Tyrrell’s Furrows Beef Brisket & Black Peppercorn

 I am gobsmacked. This Beef Brisket & Black Perppercorn crisp really tastes as if it was made with actual meat. Or meat extract. Or something. But no. It is actually suitable for vegetarians.

Now, the Family Vegetarian Taste Tester tells me that no amount of  “oh yes all the ingredients are suitable for veggies” style info on the back of crisp packets makes any difference. If the packet is labelled Beef Brisket she’s just not going to try it. I wonder how many vegetarians this applies to.

And I do wonder if crisp manufacturers are trying to woo vegetarians with totally veggie flavours that sound meaty, or are creating meaty flavours (that are in fact veggie) because that’s what they think people want.

Hard to say. But if you ask my stepdaughter they’re going in the wrong direction.

And honestly, I am not mad about these crisps. They smell, not exactly meaty, but not veggie. A little bit marmite. They look tasty. Nice crinkle cut. Yum.

Except…there’s a sort of greasy aftertaste that I’m not a big fan of. I noticed that Cliffs of Moher Taste Tester was able to eat a lot more than me. 

Tyrrell’s Hand Cooked Crisps Sea Salt & Vinegar Furrows

Senior taste tester walked all the way down the building to tell me he liked these salt & vinegar crisps. He liked the soft taste. You know how salt & vinegar crisps can have an amazingly harsh flavour? Not this crinkle cut version which has a sweet gentle taste.

This is a very nice take on salt & vinegar. And I like the crinkle cut. I didn’t used to like crinkle cut. So many had far too much flavour or, worse, were too thick cut for my taste. But this is pretty good crisp. The aroma is nice too. The reluctant taste testers tell me so.

Because it wasn’t only Senior taste tester who liked this. This was a large 150g packet, and very nearly all got snacked up. Impressive.

Tyrrell’s have very good packaging design. The packets always look great. But I have a bit of a problem with Tyrrell’s crisps. The flavour is usually fine, but it turns out I often don’t like the crisps. I don’t know why but I don’t. Well they’re a bit too potatoey. You eat a crisp and end up with a bit of potato in your mouth. So there we are.

And this packet tells me I can recycle it. Great! Or does it? I just looked up the “green dot” yin yang style arrow symbol, and it doesn’t mean any such thing. What it means is that the manufacturer has made a financial contribution towards the recovery and recycling of packaging in Europe.

I bet hardly any people know what this symbol means. I wish it was a different symbol that meant the packet could actually be recycled but I suspect that won’t happen for a long time. This is not a problem I have with Tyrrell’s. But a problem the country, and indeed the world, has with all (most at any rate) crisp manufactures. You can’t recycle your crispy snack packet and a lot of the rubbish on the side of the road will include crisp packets. It’s time the crisp manufacturers thought about this.

It’s important.