Copper Kettle Chips Sea Salt

 If you were reading my posts in early May you might remember I had been promised a packet of New Zealand crisps by the Chef’s Skiing Friend but they had been held up by the Spanish lockdown. Well, here they are!

Unfortunately this little packet of plain sea salted crisps went out of date at the end of April but the Chef and I thought they were pretty tasty anyway, and the crunch was still surprisingly good. Also they tasted good with a sour cream and chive dip, and without. Always a good test.

Copper Kettle Chips is a brand owned by New Zealand crisp company Bluebird Foods, which in turn is, of course, owned by the mega marketing monster that is PepsiCo. The potatoes for these crisps seem to have been grown in Pukekohe (one of New Zealand’s major spud growing areas), and processed by Vince’s Team. It’s hard to tell from the information on the packet whether Vince and his team harvested the potatoes or slow cooked [them] in small batches... to create the ultimate flavour and crunch.

Rather a small packet, only 40g, but obviously easier to post than anything larger, so we accidentally ate all these crisps before I got around to photographing them. But rest assured they look just like any other crisps you may have tried.

By the way, while researching this crisp, I learned that  2008 was The International Year of the Potato.

New Zealand Crisps

You have probably noticed a sudden, very welcome, influx of Irish snacks on the blog. Which is very exciting and just what we needed. But since I already wrote this I’m going to post it anyway.

Because New Zealand is so far away for most readers, we don’t get to try their crispy snacks, and indeed have no idea what’s on offer for the crispy snack or chip fan. Interestingly, New Zealand, like the U.K., doesn’t have Lay’s crisps. What they have instead is Bluebird, which is owned by the mammoth PepsiCo which also owns Lay’s. Of course. But there’s also Heartland (100% Kiwi owned to the bottom of the bag), and no doubt many more.

I have only ever  tried one packet of crispy snacks from New Zealand: my lovely friend Dutch taste tester and her husband Vinyl Collector brought back a packet of Bluebird Burger Rings from their honeymoon and the reluctant taste testers and I liked this snack a lot. Very tasty!

In fact, my friends visited New Zealand again earlier this year. Possibly simply to sample the crispy snacks. They sent me this photo ⬆️ just to make me jealous. Because that’s what friends do.

However, I have a mystery packet of New Zealand crispy snacks waiting for me in Mallorca. The Chef has a skiing friend who recently visited New Zealand and very sweetly brought me back a packet of ... I don’t know what. But instead of returning to Verbier where he sometimes lives, Skiing Friend decided to go to his house in Mallorca instead. Well, that would normally be just fine, only the local post office there has decided against accepting any international parcels for the time being. Apparently it’s all packed up in a jiffy bag ready to post, but there is still a danger that Skiing Friend might succumb to temptation, break in to the parcel and snack them all down in the middle of the night. 

While we wait for the Mallorca post office to change its mind, and perhaps the world to get back to normal, here’s a (very long, 122 varieties of crisps long) list of New Zealand crispy snacks ranked by Madeleine Chapman for The Spinoff : she really does seem to have a pretty encyclopaedic knowledge of her native crisps. So many New Zealandish crisps, indeed, that you may feel the need to scroll through to the top 10.

I confess I have a weakness for the Bluebird packaging design. Why a penguin? It’s weird. But who cares? It’s fun. If I ever visit New Zealand you can tell I will be in the nearest shop looking for the crispy snack aisle.