Forest Feast Sea Salt & Black Pepper

Where did I pick up this fancy packet of nuts? I can’t remember. Oh wait, it might have been Sainsburys. But I thought it looked as though it might be rather good.

The nuts themselves are large and look to be good quality. But I thought there was an awful lot of added flavour dust, and not much taste of nut. I asked the Family Vegetarian what she thought, and she absolutely agreed with me. She said that nuts have quite a delicate taste and she thought they were quite overshadowed by the strong taste of pepper. 

I also asked Graffiti Artist Taste Tester. He said he wasn’t that keen on nuts and didn’t really want to try… but he did try. And here’s why you always have to try for yourself: he quite liked these nuts. How could we predict that?

This packet is a mix of “Jumbo Peanuts, Colossal Cashews, Almonds, Pecans and Macadamias”. And this packet is brought to you by Kestrel Foods based in Northern Ireland.

My verdict? Too much pepper.

Tesco Finest Sea Salt & Black Pepper

Another Sea Salt and Black Pepper crisp. It's a good simple flavour, invented relatively recently but none the worse for that, and this is a pretty good example. Salt. And black pepper. A combo that usually works very well.

Not complicated but tasty. I'm sure this particular version would work brilliantly with a sour cream and chive dip (or any other dip for that matter). And I reckon you could probably heat it in the oven as an accompaniment to a turkey and stuffing sandwich.  We don't have turkey, but it would work well with chicken and bread sauce I'm sure.

Sea salt and black pepper crisps and brussels sprouts sandwich? Could be.

Give it a try. Go on. You know you want to.

John & John Sea Salt & Black Pepper

I think it was last weekend that the Chef & I tried these tasty sea salt & black pepper crisps I found in a motorway service station near Beaune. The reluctant taste testers and I had tried the other two packets so it seemed only fair to give the Chef a chance to try this flavour which I know he usually enjoys.

A fairly hard crunch but a lovely salt and pepper flavour - very nice indeed. I can't even remember if we tried these with a dip but if we did I am sure it worked very well: guacamole maybe?

It remains a mystery why these crisps are made in the UK for a German company and marketed in France. Weird.

Another beautifully subtle packet design.

Tyrrell's Sea Salt & Black Pepper Hand Cooked English Crisps

This packet of classic flavour Sea Salt & Black Pepper crisps was bought by the Chef. Not to taste test, but actually to eat. At a committee meeting.

Luckily, I noticed that although I had tried this flavour in the past, I hadn't got around to writing about it. So I rushed some of the crisps into a bowl for a photo opportunity before they all got eaten up.

What a great crisp this is. Sea Salt & Black Pepper is a very strong flavour, but it's a simple flavour; not too complicated. And because it's not too complicated, it's a flavour to go back to again and again. Tyrrell's call it a time-honoured marriage: sea salt and that most cracking of spices.

Very nice.

And what handsome packaging. I love the black and white bag with the rich red typeface and pepper pot! It's great.

These crisps are made with the finest Herefordshire potatoes, complete with jackets, hand-cooked on the farm in small batches and spun to achieve our signature crunch says the packet. No artificial ingredients, free from gluten, suitable for vegans. And there's a great taste gold award 2014.

We have since tried it again with a guacamole dip. Very nice indeed.

And here's the previous packaging. Pre-blog we had a packet with our picnic by the glacier up past the Lac de Moiry above Grimentz. As I went to the trouble of photographing the packet it seems a shame t waste the picture.

The Real Crisp Co. Hand Cooked Sea Salt & Black Pepper

The crisp market can be very strange at times. If you read this blog regularly you may remember that last year much to my astonishment I found several packets of Scottish crisps at Sion railway station (Switzerland); just the other day I was in Globus in Bern (also Switzerland) where I picked up crisps from Spain and Belgium, although I could also have bought crisps from Britain or Ireland. And this packet from The Real Crisp Co, which was made in Wales, I found at Geneva airport. The Swiss, it seems, are interested in international crisps.

Anyhow, I found this little 35g packet at the gate while waiting for my flight home. Which was late.

I'm not sure about this slate grey packaging and the strange woman with two colours of nail varnish. Of course I'll buy all sorts of crisps, alluring packaging or no, but I have to say I'm really not crazy about this image. Still, I bought the packet anyway (you knew I would).

Nice lot of skin left on the potatoes, not a terrific aroma but a great crunch (perhaps a little harder than normal), slightly darker than the usual pale golden colour, and a very tasty salt and pepper taste. It's helped along by added onion powder, and there's also sugar, milk yeast powder and other "made in a factory" crisp ingredients including "spices" whatever that means.

Not an amazing crisp but very nice. And in a nice little bag. Ideal really if you're about to get on a plane.

These Welsh crisps are hand cooked in sunflower oil and suitable for vegetarians. The company that makes them is Sirhowy Valley Foods Ltd, otherwise known as The Real Crisp Co. Based in Crumlin near Newport in Gwent.