Tesco Finest Baked British Gammon with Winter Berries

Well! Crisp flavours just get weirder and weirder don't they?

These interestingly flavoured crisps come in a fine purple packet with golden writing and a golden piggy. Handsome indeed.

But I was rather dubious about trying them. I've tried ham flavoured crisps in the past that were frankly horrible so I have rather avoided trying any ham flavours since then. It was some years ago but some things are so nasty that they really put you off. And then, I really didn't like these.

Obviously I have made it my mission to try as many different types of crisp as possible (and that without eating too many and getting grossly fat!) so maybe I need to be braver in the ham/gammon department because this hand cooked crisp flavour isn't bad.

These are rather rich coloured crisps with a great deal of flavour dust, and they have a wonderful crunch I really liked. The smell is a bit fruity; perhaps that's because the ingredients include dried cranberry and blueberries. That'll be the winter berries then. And obviously there's quite a lot of paprika to enhance the colour.

The gammon flavour is very well realised. Apparently it is slow baked free range pork (which sounds awfully good) that goes into the "British Gammon extract" on the list of ingredients.

As with other Tesco Finest crisps we are told the potato variety; Lady Rosetta. The British Potato Variety Database tells me that this is a red skinned early maincrop variety with light yellow flesh. We know the field name; Riverpeace. And the crisps are made somewhere in Devon.

Once again this is a really interesting flavour, which I surprised myself by quite liking, but I didn't want to eat too many. I took them to the office to see what everyone thought and one or two were not impressed, but even though the others liked the taste, like me they didn't want to try more than a couple.

I think the mark of a great crisp is one where you accidentally eat an entire packet without noticing. Think of the fabulous Provençal flavour crisp by Swiss company Zweifel which you can read about here. Sadly this Tesco Finest flavour does not (ghastly expression) tick the boxes for me.

This was a special flavour for Christmas 2013 so I don't know if it is still available.