6 Kirkland Signature Snacks, Ranked

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My family and I recently became Costco members. We've been doing all the typical things that new members do: sampling the famous Costco hot dog, trying out some of the bakery items, comparing receipts to determine if Costco really is more affordable than regular grocery stores, and discovering new favorite Kirkland products. At times, I will admit that I have been negatively biased against store brand products, but I will admit freely that Kirkland buffs that perspective almost entirely.

Across Costco, you'll find Kirkland brand products in almost every aisle. And when it comes to food, the private label is everywhere. In the snack food category, Kirkland has many options. To get the best sampling possible, I selected options that had an abundance of positive reviews on the Costco app. From there, my family and I sampled these over the course of a week. After our initial sampling, I let our ranking rest to determine which snacks we would be drawn to over the course of the next few days. I must admit that the listing did shift over the course of a week based on the snacks we went back to over and over again, but as the week progressed, I also found that each one of these snacks had their place. That is to say, although I've listed them from least to most favorite, no single one of these snacks is a disappointment.

Snacks serve all kinds of purposes. Sometimes, you need a treat that's poppable, making it easy to eat piece after piece while watching that binge worthy show. In other moments, you might be looking for a snack you can put in the middle of a game night table to share with friends. It should be tasty, but not the type of snack that you scarf one after another. The peanut butter pretzel nuggets are the ideal snack for this scenario.

Like other pretzels, they are quite dry, and the peanut butter is a small little dollop inside the pretzel puff. Kirkland notes on the package that the peanut butter is Valencia variety. Valencia peanuts are sweeter, so this tends to be the variety of peanuts natural peanut butter producers use.

You'll certainly want to have a drink on hand to enjoy these with. They make an enjoyable pairing with a pint with friends or during that weekly D&D campaign. They ranked in last place because they were just so very dry. These pretzels certainly have their place, but other snacks I tried were just more enjoyable. I should note, however, that this does not make them bad by any means; rather, I liked others more.

My first introduction to pralines was through ice cream. Growing up, my favorite butter pecan variety had praline within, and I loved those little crunchy bites. During the winter season, sometimes my family makes candied pecans, covered in cinnamon and sugar. These pecans remind me of the homemade ones I've made, but with less flavor. Kirkland's Praline Pecans are halved pecans covered in a slightly sweet coating. While tasty, they weren't quite what I expected them to be.

Rather than being super sweet with a touch of cinnamon, these were only marginally sweet in flavor. Looking at the bites, they appear thoroughly glazed over and sugary, and I can imagine them being great crunched up on ice cream, but as little poppable snacks, they didn't quite do the trick. For that, I needed a little more flavor. They were more enjoyable to eat than the peanut butter bites, but needed an extra something to bring them up, perhaps cinnamon or other warming spices. Though I've ranked them low overall, that doesn't make them disappointing. If you have eaten and enjoyed sugared pecans in the past, these will be enjoyable.

Of any Kirkland snacks I tried, the butter toffee cashews were strongest in smell. As soon as I opened the bag, I got something of a fruity scent. Before long, it became more clearly a vanilla or buttery scent. First brush of any snack, this was my favorite tasting one. There's an enjoyable crunch and sweet flavor, but I pulled this one from the top of my rating because as the week went on, I found that I didn't reach for them often enough to earn a top spot.

Truth be told, although the flavor here is great, they just don't fit the mold of being a super enjoyable snack. The flavor is perfectly sweet, but it just didn't pull me back in the way that other snacks did. Like the pralines, it would be an enjoyable topping, or even as an ingredient as part of a larger snack mix, but as a standalone snack, maybe not. Add some salty mix-ins though, and I can imagine these being a fantastic pairing.

My husband's favorite snack of the group was the sweet heat snack mix. This is a combination of some seasoned almonds and cashews, honey-roasted sesame seeds, glazed pecans with a savory twist, BBQ almonds, and corn nuggets. For snack mix lovers, it looks like the perfect, slightly smoky combo. And, for some, like my husband, it is. As I write this, the bag is nearly empty. In any case, I didn't enjoy these as much. I found the smokey flavor to be a little too much, but I'm very sensitive to this type of flavor.

The mix is ranked so high overall because it was such a favorite and returned to over and over by some in my family. I know many more people would enjoy it more than I did, and it didn't seem right to rank the mix so low based only on my distaste for smokey things.

To make sure that the snack mixture I sampled wasn't too nut-heavy, I wanted to get some chips or a more typical crunchy snack in the ranking. To this end, I chose chips and guacamole. While I am reviewing these items together, you'll need to purchase them separately. I initially sent searching for salsas for the chips, and while Costco does sell salsa, it isn't Kirkland brand, so I found guacamole (that is Kirkland brand) to include, instead.

Kirkland's organic tortilla chips are restaurant-style with a blend of white and yellow corn. Like the kind of chips you get in your town's favorite Mexican restaurant, they are large and offer a nice crunch with a generous salting. I was impressed by the thickness and strength of the chip, ideal for using with heavier salsas or guacamole. Lovers of clean ingredients will especially like these chips as there's only organic corn, vegetable oil, and sea salt amongst them. You couldn't do better than that mix, even if you made them at home.

One of my favorite parts about shopping at Costco is that items with several servings are often packaged with their own labeling. The guacamole, for instance, comes in smaller cups, each with its own ingredients and nutrition listed. Like the chips, the ingredients are simple, and there's nothing unexpected in the mix. The helping in each cup is substantial, and as I reached for this duo over and over throughout the week, I always felt satisfied after one little cup.

Okay, I know. Dried fruit at the top of the list? But you've got to trust me on this. If you haven't tried the dried mangoes from Costco, you're missing out. Think fruit leather, but with a deeper bite. It's the grown-up version of the fruit by the foot I enjoyed as a kid.

These are generously sliced mangoes with a little sugar and citric acid, and as dried fruit, I was expecting that they would be super hard, like dried apples or bananas I've had, but they're not. Instead, they have a nice bite that feels substantial but not tough to enjoy. After the initial tasting, per the instructions, I put the bag in the refrigerator, and I found myself going back to them over and over throughout the week. It's the ideal balance of flavor and texture that makes a great snack.

I did this tasting over the course of a week that my family and I spent at my parents' house. I chose which snacks we would sample based on the popularity of the snacks on the Costco app. I picked up the snacks early in the week, we all sampled them, and put them in order according to which we enjoyed most. Then, throughout the week, I took note of which snacks my family and I kept reaching for. I found that although we thought certain snacks more enjoyable initially than others, there were others we just kept going back for, and I adjusted the ranking based on these snacking preferences.

If you're not a member of Costco (or live in one of the three U.S. states that still don't have a Costco), and some of these snacks looked appealing, you may be interested to know that you can find Kirkland-brand products at other stores. Amazon, for one, has the peanut butter pretzels and even the sweet heat snack mix. Alternatively, you could look into ways to buy Costco groceries without a membership, like purchasing on the Costco website, for instance.