These Crunchy Chips Will Blow Your Mind

Popadelics Crunchy Mushroom Chips are the are part of a rising trend of groundbreaking snacks that are going to give potato chips some stiff competition. Here’s why you need to check them out.

Turning ewww into mmmm

For many, mushrooms are the ultimate not-going-there food. They’re sponge-like, they’re slimy, the fungi haters say. But hang on a sec.

Fun-Gal Snacks co-founder Marilyn Yang is aiming to change that perception. “So many kids were introduced to mushrooms sliced raw in salads. We’ve done tastings where you see people mentally preparing to hate the mushroom chips, thinking it’s going to be chewy. Their eyes widen and they say something like these are like pretzels.”

In other words, minds are blown.

It certainly helps when there’s a little peer pressure involved. Yang recalled doing an in-store demo when a bunch of girlfriends convinced their mushroom-hating pal to give Popadelics a try. “She was the one who ended up buying a bunch,” Yang said in a recent phone interview.

While the snack aisle is typically devoted to potato and corn tortilla chips, Yang said the market is starting to see a shift towards consumers longing to try something new and different.

That’s the mission of Popadelics, which promises to deliver Trippin’ Flavor and Killer Crunch.

The product is made in a special vacuum fryer at a facility in Chicago. “It’s a giant cylindrical chamber that allows foods to be cooked at a lower temperature. That means we use less oil,” Yang explained.

Before hitting the market, the team tested various flavors and came up with some memorable combinations:

• Rad Rosemary + Salt
• Twisted Thai Chili
• Trippin’ Truffle Parm

How do they taste?

True confession, I’m a sucker for salty snacks. When I worked at Allrecipes, I orchestrated a massive potato chip throwdown during which our tasting panel named Rusty’s top dog. Also, an early adopter/fan of the once obscure, now snack food juggernaut known as Dot’s Pretzels.

So, when I stumbled onto these Popadelics mushroom chips, getting on board was a no-brainer. They are, as hyped, crunchy and intensely flavorful. Plus, they’re even kinda good for you. OK, not like eating an apple-a-day, but still: 6 grams of fiber, 3 grams of protein, 2 grams of sugar per serving, as well as 9 grams of fat, 21 grams total carbs and 330 milligrams of sodium. As the eye-popping packaging points out, these ‘shrooms are also gluten-free, vegan and made with non-GMO ingredients. Cool.

In my personal experience tasting of these chips, I felt like they took the edge off my hunger pangs more effectively than a fistful of potato chips. They were especially satisfying during a recent hike in Sedona and have joined my lineup of go-to snack faves. (Along with an incredible oyster mushroom jerky from Canyon Creek Mushrooms, which I discovered at the Saturday farmers market in Palm Springs. )

Are these the only mushroom snacks on the market? Far from it. A search on Amazon yielded more than 2,000 items. Let the mushroom snack revolution begin!

Final twist

Mushrooms have been in the news a lot in recent years, starting with Michael Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind best seller and continuing with ongoing moves to legalize psychedelics for treatment of various medical conditions.

Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research has been a leader in these efforts and Fun-Gal Snacks Foundation has made a commitment to use a portion of the proceeds from Popadelic sales to support those initiatives.

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