M&S Reduced Fat Full on Flavour Sweet & Smokey BBQ

Here's a BBQ flavour crinkle cut crisp (full on flavour and reduced fat to boot) which appeared in the office one day. To my shame I cannot recall who provided it. Well, you know, the reluctant taste testers quite often proffer new acquisitions for all of us to try. Pretty much everyone from Giraffe Fan to Tech taste tester has provided something tasty over the last (not quite) 3 years. I do the writing it's true, but everyone gets to try if they want to.

And in fact I think the reluctant taste testers rather liked this gentle BBQ flavour. Not a BBQ fan myself I thought they were quite nice too.

And if you can find such a good crunch and pleasant taste together in a reduced fat crisp I think you are doing pretty well. A success then.

But I totally forgot to mention this is one of Marks & Spencer's crisps mysteriously made in Denmark.

M&S Full on Flavour Roast Beef & Onion

Yet another different flavour of crisp from those insatiable guys at the Marks & Spencer crisp development unit. Do they ever sleep? On recent evidence it would seem not. Although for some strange reason these crisps are made not in the UK but Denmark.

The reluctant taste testers and I quite liked these beefy crisps for the most part. I think most of this 150g packet got eaten. Quite beefy, quite oniony, and weirdly, suitable for vegetarians. Nice aroma too.

And there's an interesting serving suggestion here. Put the crisps into a bowl. Chop up some parsley, and cut up some onion rings. Toss the parsley and onion rings into the air over the bowl of crisps. I think it would be a mistake to do this, not to mention annoyingly fiddly to tidy up.

M&S Full on Flavour Lightly Sea Salted

So, erm, full on flavour but also lightly sea salted eh? Bit of a contradiction there wouldn't you say? 

Perhaps. But none the less this is a pretty good lightly salted crisp. And the reluctant taste testers ate quite a lot of them without having very much to say about the flavour. Which is salty but not too salty. And not "not salty enough" as some lightly salted crisps are.

So not bad. But not terribly exciting either. 

This crisp benefits (as estate agents cannot stop themselves saying) from the new thicker more plasticky packaging with a gusset. Only some of Marks & Spencer's crisps have this new style of packaging; some of the new crisps have it, some don't. I have no idea why.

M&S Full on Flavour Four Cheese & Red Onion

History Graduate tester tester admitted he had been bamboozled (excellent choice of word!) by the exciting new gusseted packaging into thinking this was some sort of fabulous new flavour. And the shiny new plastic stuff  that the bag is made of may have contributed too.

But although on inspection this looks like just another fancy pants version of cheese & onion, in fact I think, on closer inspection still,  it is more than that.

This is a very tasty crisp. And not too oniony. Red onion can be a very harsh flavour but this works extremely well.

And then there's the cheese.... four cheeses. What do you suppose these four cheese are? Bet you can't guess.

OK; Red Leicester, which you can see in the falling cheese on the front of the packet (it looks like grated carrot), Mozzarella (which I thought I could taste before I read the list of ingredients), Mascarpone and Cream cheese. Well, well. I wouldn't have thought of that selection but honestly I think it works very well indeed.

And the reluctant taste testers agreed. Lots of tasty flavour dust, a good sprinkling of parsley; one of our five a day, pretty yummy all round (she said licking her fingers again - don't waste that tasty flavour dust left at the bottom of the packet!). Very nice indeed.

If you fancy a new sort of cheese and onion flavour give these crisps a try. Although you do need a local M&S. I don't think their food products are available mail order.

M&S Full on Flavour Thai Coconut Chicken

Goodness gracious. Yet another "complete dinner flavour" crisp from M&S. Thai Coconut Chicken eh? Is that a flavour we ask ourselves? Indeed, is it a suitable flavour for a crisp?

Well, for me the problem is that I really don't like coconut. So  you probably wouldn't find me sitting down to a plate of Thai coconut chicken. And I would not have chosen to buy this bag of crisps. I tried one or two and they seemed pretty coconutty. Full on coconutty perhaps?

So far as I could tell these were the usual high quality crisps from Marks & Spencer with a good golden colour and a nice crunch. But I think the reluctant taste testers wondered if this flavour would work better with a prawn cracker or poppadum style base rather than a regular potato crisp.

