If you're looking for tortilla chips made with coconut oil, you've probably already discovered something strange.
There aren't that many of them.
Most conventional tortilla chips use canola, soybean, sunflower, corn, or another vegetable oil. And among newer seed oil free brands, avocado oil has become much more common than coconut oil.
But coconut oil tortilla chips do exist.
It's also the oil we chose when we created FIXD.
What are coconut oil tortilla chips?
Exactly what they sound like: tortilla chips that use coconut oil as their cooking oil instead of the vegetable or seed oils found in many conventional chips.
A basic version can be very simple.
Corn. Coconut oil. Salt.
Flavored versions naturally add seasoning, but the important part for somebody specifically looking for coconut oil tortilla chips is that the primary cooking oil is coconut oil.
Are tortilla chips made with coconut oil seed oil free?
Coconut oil itself is not considered a seed oil in the way people commonly use that term.
So a tortilla chip fried only in coconut oil can be seed oil free.
But there's an important catch with flavored chips.
The primary cooking oil isn't necessarily the only place an oil can appear.
A seasoning blend can contain additional ingredients, including oils or carriers. If you're specifically avoiding seed oils, read the entire ingredient panel instead of stopping as soon as you see "coconut oil."
We have a more complete guide on how to find tortilla chips without seed oils if you want to know what to look for.
Why does FIXD use coconut oil?
When we started building FIXD, we knew we didn't want to use the seed oils common in the conventional chip aisle.
But the oil wasn't the whole product brief.
The chip still had to be good.
Really good.
We weren't interested in making something we'd reluctantly choose because we approved of the ingredient panel.
We wanted the crunch, texture, and flavor to stand on their own.
Coconut oil gave us the product we wanted while letting us make FIXD tortilla chips without seed oils.
That's why both Simply Salted and Tangy Tortilla use coconut oil.
Do coconut oil tortilla chips taste like coconut?
Not necessarily.
The final taste depends on the oil used, how the chip is made, the corn, salt level, and whatever seasoning is added.
A tortilla chip made with coconut oil doesn't automatically taste like somebody sprinkled shredded coconut over your salsa.
With FIXD, we wanted the corn and seasoning to be the things you noticed.
Simply Salted should taste like a really good tortilla chip.
Tangy Tortilla should taste bold and tangy.
The cooking oil is part of how the chip is made, not the flavor we're trying to advertise to your tongue.
What brands make tortilla chips with coconut oil?
The category is still fairly small.
FIXD uses coconut oil for both Simply Salted and Tangy Tortilla.
Gilly Loco is another current option. Its yellow and blue corn tortilla chips are also cooked in coconut oil and lean toward a thin, crispy restaurant-style chip.
There are far more tortilla-chip options made with avocado oil than coconut oil, which is why coconut oil is useful as a more specific search when that's what you actually want.
For a broader comparison, see our guide to the best seed oil free tortilla chips.
Coconut oil vs. avocado oil tortilla chips
Both show up in the seed oil free chip category.
Avocado oil is currently used by several large better-ingredient snack brands, including Siete and Zack's Mighty.
Coconut oil is less common in tortilla chips. FIXD and Gilly Loco are two examples.
From a shopping standpoint, the biggest thing is simply knowing which one you prefer and checking the package.
A front label that says "seed oil free" doesn't tell you whether the chip uses coconut oil, avocado oil, olive oil, or an animal fat.
The ingredient panel will.
Coconut oil vs. beef tallow tortilla chips
Beef tallow is another option that has become much more visible.
MASA, for example, makes corn tortilla chips cooked in beef tallow.
That's a fundamentally different choice from a coconut-oil chip.
Some people specifically want animal fat. Others want a plant-based product.
If vegetarian ingredients matter to you, that's an obvious reason to choose coconut or avocado oil instead.
If what matters most is simply avoiding seed oils, all of these approaches can potentially fit that preference.
Are coconut oil tortilla chips gluten free?
Coconut oil doesn't contain gluten, but that doesn't automatically make the entire chip gluten free.
Those are separate questions.
You still need to consider the chip base, seasoning, labeling, and manufacturing practices.
Traditional corn tortilla chips can often be gluten free because corn itself is naturally gluten free, but you shouldn't assume that every bag is.
FIXD tortilla chips are gluten free.
If gluten is one of the reasons you're researching tortilla chips, read our guide to whether tortilla chips are gluten free.
What should you look for on the ingredient list?
Start with the oil.
If you specifically want coconut oil, it should be clearly listed in the ingredients.
Then keep reading.
With a plain salted tortilla chip, the ingredient panel may be extremely short.
With a flavored tortilla chip, check the seasoning too.
Also don't assume other claims mean the same thing.
Gluten free doesn't mean seed oil free.
Organic doesn't mean coconut oil.
Non-GMO doesn't tell you what cooking oil was used.
Each claim answers a different question.
Are coconut oil chips better than regular tortilla chips?
"Better" depends on what you're actually trying to buy.
If your goal is specifically to find tortilla chips without seed oils, coconut oil gives you one way to do that.
If you don't care what oil your chips are cooked in, the distinction may not matter to you at all.
We'd rather be straightforward about that than pretend a bag of tortilla chips becomes a superfood because we changed the fryer oil.
What mattered to us was making the ingredient choices we wanted without giving ourselves permission to make a worse-tasting chip.
What about flavored coconut oil tortilla chips?
This is where we think things get more interesting.
A lot of the seed oil free market is built around simple sea salt chips.
That's great if you want a dipping chip.
But sometimes you don't want guacamole.
Sometimes you want the bag itself to be the snack.
That's why Tangy Tortilla exists.
It uses the same coconut-oil approach as Simply Salted but goes much harder on flavor.
If you're specifically trying to replace the experience of conventional heavily seasoned chips, you might also like our guide to Doritos alternatives without seed oils.
The bottom line
Tortilla chips made with coconut oil are still a relatively small part of the chip aisle.
If that's what you're looking for, turn the bag around and verify the ingredient list rather than relying on generic front-of-package claims.
Check the primary cooking oil.
If it's flavored, check the seasoning too.
Then separately verify gluten, allergens, or anything else that's important to you.
We chose coconut oil because it let us make the kind of tortilla chip we wanted to bring home.
But the oil was only half the assignment.
The other half was making sure the bag was dangerously easy to finish.
Try FIXD Tortilla Chips Made With Coconut Oil
Good ingredients. Bad self-control.