Good Housekeeping Magazine: Gourmet Salt & Vinegar Crisps

I don't normally see Good Housekeeping Magazine so I wasn't really aware they had a "Taste Test" feature although it isn't a surprise. It looks like a regular monthly feature and could probably be a taste test of anything from plum jams to baked beans to ready to cook frozen prawns. Who knows? Except a regular Good Housekeeping reader. Anyway, lucky for me that the September 2015 issue I chanced to pick up while I was waiting to see Porsche Fan Chiropractor happened to be a review of crisps.

Not just any old crisps either, although they are nearly all supermarket own brand crisps which many reviewers consider beneath contempt. Pah! What do they know? There is nothing the matter with supermarket crisps; some of them are extremely good. We have offerings from both Sainsburys and the Co-op on our Recommended list (see right).

Here we have salt & vinegar crisps which of course is one of the original crisp flavours in this country, and gourmet salt & vinegar at that.

Well now, you're probably thinking "Hang on there Miss Cheeseburger-Crisps, this is September 2015 you're talking about. Isn't that rather a long time ago?". Yes, it is. But the reluctant taste testers and I tried the winning crisp in November last year and if it isn't still available I'd be very surprised because we thought this was pretty tasty.

The taste testers at the Good Housekeeping Institute tested salt & vinegar crisps from seven supermarkets and here we have the winning crisp Co-op Truly Irresistible Sea Salt and Chardonnay Wine Vinegar Crisps which were awarded 80 points out of 100.

Runners up were Waitrose Sea Salt & Somerset Cider Vinegar Hand Cooked Crisps 74/100

Tyrrell's Sea Salt and Cider Vinegar Crisps 75/100

M&S Hand Cooked Sea Salt and Balsamic Vinegar Crisps 76/100

And Sainsbury's Taste the Difference Sea Salt & Cider Vinegar Hand Cooked Crisps 76/100.

The reluctant taste testers and I haven't tried all of these crisps. But here's what we thought of two of them. And it might be worth our while seeking out the others if they are still available.

By the way, I did admit to Porsche Fan Chiropractor that I had torn a page out of one of the only two magazines in the waiting room. He didn't seem to mind.

Ideal Choco Crisps

So (taking advantage of the current style of explanatory speech), so I was looking at Amazon a couple of months back and spotted these chocolate coated crisps which looked rather interesting. But I told myself that there were plenty of crisps in the shops and anyway I was shortly going to be visiting a massive crisp heaven supermarket in France so it would be silly to buy them off Amazon.

Fast forward to the other day when we suddenly needed one of those lampshade ensmallifier rings that make the bit of your lampshade that sits on the part the bulb goes into smaller. Yeah I didn't know what they were called either but it turns out that Amazon's search engine was able to help me out there. Anyway, lovely old Amazon alerted me to the fact that Choco Crisps were now reduced in price. So I bought a packet.

And?

Well, these Spanish crisps come in two silver baggies inside a cardboard box. I went into work for a cup of coffee this week because I've been missing all the taste testers and they claim to be missing me. Plus, Tall taste tester emailed to say they have been finding themselves very short of potato based snacks. So I took one of the little silver baggies in with me. Well, I thought they might be disappointed if I arrived minus potatoey products.

Guess what? All the reluctant taste testers said they liked them. "Wrong but good" said Tall taste tester taking another. "Oh these are quite nice" said Tall Elegant taste tester. Yes, quite nice plain crisps with quite a lot of quite nice chocolate. As you can see from the photograph it's almost quite nice chocolate with a crisp on top.

Not sure I would buy them again though because to be honest crisp plus chocolate is slightly weird.