Terra Chips

Terra Chips sound exactly like a product I'd love.  I've been on a ridiculous chips craving fest for ... a year?  I don't even know how long.  Somehow, mid-pandemic, chips just became a staple of my life.  I eat them every day.  

"For over two decades, TERRA® chips has had a passion for creating top quality, delicious chips. 

Our chips are made from real whole vegetables. We source a diverse range of root vegetables to create each delicious TERRA® blend."

And Terra Chips makes more unique chips, not standard potato based, but rather, all sorts of root veggies.  They were certainly the first of their kind in most markets.  While my potato chip love is a bit newfound, I've adored taro, yucca, plantain, etc chips for years, so, again, these sound like something I'd love.

And yet ... I don't.  I never did.  I've tried them so many times, but somehow, they just always greatly disappoint. 

Exotic Chips

The main product line by Terra is their "exotic" chips, available in several blends, from their signature original mix (also available with Mediterranean spices), to several potato only blends (Terra Blues, Exotic Potato, or Heritage Blend), to other colorful collections like the stunning Stripes and Blues.

Original Terra Chips.

The original variety of Terra Chips, aptly named "original", is the most complex: it contains 6 types of chips!  Luckily, it came with a guide on the back as to what they all were.

The lineup?  Yuca, Taro, Sweet Potato, Batata, Parsnip, and "Ruby Dipped Vegetables".

I was most excited for the first two, obviously, as I adore both taro and yuca.

Distribution of Chips :(
Parsnip / Ruby Dipped Vegetables / Sweet Potato / Batata / Taro / Yuca (clockwise from top L)

I of course wanted to identify them all, and taste individually.  So I sorted them, and to my dismay, I found they were not very equally distributed in the bag.  At all.  And the ones I was most excited for?  Yeah.  2 tiny fragments each.

My disappointment continued as I tasted them all.  These are very greasy style chips.  They were crispy at least, but oh so greasy.  In not a pleasant way.

Parsnip
"A member of the same family as carrots, fennel, parsley, celery, celeriac and chervil."

I actually had only one of these (the other that I thought was parsnip was thin batata).  It was slightly sweet and almost soft it was so greasy.  I think this could be good, but, the one I had wasn't.

Ruby Dipped Vegetables
"Perhaps the most dramatic, these TERRA ®Chips are kissed with beet juice, resulting in their distinctive autumn red color."

The majority of the bag was ruby dipped.

Interestingly, most of the ruby dipped ones were taro, with a few that I think were just sweet potato.  There didn't seem to be any others represented.  They didn't really taste of beet, but they had some kind of different flavor, sorta.  Again so greasy.  The ruby coating definitely masked the taro flavor, which made me sad.

Sweet Potato
"Sweet potato, a root vegetable often called a yam, is not really a yam at all, but rather a distinct variety of the Ipomea Batata family. Cultivated for thousands of years in the Western Hemisphere, sweet potatoes have become an important part of traditional American cuisine."

Boring, greasy, just a potato chip.

Batata / (Boniato or Cuban Sweet Potato) 
"Light brown in color, yet darker than the Yuca. Batata has been savored in the Caribbean for centuries."

Boring, greasy, just a potato chip.

Taro (also known as Malanga and Dasheen)
"The white chip with the characteristic purplish-brown lines."

These were the ones I was most looking forward to.  They were ... fine.  Pretty greasy.  Slight taro flavor.  Mostly just tasted grease, not lovely taro.  Not high up there in the taro chips I've had, but not *bad* exactly.

Yuca / (Cassava)
"The lightest of color of the TERRA® Chips, pale yellow-white."

Definitely the best.  Super crispy.  Wish I had more than 2 fragments!

Of this assortment, the only ones I liked were yuca, and I was quite displeased with the distribution of chips.

Original: Bag #2.

A few days later, I opened another bag.

The difference in the distribution was shocking.  This one was considerably more balanced.

However, the chips still were ... eh.  I was glad to have nearly full size taro and yucca this time, but, they were still just so greasy.  

I would not get any of these again.

*+.

Sweet Potato

Although sweet potatoes are featured in some of the exotic chip blends, Terra also has an entire product range devoted to sweet potato chips, some are just a subset of the ones from the exotic mixes, like "Sweets & Beets", "Sweets & Blues", or "Red, White, & Blues" (yukon gold, sweet, and blue potatoes), all of which use the thin, crispy style of sweet potato chip found in the exotic mix.  But others add in a waved ruffled version, slightly thicker. Available plain, with sea salt, barbecued, or mixed with carrot chips.  A bunch of other varities of the thin ones are also available, chipotle, mixed with apples, etc, etc. 

I tried just the ruffled sweets, salted to get a sense if I'd like the different style perhaps, given I wasn't into the ones in the mix.

Sweet Potato with Sea Salt.

"Sweet potato, a root vegetable often called a yam, is not really a yam at all, but rather a distinct variety of the Ipomea Batata family. Cultivated for thousands of years in the Western Hemisphere, sweet potatoes have become an important part of traditional American cuisine."

They *did* look entirely different.

Larger, thicker, wavy.  Not nearly as greasy.

But ... still just sweet potato chips, not really my thing, besides crunching up and throwing on top of salad or something.

Meh. **+.