Red Monday Julio’s Chips

Julio’s Chips:
The first, should be an obvious connection, the only place I’ve found these chips are south of Interstate 10. El Paso, San Antonio, don’t know about other places. This image is from last summer’s sojourn into the twilight of the American West, and points along the Texas Frontier.

Julio’s Chips are from Del Rio, TX. The bag now says “Del Rio, San Angelo” (both in Texas). That image was the factory outlet, or something. It was good. Very good. Still have half a bag leftover from the holiday. Xmas Tamales from Eddie’s and Julio’s Chips with Kay-Sew. (Queso: Velveeta and meat products, peppers and so forth), your mileage may vary. Gray sky, suicide weather, warm but not hot, spicy but not too spicy. Red trim, red letters. Seriously good chips.

“All natural ingredients.”

There’s a certain smell, an aroma, and I’ve quizzed real cooks, it’s some combination of a slightly more coarse grind to the corn meal, the lime, and the other seasonings, of which the label lists precious few. It’s hard to wax poetic about a simple corn chip, but this is like the old-school Frito-Lay chips. Smell is similar, that corn-chip, corn chip smell.

The chips are dusted with with an alarming amount of salt, which, I’m sure, isn’t good for cardiac health, nor is the grease the chips were fried in, but the dusting includes some kind of peppers, and the label does include paprika.

C’mon, every Tex-Mex palace has a source of chips, and those chips are served by the scoop and bucket-full. It’s just the Julio’s, in part for the limited dispersal, and in part, for its full-flavor.

Nor to nitpick but I will. There isn’t a cactus like the image, not in that part of Texas. Nor, really, in any part of Texas, not native.

As the best of the “mexican” cooks explained to me, “It’s the lime.”

Doesn’t make the chips any less than wonderful.