Snyder's of Hanover Sweet & Salty Pretzel Pieces Salted Caramel

Hmm... the name of this crispy crunchy snack seems to go on forever. The actual flavour is Salted Caramel and they certainly do taste of Salted Caramel.

I think the reluctant taste testers and I tried these Sweet & Salty Pretzel Pieces just before I was dragged off to hospital in early March. They've sitting around since then and are in pretty good condition considering. Paper clips seem to work as well as a kitchen clip at keeping the bag tightly shut. Which is lucky as here we are 4 months later.

As with all these Pretzel Piece snacks this has a huge great crunch which is fabulous, but of course as usual it looks like a snack cobbled together from the remains of an nasty accident in Snyder's kitchens. And I wouldn't be a bit surprised if that's what happened once upon a time and gave someone a marketing idea.

We've tried 4 different packets of Pretzel Pieces before but they were all savoury flavours like Hot Buffalo Wings but these are Sweet & Salty which is a very different taste. These pieces of pretzel are swathed in piles of flavour dust which delivers a great thwack of Sweet & Salty flavour. And the Salted Caramel is very caramelly.

It reminds me of the olden days when William Morris Fan taste tester who worked with me and the taste testers before ever the taste testing was invented, introduced me to Sweet & Salted as a flavour for the first time. She rushed out to one of the local kosher delis and produced a snack such as I had never seen before  - I think it was popcorn. Wow! That must be less than 10 years ago. Amazing. Crispy snack flavours have come on apace since then. Although possibly that comment applies more to the UK than the USA.

Never attempted this sort of flavour? Definitely worth a try. Go on. You know you want to.

Snyder's of Hanover Pretzel Pieces Jalapeño

Well, we seem to have tried a good number of Pretzel Piece flavours lately and they've all been very tasty. And extremely crunchy.

This flavour  is just as broken up as ever (no surprise there) and has a strong taste of jalapeño peppers. Which I didn't used to like but have grown accustomed to. Not from eating real food you understand, but from trying all sorts of weird crispy snacks. Because (who knew?) eating crispy snacks is actually very educational. I'm generally a very picky eater and there are flavours I have tried as part of a crispy snack that I would never have considered trying in real life. In the end this has made me a bolder eater when it comes to actual food. Which is great. But I guess it tells you that I don't consider crisps and crispy snacks to be real food.Well, you know, not a major food group like fruit & vegetables. Just in case you hadn't read my alerts in the sidebar about eating healthily, I really am aware that crisps and crispy snacks should be eaten in moderation. Although sometimes you just can't help loving a crispy snack and eating a lot more than you mean to.

OK, I know the answer to this one. Try hard not to do this too often. It isn't good for you. I sometimes find an amazing snack and I want to eat the whole packet at once. but I try really hard not to do that. Please take my advice and restrict your intake too. Sharing packet with the reluctant taste testers helps a lot.

OK, back to the snack. Which the reluctant taste testers quite enjoyed and ate a fair pile of. It seems like quite a true Jalapeño taste.

And on another subject I'm really quite impressed that my computer inserts the little wavy line over the n (is it a tilde? I can't remember this morning) in Jalapeño all of its own accord. I bet it wouldn't have done that 10 years ago. On the other hand, it doesn't like the expression "all of its own accord" and wants to change it to "all of its own account"; this is annoying but at least it tells me that my computer has not yet learned to read my mind. Cause for celebration there I think!

Snyder's of Hanover Pretzel Pieces Cheddar Cheese

So, having enjoyed the Honey Mustard and Onion flavour Pretzel Pieces such a lot, the reluctant taste testers were keen to try another flavour and here we have the Cheddar Cheese.

Which we really liked a lot. Pretzel Pieces have a mighty crunch which works very well with this Cheddar cheese flavour. I think we'd like to recommend these.

Not a huge bag (125g) but you get a lot of pieces in your bag. Popular.

Snyder's of Hanover, Pretzel Pieces, Honey Mustard & Onion

I picked up this little packet of Pretzel Pieces in the local Turkish shop. They sell an interesting selection of crispy snacks.

I've got say Pretzel Pieces are not a prepossessing looking snack. I mean, bits of pretzel apparently hit with a large hammer.... Noble Friend thought she was looking at a bowlful of brazil nut pieces. Well, why not? But then she tried this snack. Oh my goodness! I never saw Noble Friend so excited. She loves this snack! She really really loves this snack. I had to rush to the shop and buy her two more packets. Well, it is on my way to work.

Dutch taste tester loved them too (an extra packet for her as well) and I guess I'm not that surprised. Because they are a bit like the Dutch Joppie Saus crisps that they both love so much. Texture of course completely different but they have the same sort of sweet mustardy, piccalilli-ish kind of flavour. It's not really my thing because I don't like mustard. Neither does History Graduate. But lots of the reluctant taste testers rally enjoyed this crispy snack.

Dutch taste tester was also interested to note that Snyder's are based in Charlotte North Carolina where some her her best friends live. Interesting. Maybe we could blackmail them into sending supplies?

I wrote about Snyder's of Hanover Pretzel Crisps before, in this same flavour but all I had to go on was an empty packet brought home from Madrid by Tall taste tester. We've also tried Pretzel Pieces in Hot Buffalo Wing flavour. Luckily I know that buffalo don't have wings and this is a chicken flavour snack. But really, unless you speak the language, how are you supposed to know?

Guess what though? Snyder's make lots of other flavours. So we plan to try them out.

Snyder's of Hanover Hot Buffalo Wing Pretzel Pieces

Yes... I honestly wasn't sure what to expect of Pretzel Pieces.  But you know, what you get is pieces of pretzel. Trouble is I'm wondering do Snyder's make a bunch of pretzels and then hit them with a hammer or something?

A thousand years ago when the world was young you used to be able to buy biscuits by the pound, or half pound from the local grocer. Biscuits didn't come in packets. And if you had a bit less money you would buy broken biscuits. Which tasted exactly the same but (you've guessed) were all broken bits. Only in this case it does seem that the "whole pretzels" never exist. All you can get is the broken bits. Weird.

So this flavour of Pretzel Pieces is Hot Buffalo Wing. Which means chicken wings. Well, we all tried really hard but none of us could detect any trace of chicken in this flavour. And do you know, I have two (2) friends who tell me that the wing of the chicken is the tastiest bit. Now that is weird.

Anyway, ignoring that weird fact, we move on the the taste of this quite dark orange crispy snack.

Despite themselves I think the reluctant taste testers rather enjoyed this snack. Some of the bits  (sorry: pieces) have a sort of shiny pretzel skin which holds the flavour dust a lot less well than the inner bits of pretzel which are well impregnated with lots and lots of flavour and are very very flavoursome.

Which is great. We just weren't quite sure what they taste of. Since there's no sign of a chickeny taste, perhaps the taste is simply "hot". Whatever it is, it's really very tasty. The reluctant taste testers and I surprised ourselves by eating quite a lot of these strange broken bits of pretzel.