KP Snacks Penn State Pretzels Sour Cream & Chive

I wandered in to speak to Tech taste tester while he was eating his lunch and found he was feasting, all on his own, on a packet of sour cream & chive mini pretzels.

I don't usually buy pretzel-style crispy snacks.... although I don't really know why not. And in this case what a mistake. Because this is a lovely tasty snack; lots of sour cream & chive flavour dust chucked over a pile of crispy little pretzels. 

I only had the one, because this was part of Tech taste tester's lunch, but I was quite impressed.

My only real issue is that all the flavour dust gets eaten first however hard you try, and then there's nothing but a small biscuitty twirl or shards of same; depending how hard you've crunched.

A fine crunch at lunch and perhaps something to try again in the New Year (which as I write has not yet arrived).

I see the reluctant taste testers and I tried the Original Sea Salt version of this crispy snack back in January 2016. I also see we quite enjoyed it.

Tesco Sour Cream & Chive Snack Mix

The reluctant taste testers were talking the other day about how they often prefer a crispy snack that tastes bland rather than strong or complicated and this crispy snack from Mr Tesco covers the bland front well.

And although many of these moon- and star-shaped sort of woven (and 3D) snacks are broken, those that were still intact were rather wonderful.

As you know, I get a little tetchy if the crispy snack is supposed to be a particular shape but what you mostly get is broken pieces, and I wasn't that impressed here. I expect Mr Tesco to protect its products sufficiently so if you buy moons and stars, you get moons and stars and not little bits of something. However, it appears that Mr Tesco doesn't care what I think. This is a shame because I am sure it's not only me who expects to buy something other than broken bits. In the olden days you bought biscuits from a grocer, and broken biscuits were cheaper than whole ones. Apparently this does not pertain in the modern crispy snack world.

Quite a nice taste of nothing in particular which the reluctant taste testers, and indeed the Chef, found rather good.

M&S Sour Cream & Chive Pretzels

This pretzel snack is one of M&S's Great American Snack range. I was fairly sure that pretzels originated in Germany or somewhere but, hey, who knows. I guess the Americans have made it their own.

So these little pretzels are about the size of the first joint on your thumb. Which is a nice little size for a crispy snack.

And they have a fair amount of tasty flavour dust. You do have to lick it off your fingers. Which is no bad thing.

I quite liked this flavour. The reluctant taste testers quite liked it too. A nice combination of gentle sour cream and not too chivy. The Chef wasn't so keen. But it's quite a moreish snack  and I think most of us ate more than we expected.

Not bad.

As ever I ponder over the list of ingredients and wonder why you need dried creme fraȋche, dried yoghourt, dried whey and dried soured cream to create a good sour cream flavour. But the crispy snack department at M&S seem to have done a pretty good job.

Nice. I don't know why I never tried them before.