Ode to Dill Pickle Flavoured Snacks

 I think we could debate for days, weeks or even years about what the best flavour of potato chips might be. I’m standing firm in salt and vinegar world, but maybe you like barbecue more. Picking a “best” flavour for any snack is impossible, since we all have different tastes. I however want to suggest this question, and maybe even suggest an answer. The question is, what’s the surprisingly greatest flavour of potato chip? I’ll even go one step further and say that this flavour I’m thinking about is the surprisingly greatest flavour for just about any salty snack.

The flavour I’m talking about is dill pickle. Just to make this clear, it’s a flavour that objectively seems a little too weird to work, but surprisingly tastes really good. I also want to make it clear that I’m talking about dill pickle flavoured treats, and not just dill or creamy dill flavoured treats (not that those are bad either).

I don’t know when or where dill pickle flavoured salty snacks came to be, but my memory is of them being a popular flavour of potato chip in the early 80s in Canada. I remember talking to an American friend at the time who thought it was crazy to have a chip that tasted like dill pickle, so I feel like it was a Canadian thing before becoming an American thing, but I could be wrong. It didn’t take long for this flavour to really settle in my area either. It seems like it’s been a regular flavour of chip since it first came out.

The great thing is dill pickle as a flavour seems to have settled in other parts of the world too. With this flavour of potato chip becoming accepted, it also appears that the flavour has moved onto other salty snacks as well. I’ve seen dill pickle sunflower seeds, peanuts and even crackers. I’ve tasted dill pickle versions of many salty snacks and I have to say that for the most part this flavour has never failed. Sure there are better and worse dill pickle snacks, but I think it has more to do with the seasoning quality than the snack it’s paired up with.

There are only a few potato chip flavours that have really moved on successfully into the great snacking world, and dill pickle is one of them. Most of the other flavours have been around for such a long time, but dill pickle is comparatively the new kid on the block. However, what amazes me more is that there are still people out there afraid to try this flavour, or even some people that don’t know it exists. This is why dill pickle is surprisingly the best flavour of chips or any salty snack in the world (emphasis on the word surprisingly).

This then asks the question, would I want dill pickle to become as common as salt and vinegar or barbecue for salty snacks. Part of me enjoys the niche-ness of this treat, but most of me wants the whole world to truly understand how good this flavour can be. Sure there are going to be some people out there who just don’t like it, heck I’m not a huge barbecue fan. I just want everyone to have at least tried it once.