This post is sponsored by Food Should Taste Good™ , but all opinions are honest and my own. Read my full disclosure policy here.
Shake up your Memorial Day party and summertime entertaining plans by hosting a chips and salsa and beer tasting party, featuring Food Should Taste Good™ Tortilla Chips and your favorite dips and brews.
Summer cookouts are great. But do you ever feel like you’re in a rut, serving up the same grilled meats and sides year after year?
The next time you’re hosting a summertime shindig, make it a chips and salsa and beer tasting party. Your guests will have plenty to snack and sip on, and you won’t spend the whole party sweating behind the grill.
The setup is simple.
Step 1: Start With Your Favorite Tortilla Chips
For our party, we served six different varieties of Food Should Taste Good Tortilla Chips: Blue Corn, Multigrain, Jalapeño, Cheddar, Guacamole and Pinto Bean Multigrain Chips.
We like Food Should Taste Good Tortilla Chips because there’s a flavor everyone loves. The chips are certified Kosher, certified gluten-free, and made from real, wholesome simple ingredients. They’re also thicker chips, which makes them the perfect salsa delivery vehicle!
Especially when you’re dealing with thicker salsas, like corn, pineapple mango or my homemade calabacitas salsa.
Step 2: Choose Your Salsa Lineup
We chose to serve six different varieties of salsa, and not just your basic tomato varieties.
We offered fresh mango peach salsa, corn salsa, thick and chunky salsa, fresh pineapple and mango salsa and cantina-style salsa from our favorite local food truck.
You can find lots of great salsas at the grocery store, especially the fresh varieties in the produce section. I also recommend checking out the farmer’s market, local restaurants and food trucks for interesting flavor combinations.
If you have time, you can make your own.
Food Should Taste Good has some terrific recipes for avocado salsa, Mexican street corn dip, red pepper pico de gallo, Mediteterranean salsa, blood orange salsa, avocado chipotle salsa, blueberry salsa and more.
Step 3: Choose Your Brews
Enlist your party guests’ help with this step by asking everyone to bring their favorite beer or hard cider.
Then, instead of grabbing a bottle, serve them flight style in tasting glasses.
When designing a beer flight, start with the lightest beers first, that is those with the lowest alcohol content. As you progress up the flight, beers should have a higher alcohol and hops content.
Finish with the most intensely flavored beers.
Step 4: Get Your Snack On
Now comes the fun part — tasting and ranking all those chips and salsa and beer combinations.
You’ll be surprised by how the different salsas enhance the flavors of the Food Should Taste Good Tortilla Chips.
In lieu of lunch, my husband and I tried all 36 different combos, and we picked our favorites.
We kept track on this free chips and salsa pairings worksheet. You can download a blank copy here.
Here are our favorite combos:
Multigrain Tortilla Chips: pineapple mango salsa, roasted verde salsa and mango pineapple salsa
Guacamole Tortilla Chips: cantina-style salsa; thick and chunky salsa
Pinto Bean Multigrain Chips: roasted verde salsa, cantina-style salsa and corn salsa
Jalapeño Tortilla Chips: corn salsa and roasted verde salsa
Cheddar Tortilla Chips: thick and chunky salsa and cantina-style salsa
Blue Corn Tortilla Chips: pineapple mango salsa, thick and chunky salsa and mango peach salsa
We didn’t do a beer pairing with every tortilla chips and salsa combo because that would have been a lot of beer to drink in one sitting!
But I did want to share three favorites from the sampling that are widely available. One of these should please your palate.
If you’re looking for a light, refreshing beer to pair with your chips and salsa, I recommend Angry Orchard or another hard cider. The sweet and tart flavors won’t compete with the more flavorful or spicy salsas.
If you’re craving slightly more hops, then you may want to try Dos Equis Azul, a spiced lager blended with blue agave. It was really good with the fruity salsas.
And finally, we recommend Guinness Draught, especially with the tomato salsas. The beer really helps tone down the acidity of the tomatoes, and it was especially good paired with the slightly nutty Multigrain Tortilla Chips.
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