Top 8: The best shop-bought chips to cook in your air fryer or oven

Add cooked chips to a stir fry before serving, coating them in the sauce. And, of course, a curry sauce is delicious with chips. Add a fried egg on top to add more nourishment. Chop up chips and add to soup to add substance or an omelette before serving.

Chips supply a mere 2% protein, the majority going to carbs 23-35% and fats 2-5%. It’s best to consider them a treat to enjoy once a week or fortnight.

Chips are suitable for vegans when they have just potatoes and oil, and our tasters liked them best like this.

For a full-bodied flavour, sprinkle with paprika, garlic salt, and harissa before cooking, and serve with mayo spiked with chutney

Strong Roots Proper Chips 650g €3.99

Maris Piper potatoes (97%) are used for these chunky chips with just 3% sunflower oil. There’s enough flavour and good texture to make this our top scorer. We also tasted the brand’s skinny and delicious sweet potato fries (500g €4) made with 86% sweet potato, starches and flours in the coating.

Score: 9.5

Tesco Salt & Pepper Ridge chips 750g €1.95

Potato 87% means the remaining 13% comprises rapeseed oil, maize flour, modified potato starch, rice flour, maize starch, sea salt, black pepper, paprika and turmeric. The combination worked for tasters who liked the shape and crispness without oiliness. A suggestion was to serve at parties - good to hand around with drinks, like crisps. The children didn’t particularly like the pepperiness of the flavouring.

Score: 8.5

Aunt Bessie’s Skin On Homestyle 800g €4.50

Tasters liked these chips with an extra bite from the skin that wasn’t too thick and crisped up nicely. Potatoes (93%) are pre-cooked in sunflower oil, with a coating of rice flour, dextrin, potato starch, caramel colour, turmeric powder, and paprika flavouring. Liked by tasters.

Score: 8.5

Lidl Harvest Basket Beef Dripping chips 650g €1.99

Ingredients are 90% potatoes, 4% beef dripping, 3.5% sunflower oil, rice flour, dextrins, salt spices, and dextrose. Fluffy inside was the outstanding feature of these chunky chips. We expected them to be more crisp on the outside, given that they were triple-cooked in beef dripping, which usually guarantees a crisp finish — still, a good chip.

Score: 8

Unislim Gorge Us! Rustic Cut chips 1kg €4.69

‘Rustic Cut’ suggested skins, but none were found in this quite chunky chip made from 96% potatoes and 4% sunflower oil. There was 1% more oil than in other samples, which helped them crisp up nicely, and they had a good, clean taste. As we might expect, there is no magic slimming bullet but a note for dieters about quantities.

Score: 9

McCain Naked Oven chips 1.7kg €5.27

We liked these minimalist straight-cut chips – 97% potatoes and 3% sunflower oil, with air fryer instructions included. Medium thick, the inside was nicely fluffy and the outside crisp — a regular chip.

Score: 8.5

Aldi Four Seasons Crinkle Cut chips 1.5kg €2.09

The simplicity of potato 96% with sunflower oil works well with no extra flavours. Medium thickness, they crisp up quite nicely and are good value.

Score: 8.5

Green Isle Rustic chips 750g €4

These were as we expected rustic chips to be — with skins on. Quite thin, they crisped up quite well with potato 87%, sunflower oil 5%, the rest a coating designed to cling to the smooth surface of the chip — potato starch, rice flour, salt, dextrin, and surprisingly raising agents sodium bicarbonate and disodium diphosphate and the thickener xanthan gum. Dextrose, spice extract and turmeric also liven the taste a little. Not a top choice of tasters.

Score: 7.5