Why One Aldi Dip Totally Flopped In Our Taste Test

For the seasoned snacker, Aldi is a veritable paradise. There are a ton of hidden gems at the low-cost supermarket, including award-winning items like Savoritz' Parmesan Cheese Crisps, Kirkwood's Crispy Chicken Nuggets, and Clancy's Sea Salt Pita Chips. Even better, there are literally dozens of different dips to enjoy them with, giving you an endless number of combinations to experiment with. There is, however, one dip in particular that you're probably better off avoiding on your next snacking spree.

In Mashed's taste test of 14 different Aldi dips, Park Street Deli's Truffle Dip was the worst by far. On paper, it looks like a good time: the dip is a blend of cream cheese, sour cream, parmesan cheese, and truffle oil, with lemon juice, garlic, and black pepper for balance. At just around $3 for a seven-ounce tub, it's also a really cheap way to add a layer of luxury to your snacks, with the truffle oil adding earthy complexity to the mix.

Unfortunately, there's such a thing as being too earthy, and the Aldi truffle dip was the definition of it. Our taste tester found the truffle element "excessively mushroomy", taking away any comfort and coziness you might be looking for in a dip's flavor profile. Those who want their snacks on the extreme end of flavor might still appreciate it, but it'll probably be on the back end of most people's dip rotation.

The fact that Park Street used truffle oil may have doomed the dip from the start. Truffle oil is an extremely polarizing ingredient — it's one of the food trends Gordon Ramsay hated the most — and using it to flavor a dip won't actually give it the subtleties that give truffles their luxurious flavor profile. Most of the "flavor" you get comes from an ingredient most folks are surprised to find inside truffle oil: 2,4-dithiapentane. While you may not know it the name, you will definitely recognize the chemical compound's unmistakeable aroma. Truffle oil smells strongly of truffles, but doesn't taste like them, so what you end up with is a dip that only pretends to have this distinct flavor.

At the same time, according to Chef Ken Frank of La Toque, the compound gives truffle oil a one-dimensional, overpowering presence because it's much more concentrated in the oil than what you might get from a real truffle (via Napa Truffle Festival). Aldi's truffle dip tastes too earthy to enjoy because there's most likely an excessive amount of truffle oil in its recipe.

This makes Park Street Deli's Truffle Dip the absolute worst option you can buy at Aldi, since the point of a dip is to enhance a snack's flavors rather than completely dominate it. It might not count among the biggest Aldi failures of all time, but it definitely fails in giving your chips an upscale flavor boost. If you're looking for something bougie but better, go with Aldi's Roasted Red Pepper Goat Cheese Dip instead. It ranked 4th out of 14 total in our taste test, and brings the elegant harmony of flavors that the Truffle Dip completely flopped on.