Swap Out Croutons On Your Next Salad With A Crunchy, Salty Snack

From DIY Italian summer salads to a bagged Caesar salad, there's no doubt that croutons and the crunch they provide are a staple of the salad world. Just by demonstrating that crunchy and starchy foods pair well mixed into a salad, croutons open up a world of possibility for other ingredients. So if you've been down the crouton road many a-time and want a different salty addition to your salads, try adding crushed chips.

Crushed chips of many kinds work well incorporated within salads to provide a more nuanced textural composition than salad or produce alone usually provides. While croutons can range anywhere from hard as a rock to crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, chips are a thinner, more guaranteed crunch without the hassle of occasionally facing an impossible-to-chew cube of bread. Plus, with dozens of flavors of chips, as well as countless kinds made from different starches, roots, and grains, the possibilities of this upgrade are as vast as your imagination, or at least the chip aisle at your local grocery store, allows.

The chip-crouton salad swap is tremendously easy, thanks in no small part to the fact that many people already have a bag of potato or tortilla chips in their pantry. Caesar salad is the perfect salad with which to start; try adding a cup or two of crushed potato chips (you can crush them as fine or large as you prefer) to this Tasting Table Caesar salad recipe. Or try potato chips crushed up with some kale and alliums for a zesty, robust salad.

But plain potato chips are far from the only chips that will work for a crouton swap. With this combo, also feel free to stray away from a traditional Caesar salad. Tasting Table's recipe for an everyday lemon-based salad is built with customization in mind and would benefit from sweet onion chips, or maybe barbecue, and jalapeño-flavored chips as well. If you want to veer away from the standard potato, chips made from sweet potatoes or plantains can add a crunchy texture boost to any salad bowl. Even tortilla chips, plain, salted, lime-dusted, or otherwise, can take an otherwise banal salad to newfound heights. Still need a little inspiration? This Tasting Table taste-test provides some opinions on the best chip brands to kick-start your crouton swap.