Proper Chips Ghost Chilli & Yuzu Chickpea Chips

We all know that the Chef prefers potato crisps to corn chips or other crispy snacks, but have we before encountered the Chef’s younger brother who really really prefers potato crisps to any other style of snack? I asked him to attempt these New! chickpea chips, and I gather (I wasn’t there) he was not impressed.

Apparently they don’t taste of anything, they are too hot for his taste, too citrusy and he didn’t like the texture. I am not sure that he entered into the spirit of reluctant taste testing.

Cliffs of Moher taste tester came for dinner and found them weird.

And what do I think? Well, the texture is a surprise. It’s sort of prawn cracker or very fine Quavers style texture - only not. Presumably a slurry of chickpeas is extruded to form roughly crispy snack shaped shapes. That’s a charming way to put it, I know, but I imagine that’s how these chickpea chips are made.

And the taste? Surprisingly citrusy. Surprisingly, because that’s not what you expect of a crispy snack. All the bright lemony flavour comes from yuzu; an East Asian citrus fruit a bit like a clementine but with a sharper more grapefruity taste. And the ghost chilli is a very hot chilli, once the hottest in the world, but now overtaken by the Carolina reaper in 2013, and Chilli X in 2023. The internet tells me it originated in Bhutan and Assam. But it’s not too hot in this crispy chip.

This is an extremely exotic combination of flavours for a crispy snack sold by conservative supermarket Waitrose in North London. Proper Chips have certainly been working hard to find us new flavours. But perhaps a little too weird.

Tongue tingling! And yes, they really do tingle your tongue.

Retro Crispy Snacks are Making a Comeback

 

I read several articles this September about how retro style crispy snacks are making a huge comeback. Of course, one person’s retro snack is another person’s childhood favourite. Apparently it’s a TikTok trend. I have never looked at TikTok and don’t intend to start now, but it seems that TikTokers will watch absolutely anything for a laugh. And if that means discovering retro snacks that’s fine by me.

Here’s the Daily Mirror. And here’s The Guardian. And The Daily Mail.

Here’s what I had to say about Nik Naks. How interesting, I had quite forgotten them. They’re rather like Crunchy Wotsits. 

And here’s me trying Skips if you are interested.

Since I started eating crisps and crispy snacks in the early 1960s none of these “retro” snacks strikes me as particularly old school. Especially as the little local shop at the bottom of our road has never stopped selling this style of snack. Ditto our post office. Mind you, these days retro seems to apply to anything that wasn’t made or thought of this year. So you decide if these snacks seem retro to you.

Also TikTokers seem to have the attention span of a goldfish (I gather this is longer than we thought), so this trend will probably be over by Christmas, if it isn’t over already.

Dogritos Bones

Our granddaughter will have her first birthday very soon. No doubt she will be showered with presents, so as well as buying her a pull-along Scottie dog on wheels called Walter, we thought it would be nice to buy a little something for the family spaniel. Because it’s no fun feeling left out.

So, here we have a squashy packet of Dogritos. It squeaks. It also makes a noise like scrumpled up crisp packets. I hope Ziggy likes it. If he pulls it apart inside 5 minutes we will take that as a sign he was having fun.

I found this squeaky dog toy on Etsy.

Tyrrell’s Roasted Chicken & Sage

 

New! A gold coin thingy with a crown tells us that this is a New! crisp flavour. With, I read on the back of the packet, oodles of flavour to tickle your tastebuds.

Well. Normally I love a chicken or roast chicken crisp. They taste chickeny and I like that. However, I see that yeast extract (Marmite to me) is one of the ingredients for this crisp. And despite the cooked chicken powder - second crisp in a row to contain actual meat: so not suitable for vegetarians - I think this crisp mostly tastes of Marmite. What a disappointment.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Marmite. On toast it’s fabulous. And my mother brainwashed me to believe that a mug of hot Marmite would cure any ill from period pain to a broken leg, and trust me, it really works. Only do go to A&E if you think your leg might be broken. Maybe have a mug of Marmite while you wait for the ambulance.

However again, I was hoping this new New! crisp would taste of chicken and some sage. And it doesn’t. It smells of Marmite too. 

But the Chef has absentmindedly noshed down almost the entire packet so one can only assume that he has been enjoying the taste. And there is nothing the matter with the crunch.

Manōmasa Limited Edition Chimichurri Steak

Quite a lot of ‘meaty’ or ‘chickeny’ flavoured crisps are in fact suitable for vegetarian snackers. Even, perhaps some of the fake bacon shaped snacks. Is this to save money, or is it easier to create a flavour without adding dried meat or extract of meat or whatever sort of meatiness the food scientists are tinkering with these days? 

Whichever, the family vegetarian told me once that even though a crispy snack might be entirely vegetarian (though likely not vegan), if it has a meaty name that’s enough to put her off. In any case, that doesn’t apply here, because much to my surprise, this Chimichurri Steak flavour corn chip is actually made with meat.

I think it’s a long time since I tried a meat flavoured crisp that is actually made of meat. And that’s probably a good thing because I’m not sure I like these. They are…. aggressively meaty. And for me that’s not a good thing. 

And I am not at all sure I can taste the black beans. Maybe they are in the recipe to give a weird dark brown colour to the chips. 

Not really sure what I think. See what you think.

Terry Pratchett’s Cheese ‘n’ Smoky Dragon Flavour Crisps

Thanks to epiclootshop 

No, of course this isn’t a genuine potato crisp flavour. How could it be? For a start we have no idea what dragon tastes of, although perhaps the food boffins might choose chicken or turkey flavour as a starting point? 

