profile. They're also probably about as twice as thick as a regular potato chip but maintain an ease of use.

Ruffles are the edgier, or rather more edge-laden, ridge-covered cousin of Lay's, both made by FritoLay. One of the numerous flavor-blasted varieties of Ruffles widely available, Ruffles Smokehouse Barbecue is a standout not only of the scalloped brand but of the entire array of barbecue chips available at the most retail outlets. Ruffles Smokehouse Barbecue potato chips took the framework and makeup of Lay's Barbecue Chips, and improved upon every single element.

By their very nature, Ruffles are both thicker and crispier than the regular Lay's potato chips. Those ridges are built to catch as many flavoring ingredients as possible, which here is barbecue flavor. That's also been ramped up from the normal Lay's recipe, with lots of saltiness, tangy tomato, and smoky flavor taking the lead. All that adds up to a luxurious mouthfeel with a moderate amount of spice that disappears at the right time. Don't be swayed by the pale and unappetizing color that doesn't match the packaging: Ruffles Smokehouse Barbecue are the best barbecue chips out there.

The potato chips selected for review and ranking in this piece are all brands that are available on a national level across grocery, convenience, and big box stores. From that group of barbecue flavored chips, the most prominent and flagship flavors were used, so as to pull from the largest possible group of commonly available products. Both regular potato chips and significant crisp-style snacks made the cut.

Every brand was purchased well before its expiration date, to make for as fresh a selction of chips as possible. After photography, chips were eaten immediately and assessed foremost on taste. That notion was mostly about the prominence and accuracy of barbecue flavor, which included looking for factors such as sweetness, tanginess, spice, and tomato-based flavoring, and how much or little of each was used and how they combined to create a good profile and mouthfeel. Also considered was the thickness of chips and the relative pleasingness of the crunch.