Review: Gluten-Free Chips and Salsa

It’s pretty easy to find salsa and tortilla chips that are made without gluten-free ingredients. However, if you’re looking for either item with the words gluten-free on the label, you might pay a hefty price for them. Most tortilla chips are made from corn and are gluten-free, but many popular brands are not labeled as such. Some brands are made without gluten ingredients, though due to the manufacturing process, many companies won’t state the item is gluten-free. Many mainstream brands of salsas are gluten-free, but again, they are not all labeled that way.

Enter Drew’s Salsa and Green Mountain Gringo Tortilla Chips. While shopping at my local health food store recently, I found both items and noticed that both were labeled gluten-free. I’ve been using some of the gluten-free dressings from Drew’s for years, but they would not say their salsas were gluten-free when I inquired quite a while back. The Double Fire Roasted Salsa from Drew’s is not only gluten-free and delicious, it’s made with 100% organic ingredients.

Green Mountain Gringo chips are certified by the Gluten-Free Certification Organization (a GIG program) and the bag bears the GFCO symbol. The chips have a wonderful rectangle shape, making them the perfect chip for salsas and dips. The taste of the chips is pretty much like most any really good corn chip. They have a great texture that offers a perfect crunch. I’m a salt addict and there is plenty of salt on these chips for me. People that don’t like salty chips would probably not enjoy these. Until I looked the website up, I had no idea the company also makes several salsas – and all of them are gluten-free as well.

From the Green Mountain Gringo website:

ALL OF OUR PRODUCTS ARE: All Natural, No Preservatives or artificial colors or flavors. gluten-free, Cholesterol Free, No GMO’s (Genetically modified produce).

The salsa from Drew’s contains organic tomatoes, peppers, onions, spices, cider vinegar, water, garlic, herbs, sea salt and black pepper. It’s all real food and all the flavors meld perfectly to offer the finest tasting salsa I’ve had from a jar. Because I don’t like any chunks of anything in my salsa, I actually use a small food processor to puree the whole jar so it’s just the way I like it when I have a hankering for chips and salsa. Most people would not consider the Drew’s salsa I bought to be “chunky”, but unless it’s pulverized, it’s chunky to me.

It’s not that difficult to make home made salsa and it would be rare to find a recipe for it that calls for gluten ingredients. If you need to make a lot of salsa for a party, it would be more cost effective to make it from scratch than to buy several jars of it. In our case, it’s very cost effective to buy ready made salsa because we don’t go through it that fast. It’s great to be able to find more and more gluten-free labeled items that don’t cost a fortune these days. Here’s to hoping this wonderful trend continues!