Tesco Salted Caramel Crisps

Quite a handsome golden brown crisp. Not a bad crunch. Nice size crisps. So far so normal. But OK, we're here to discuss this exotic special Christmas flavour.

So, er, the taste? Well.... I have to say that we really didn't like these that much. The initial aroma on opening the bag was basically potato crisp. And after a minute or two it was... sort of sweet.

Sort of sweet eh? Yes, some people thought they could really taste the caramel but they thought it a dead weird crisp flavour. I couldn't really detect  caramel specifically. It could have been chocolate or something.  But basically it was more "or something".

As so often I poured out a bowlful for the reluctant taste testers at work. Usually I go back an hour or so later and refill the bowl. Not this time. Nope. I took home most of the packet. Which tells its own story.

Really not at all sure what Mr Tesco was thinking of with this crisp flavour. Weird.

M&S Hand Cooked Lightly Salted Highland Burgundy Red British Potato Crisps

What a complicated name for a 40g packet of crisps! Remember all you fans of imperial measurements, 40g is a mere 1.41 ounces of crisp. Not a lot.

Here we have Marks & Spencer's Christmas crisps for 2014. 5% of the sale goes to Shelter which is a UK charity helping homeless people. Which is great but I rather wish it was more than 5%.

However, what do we really have here? Well, the potatoes are obviously stunning when you chop into them.  I've looked on the Thompson & Morgan website - they sell lots of plants and seeds, and in the case of potatoes: tubers.  And you can absolutely see that these crisps are hardly fiddled with at all. The factory has chopped up the Highland Burgundy potatoes and fried them.  So you get a fancy red crisp with a white surround. Actually grown for you by a potato plant. Hurrah!

Lightly salted? Yes. Quite tasty but for me, there could have been a little more salt. You know I like my salt. And quite a hearty crunch. So not a bad crisp at all.
Yup. Pretty good. So buy some soon and support Shelter.