Ranking 8 Cheddar and Sour Cream Chips

There is no shortage of potato chip flavors to choose from. While you have your staple chips — including the original, barbecue, and salt and vinegar — you also have your lesser-known, more fringe-flavored chips. They’re not flavors that are always stocked on grocery store shelves or served on the snacking table at parties, but you can’t help but buy a bag when you see them, if only for their novelty. Cheddar and sour cream chips are under this umbrella. This flavor offers both the fatty and bright notes of the cheddar paired alongside the slightly sour flavor of the sour cream. They’re great solo, alongside a cheesy dip, or stuffed into a sandwich.

But not all cheddar and sour cream chips are worth buying and snacking on. Some brands offer a ho-hum and indiscernible flavor that will leave you with buyer’s remorse. In order to help you find a great cheddar and sour cream chip brand, we sampled several popular offerings before ranking them from worst to best based on factors like flavor, texture, and how satisfying they are to snack on. 

I’m going to be honest here: I’ve never enjoyed Pringles, regardless of what flavor they are. These saddle-shaped chips just don’t hit the spot texturally, as I find that their consistency is mealy and almost stale. That was certainly the case for the brand’s cheddar and sour cream chips. They didn’t have a refreshing, crispy snap to them, and their flavor was reminiscent of mashed potatoes that had sat out on the dinner table for too long. 

I rolled my eyes a bit when I saw that the label on the container said “bursting with flavor.” Bursting with flavor for an ant, maybe, but there was very little flavor to be found on these “chips,” if you can even call them that. If you lean in and take a big whiff of the can, you don’t really smell anything remotely cheddar-y or sour. The flavor on the palate is almost rancid, with very little cheddar or sour cream notes to report. 

In order to try and find the flavor on these chips, I eventually took to licking them to see if I was just missing something. But even then, there was very little cheesy flavor, and anything that was there was immediately overridden by that mashed potato taste. I wouldn’t serve these Pringles to my worst enemy. They’re flavorless, sad, and a sorry excuse for a chip — which made them very deserving of last place. 

I remember the day that my middle school cafeteria, likely in the wake of Michelle Obama’s attempt at school lunch reform, switched its normal potato chip offerings over for these “healthier” baked chips. Little did the principal and cafeteria staff know that they were about to have a riot on their hands. 

I won’t sugarcoat it: These chips are downright awful. I get the idea of wanting to make a less greasy alternative to classic potato chips, but I have to wonder why anyone would cut corners here. Part of what makes a chip so delicious is the fact that it leaves an oily sheen on your fingertips and makes your stomach feel like a bubbling cesspool of grease afterwards. It’s like using a cauliflower crust for pizza and calling it the same thing as a New York slice. There’s nothing it can do to redeem itself, which was essentially the nail in the coffin for this Ruffles spin-off. 

These chips had a mealy consistency, which I assume is because they were baked rather than fried. Otherwise, their flavor was about the same as the other original Ruffles chips I sampled for this ranking. There wasn’t enough sourness to bolster the flavor of the cheddar, and I was left with a stale aftertaste in my mouth. I have a feeling that calling this product a “chip” is an insult to all the other potato chip products out there, which is why I placed these snacks so low on my list. Keep your grubby hands off my potato chips, Michelle Obama.

These Cape Cod aged white cheddar and sour cream kettle chips are the most “modern farmhouse” of the chips that I sampled. If these chips were a person, they would be someone who drinks oat milk matcha lattes on the daily and only gives their children brown and neutral-colored toys. It’s a far cry from the bright artificial-orange chips that some other brands put forward. 

The flavor of these chips, much like their packaging and aura suggests, is dull. The chip design is flawless, though, and that’s something that I will give the Cape Cod chip brand a lot of credit for as a whole. The sheer number of folded-over chips in this bag would make any potato chip lover positively giddy. But while you get a little bit of that aged cheddar on the mouth, which tastes a lot like Annie’s mac and cheese, you’ll find it doesn’t stick around long after on the palate, especially compared to the Kraft mac and cheeses of the potato chip world. The sourness is also minimal on these chips, which makes them feel more like an aged white cheddar chip than one that’s supposed to share the spotlight with the sour cream. 

In my previous ranking of Cape Cod chip flavors, I ranked this one quite highly. However, it doesn’t hold a candle to the more flavor-forward options on this list.

Great Value’s chips were some of the cheapest on this list. And to some degree, I do think you get what you pay for here. 

In terms of flavor, these chips were leaps and bounds above the premium-priced Cape Cod aged white cheddar chips. There was a cheddar-like flavor on the tongue, though I don’t think that Great Value put its whole body weight into it. The cheddar flavor was not inviting, nor did it prickle my taste buds as I snacked my way through it. It was just cheesy, but not really remarkable enough to make it stand out as a truly great potato chip. And, it was really only pronounced when you got a chip that was covered in cheese dust, which are few and far between. Another issue with these chips was that their sour cream flavor was absent. The bite was just stale cheese, with no sour cream to lighten the mouthfeel and help it live up to the promised flavor on the bag’s label.

Structurally speaking, these are good chips. The ridges would make it easy to hold a dip, while its thick consistency would prevent the chips from breaking as they transported the dip to your mouth. However, I did notice that these chips were mealy, rather than crispy and crunchy, which made eating them less satisfying than my top-ranked brands. If you stuffed them into a sandwich, I don’t think you’d notice their texture as much. But the brand’s poor texture is very evident when these chips are enjoyed solo. With some refinement, Great Value could have potential. But as it stands, it’s just a lackluster potato chip in a world of far tastier options.