Unfortunately (careless I know) I didn't get hold of the packet to scan - or read - so we have to make do with a quick snap of the packet.  And more importantly I didn't get to read the list of ingredients. So I don't know what the little herby bits are. Wait.... I went and read the packet in the local branch of M&S; there are lots of spices involved as it is a Thai recipe, and the herby bits are either coriander or parsley.

Absolutely not for  me. But if you like coconut, or indeed Thai Coconut Chicken, these might be the crisps for you.

M&S Full on Flavour Worcester Sauce

Another tasty crisp from the ever reliable Full on Flavour range. Available at a Marks & Spencer near you. Provided you live in a country where M&S sell food.

These are rather large crisps for the most part, with a large flavour and a big crunch. In fact, the flavour could be described as enormous!

Of course Worcester Sauce itself has a huge flavour. Most people use it a few drops at a time. Well, I never use it at all but the Chef puts it in his shepherd's pie all the time. Only a few drops.

So these crisps with the great big flavour are made with Worcester Sauce then? Well, no. Not exactly because that's actually called Worcestershire Sauce even though many people including me lazily call it Worcester Sauce.

And for those of you ignorant of English geography, Worcestershire is a county in the West Midlands and Worcester is the cathedral city on the river Severn. This part of England was once part of the Anglo Saxon Kingdom of Mercia. What exciting things you can learn when reading about crisps, eh? Don't even get me started on how J R R Tolkien apparently used the Mercian dialect as the language of the Kingdom of Rohan.

Anyway, the super-helpful Wikipedia tells me that Worcestershire Sauce is a fermented condiment and draws allusions to the rather horrible-sounding garum (fermented fish sauce) that the ancient Greeks, Romans and Byzantines used to flavour a lot of their food. There was another sauce called liquamen that sounds almost nastier; something about the name perhaps? I saw a Roman dinner reproduced on TV many years ago and a bunch of archaeologists brought in as taste testers: only one person would eat the pears in garum. Yum! fruit served with fermented fish sauce. Perhaps not.

The recipe of Worcestershire Sauce is a closely guarded secret but a glance at the label of a bottle of Lea & Perrins - the leading UK brand - will tell you it includes anchovies and tamarind extract. And it is thought that the ingredients include onions, garlic, cloves, soy, lemons, picks, peppers, malt vinegar, molasses, sugar and salt. Complicated then.

This is a much simpler recipe but it does make for a very tasty crisp which I recommend if you are into big flavours. The silver bag is excitingly shiny if that makes a difference.

M&S Full on Flavour Salt & Vinegar Twists

I've been walking past these twisty snacks in Marks and Spencer for months. Possibly years. And I finally decided I might given them a chance to be better than I thought they would be. And you know what? They were right and I was wrong.

I'm always a little bit cautious about salt and vinegar. It can be a terribly harsh flavour, even to the point of taking the skin off the roof of your mouth. But these are quite mild. Very tasty in fact. Sort of... just right.

Nice smooth texture, not a lot of flavour dust. Very easy to eat a lot more than you thought you were going to.

And then, they do look just like pasta twists or fusilli for all you Italian speakers out there. I don't know about you, but when I cook pasta twists I always end up with the edges just right and the core of the twist still not quite cooked enough. So I never buy fusilli any more, and that's why I walked past these crispy snacks for so long.

However, these work just fine. Somehow the core of the twist has just the same crunch as the edges. Pretty clever, eh?

Suitable for vegetarians and vegans. No artificial colours or flavourings and no MSG. But you can't recycle the metallic blue and silver packaging.

The blue and silver really reminds me of one of my late 1960s Barbie's best outfits called Zokko #1820. And huge thanks to the Fashion Doll Guide which has posted a great photo of the exact outfit I am thinking of. A little disco dress with silver knitted top and metallic blue skirt, and a silver belt with orange stripe. It came with silver boots. How space age and modern Barbie was in 1969. Amazing.

I still have all my Barbie outfits (and my Barbie too), although all packed away just now. And in storage so I can't get at it to photograph the dress, or check to see if I still have the all important matching orange earrings. I expect it came with an orange coathanger too; everything came with a coathanger. But I am fascinated to see how much I could sell all the bits for. If I wanted to.

Back to the crispy snack. Pretty good.