Saturday 4 April 2015

Mackie's of Scotland Haggis & Cracked Black Pepper

Last year the Chef and I tried the Mackie's of Scotland Sea Salt, and Mature Cheddar Cheese & Onion flavours which we found for sale in the Aperto shop at Sion station in Switzerland. They had other flavours too, but not the Haggis. Perhaps Mackie's (or Aperto) thought the Swiss would baulk at haggis as a crisp flavour. I wouldn't be a bit surprised; I suspect the English might baulk too.

Which is why I asked my brother, who lives in Scotland, to send me this packet of crisps because I'd never seen any to buy in London (or Switzerland). I had read a lot online about haggis flavour crisps so I wanted to try them. And now I have. So thanks very much to my ex-sister-in-law who I suspect finally took charge of the actual posting.

Well... I'm not really sure about these. There is certainly a vast amount of cracked black pepperiness going on. And then there's something else which despite tasting and much sniffing I cannot put my finger on. Honestly, I can't work out what these crisps taste of.  I rather enjoy haggis but I haven't had any for some time and I don't really remember if it tastes like these crisps do.

Let's just say the taste is a bit odd. Quite tasty. Just... a bit odd. The packaging got high marks though, especially from the tall taste tester.

The reluctant taste testers quite liked these crisps, with the emphasis on quite, but like me I think they were a little bit baffled at the flavour. All of them noticed the great taste of cracked black pepper, and all of them wondered quite what the rest of the flavour was. It seems to have been created from yeast, wheat, onion powder, barley malt, and oatmeal. Interesting.

You might think haggis crisps would be made with heart, liver and lungs (creepily known as sheep's pluck) but no, are in fact they are suitable for vegetarians and even vegans. Amazing eh?

I was back in Sion in March and Aperto has stopped stocking Mackie's crisps, at least for the time being. So we had no chance to attempt other flavours when we took the train to Bern.

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