You might be wondering why there are two Cape Cod potato chips on this list with nearly the same name. While the lower-ranked Cape Cod chips were made with aged white cheddar, this bag is made with white cheddar, which I personally think gives it a little more oomph. These chips also had a slightly saltier profile, which I thought made them more satisfying to eat than the other kettle chip offering. 

That being said, the cheese flavor here is not that bold, though it was comparatively bolder than the Great Value chips. It’s fresh and light on the tongue, though it’s overshadowed a bit by the oiliness of the chips. It also doesn’t last long enough to be memorable. I was also missing out on the sour cream here, which kind of pushed these chips into an ambiguous flavor territory. If Cape Cod marketed these chips as “possibly-cheese-but-we’re-not-even-entirely-sure chips,” it would have been a little bit more truthful and true to the flavor of these chips.

Another consideration that I made for these chips, and all of the other ruffled varieties, was their size. If you’re scooping a chip into a dip, you want it to be large enough where your fingers don’t get coated in the gooey spread. These chips were comparatively smaller and more broken than the higher-ranking chips, which would make dipping them difficult. And, I’ll venture to guess that no one is going to be eating their dip-covered potato chips with a fork and knife. 

If I can give you one piece of advice, it’s to let the fire engine red color of these Ruffles serve as a warning to your taste buds. If you don’t like spicy things, you’re going to want to skip over these. But, if you can tolerate a little bit of heat, these chips might be right up your alley. 

Ruffles set itself up for a challenge with these chips, as it had to nail the cheddar, the sour cream, and the hot. The brand was mildly successful, achieving two out of the three with ease. The heat was prickly and strong at first, but mellowed out on the tongue into a subtle and pleasant aftertaste. The cheddar was also holding the spice’s hand throughout the whole bite, and it was just as fresh and flavorful as with the original Ruffles chips. It’s a dry and explosive heat, and not one that would send my hand back into the bag for another bite. However, the sour cream element is where these chips really faltered. I expected that there would be a little bit of sourness here to help smooth out the mouthfeel and balance the heat, but there was no trace of it. 

Ultimately, I placed these chips third in this ranking because they didn’t have that addictive quality to them that my top two options had. While it was successful at incorporating warmth and heat, I would have rather the brand focused on balancing the cheddar and the sour cream before it went and added another flavor element to the equation. 

Going into this ranking, I knew that there was going to be some big competition between chip giants Ruffles and Lay’s. The former put up a valiant effort against the latter, but ultimately crumbled when it came to its overall flavor. 

I will say that the cheddar flavor on the Ruffles chips is more poignant than my top-ranked chip. You can see a darker-colored cheese dust on the chips, and its flavor is far bolder. But, like the lower-ranked chips on this list, the sour cream part of the equation got erased entirely. There’s nothing “sour” about these chips, which was disappointing. 

Structurally, though, Ruffles wins by a landslide. The ridged design of its chip, coupled with its thickness, makes it a better candidate for scooping into a dip, like this buffalo chicken one. I also found it had a stronger potato chip flavor than my top pick — which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If I had to pick one to serve with a dip, it would have to be these, based on their structural stability alone. However, since these are already a pre-flavored chip, I don’t think most people would be serving them with a dip, since it would be preferable to serve your dip with a more neutral and versatile flavor, like plain chips. If the sour cream flavor was more pronounced and as bold as the cheddar was, these Ruffles chips would have certainly fared better.

The best Lay’s potato chip flavor? Sour cream and onion — no contest. I knew going into this ranking that there would be no way I would be swayed about that. However, even I can admit that these cheddar and sour cream potato chips are good — and good enough to make me consider buying them for myself again. 

The chips embody the thinness and crispness that makes Lay’s one of the best potato chip brands out there. I could detect the same sour flavor in these chips as with the sour cream and onion ones, and I appreciate how Lay’s was able to get the balance of both flavors in every single bite — which none of the other brands on this list were able to do. The cheddar isn’t artisanal and mind-blowing in any way; it tastes like the cheese dust you’d lick off your fingers after eating a bag of nacho cheese Doritos or cheese puffs. But does the cheese flavor itself need to be “fresh” for this to be a good chip? Not at all. 

I liken a good potato chip to something you could put out for a game day spread or eat in your basement while playing video games and chugging Mtn Dew. These cheddar and sour cream chips have that addictive quality to them that makes you want to keep dipping your hand back in the bag for more. While I could say that this brand could use just a pinch more salt, it was otherwise just what I wanted from a solid cheddar and sour cream chip.

I consider myself to be a fan of potato chips, but I’m also not someone who eats them too often. Therefore, I felt I could be objective and put brand loyalties aside to rank these cheddar and sour cream chips from worst to best. I sampled all of these chips on the same day to ensure that I could compare and contrast them effectively. I also sampled them sans dip or accompaniments so that I could better assess their flavors and shortcomings.

The biggest factor in deciding this ranking was, of course, flavor. I wanted to see both the cheddar and the sour cream promised on the label. In other words, if the chips were served in an unlabeled bowl at a party, would someone be able to tell that they’re eating cheddar and sour cream chips? The brands also needed to have the textural and flavor qualities of a good potato chip as well, like a balanced level of salt, crispiness, and sturdiness that could support a hefty dip. Above all, these chips had to be satisfying and make me want to keep eating them — as my top-ranked brand did.