I was thinking that a dragon flavour crisp might be a bit like a raccoon crisp. Because that sounds completely fake. Except people really do eat raccoon. Not perhaps in Britain, because here a raccoon would be either a very unusual pet, or part of a collection in a zoo, but certainly in the United States. Apparently. None of my friends live in a state where raccoon is a regular menu item (New York, California, Texas, Colorado, Rhode Island). At least I don’t think so. But in states like Georgia it might be, or so the internet tells me. And obviously the internet is the fount of all wisdom and we believe everything it tells us.

Meanwhile, back with the Cheese ‘n’ Smoky Dragon flavour: I really don’t know why I should be surprised that there are online discussions as to what dragon meat (and thus dragon crisps) might taste like. Yes, there really are people who waste their time posting about this all important issue. Other discussions are available. And yes, there are also people who waste their time writing about fictional flavours of crispy snack (me).

Anyway, if you are at all interested, I came across Cheese ‘n’ Smoky Dragon crisps in a book of Terry Pratchett’s early writing: A Stroke of the Pen. The crisps feature in a story called The Quest for the Keys. The book was published in good time for Christmas 2023, so what a pity that serious Pratchett fans didn’t lobby a crisp manufacturer to create a tie in snack. Don’t you think it would have been fun?

It’s quite OK if you don’t read this unserious post. Come back next time.

Walkers Wotsits Crunchy Sweet & Spicy Flamin’ Hot

Hmmn…. If you ask me, calling this crispy corn based snack a Wotsit is somewhat disingenuous. Honestly, these are not corn puffs and they aren’t at all like the fabulous corn based puff that is a Wotsit. I feel a bit cheated.

Yes, I know, I shouldn’t take taste testing crispy snacks so seriously, but Wotsits are wonderful and this snack isn’t.

It reminds me a little of the Italian Fonzies the Chef and I tried once, or if you are a fan of Australian snacks, think Twisties. But tasting rather different and quite orange.

But not to worry, at least not too much, because they are crunchy. And they are covered in lots of tasty orange flavour dust. And they are quite spicy, but unless my taste buds have had a major personality transplant, I really don’t think they can be described as flamin’ hot. Except, wait, wait, it appears that flamin’ hot is not a description but rather a flavour. Which includes all manner of ultra processed ingredients such as acidity regulators, disodium 5’-ribonuceotide, hydrolysed vegetable protein and sulphite amonia caramel. Yes, I imagine your guess is as good as mine.

I can’t put my finger on what this crispy corn (maize) based snack actually tastes of. A bit sweet and sour. A bit of a kick. Sort of paprika.

However, do you genuinely want flamin’ hot? Let me introduce you to the impossibly volcanic Takis Fuego snack I found in Switzerland earlier this year. That’s what we in the taste testing trade call much too hot.

Co-op Irresistible Limited Edition Hand Cooked Chicken Shawarma

I really don’t know quite what to say about this limited edition crisp from our local Co-op here in North London. You will probably think the Chef and I are terribly boring, but we are both fairly sure we’ve never had a chicken shawarma. We almost never have a takeaway. I think the last one was a pizza in lockdown in Switzerland. So neither of us knows what taste to look out for in these crisps. Oh dear. That’s not a great help, is it!

I looked up a chicken shawarma recipe to see if it tallied at all with the ingredients on the packet. What do you think? Not really. I think the taste that I can’t quite get to grips with is lurking behind the unhelpful ‘chili chicken shawarma flavour seasoning’. I wish I knew what that concoction is made with.

Don’t run away with the idea that this crisp is nasty. It’s not. I have eaten quite a few, and the Chef has been absent mindedly snacking away with no complaints. 

The crisps themselves are not very large but with a nice crunch, and they are richly golden in colour. It’s just that I can’t work out what they taste of. Could it be the cumin? I can’t make my mind up. Whatever they taste of, it’s like no other potato crisp I ever tried before.

Walkers Squares Ready Salted

And here, plucked from a multi pack, is the unadulterated version of Walkers Squares. Well, it’s what we in the UK call ready salted. Because in the olden days, the first years of crisp manufacturing, you got a packet of fried potato slices and a little blue bag of salt which you untwisted and added the salt yourself. Only then was the huge technological leap of the ready salted crisp invented. Or indeed the ready salt & vinegared or ready cheese & onioned crisp, but of course we don’t call them that.

Anyway, with just salt as the flavour, you can taste just how different reconstituted potato products are from potato crisps. Nice texture, easy to eat. I rather like the flavour but would I want to eat them every day? I think not.

Here’s another square snack I think I must have liked better, from Marks & Spencer.

In other matters, recently someone was referred to this blog by Wikipedia. I wish I knew how that happened. Oh look at that… it’s here. Scroll down. I wasn’t expecting ever to be a reference on Wikipedia. 

Ella’s Kitchen Tomato & Basil Melty Sticks

We bought this small packet of organic crispy snacks as part of a birthday present for the Chef’s great nephew, who is one this week. He’s not our child, so I won’t share the photo of him enthusiastically grasping the packet, but I can see he knows what he’s got, and he’s looking forward to his mum opening the packet for him.

I am sure that these tomato and basil melty sticks got eaten, or at least crumbled enthusiastically on to the floor (I saw what happened to his poor birthday cake), but his mum tells me he really likes the cheese and apple flavour best.