Tayto Rancheros Bacon (Republic of Ireland)

I don’t know whether to be disappointed or not that this crispy snack doesn’t look like a fake bacon rasher. I was quite expecting something more like Snacketti Bacon Strips from Swiss crisp giant Zweifel. But no.

No, what you get is a tasty, slightly bacon tasting crispy snack. Which isn’t printed with faux bacon stripes but instead has a sort of bacon style structure to it.

This is a gently flavoured bacon snack, and all the better for it. The Chef was quite impressed and ate half the packet in an absent-minded fashion while checking his emails. This is one of Cliffs of Moher’s recommendations. Although she says they are a bit weird.

Chuck Wagon photo Courtesy Library of Congress 

What I find a bit weird is the cowboy theme. What? Do cowboys only eat bacon? From my extensive research watching many westerns when I was growing up (they used to be on television all the time: it was the fashion) I had gathered that what cowboys ate was beans. When I read The Virginian, written by Owen Wister in 1902, (which spawned a Broadway play, a number of films and a long running TV series) I was struck that the characters rode across the endless empty plains of the Wyoming Territory eating tinned tomatoes straight from the tin. And then discarding the tins so they marked the trail. I don’t think I have ever noticed tinned tomatoes in a TV western.

In fact of course, a little genuine research tells me that cowboys ate salt pork not bacon at all. Obviously beans. And somewhat surprisingly, quite a lot of dried fruit.

Tayto Wheelies Bacon (Republic of Ireland)

 

Wheelies says the packaging, that crispy bacon flavour that makes you want to do a few heel clickers before free styling down the hill, hoping that your brakes still work. Or crazier still, attempt your new superman seat grab. Man that’s extreme snacking!

Well, that all sounds very exciting but, being the world’s most unlikely motorcyclist (reluctant taste testers are you surprised?) I have no idea what it’s about. Of course this is a dirt bike or trail bike or something, designed for bouncing around hillsides in mud. Which doesn’t make it any more attractive to me. A failed ex-boyfriend thought it a good plan to make me ride a motor scooter down a Spanish cliff with no edges. Guess what? Not a good idea. It was absolutely terrifying. He said I was cowardly, I said I was being sensible. I would far rather walk than plunge to my doom because I had never ridden a scooter on the flat let alone down a cliff.

Anyway, I am quite a fan of crispy bacon, and very partial to a maize based snack. So when an exciting parcel of crispy snacks arrived from Cliffs of Moher Taste Tester and her mum in Ireland (Hello!) I picked this to try first.

Right, step one: don’t sniff the packet. This snack smells disgusting! But I poured them all, not very many because it’s only a 20g bag, into a bowl and put them on the window cill to rest. And? Actually they taste pretty good. There’s that strange granular texture you get with maize based shapes, and obviously they stick to your teeth as though they’ll be there forever and get the better of your dental hygienist, but the taste is savoury and quite a bit bacony (albeit suitable for vegetarians) and the Chef and I had no difficulty in snacking down these wheel-shaped snacks.

Plus! There’s a little guy throwing his rubbish away responsibly. We haven’t had one of them for a while have we?

Tesco Crispy Coated Peanuts Pigs in Blankets Flavour

I wonder if you’re already thinking “hmmm... I bet she bought this packet of nuts because she couldn’t believe this flavour would work”? I wouldn’t be a bit surprised, because I kind of did.

And if you ask me; we were right.

Oh dear. The pigs in blankets (cocktail sausages with bacon wrapped around them) flavour isn’t really a flavour at all. It’s two different flavours smashed together and it’s hard to say if the Tesco crispy snack department have got the mixture right because the flavour just doesn’t work.

And hang on, was this meant to be a Christmas flavour? There’s nothing at all to stop you eating pigs in blankets at any time of year, but the market, and (whisper it) the American influence, has conned us into believing this is a dish/side (horrid expression)/flavour for Christmastime.

The bad thing is the peanuts don’t shine through because the alleged pigs in blankets flavour gets in the way. Even where the crispy coating has fallen off you can still taste it. So you can’t really appreciate the nuts.

What were they thinking? This Christmassy combo doesn’t work. And I don’t really like the way the crispy coating just comes off. The whole concept really doesn’t do it for me.

The Chef didn’t like these nuts either. Which is not a good sign because he simply loves peanuts.

Tayto Waffles Bacon (Republic of Ireland)

Cliffs of Moher taste tester went home to see her mum for Easter and watch as much of their new Shetland Seasons 1 - 3 DVD as possible, and she bought a packet of crisps too.

It’s a small, 35g, packet and the waffles are quite big - nicely made though. I was impressed they aren’t all furry and the waffle shape works really well, not blurred and a bit vague. And you get more in the packet than often happens. Very nice.

And the bacon flavour is very true, quite bacony. Nice crunch.

I think most of the reluctant taste testers liked this crispy snack, even Senior taste tester who normally complains if the snack isn’t actually a crisp.

7Days Bake Rolls Bacon

Hurrah! At last our local early morning/late night/all day Turkish shop has opened its big new store. Moving about 3 doors to the left this really good food shop now has at least twice as much room and has sprouted lots of exciting new stock. Including, you will perhaps not be surprised to leant, quite a lot of interesting crispy snacks. So I bought 3 packets. Don't want to get over excited.

We've tried 3 different flavours of 7Days Bake Rolls before (Garlic, Pizza, and Tomato, Olive & Oregano) and liked them a lot. Standing in the shop I couldn't quite remember which ones had seen the reluctant taste tester treatment but I was fairly sure we hadn't essayed the bacon flavour before. Luckily I was right.

And what a great crispy snack this is. Modelled I suppose on slices of bagel this is a very crunchy crispy snack with the flavour mysteriously on one side only. Sadly you do see a lot of breakages but that does not affect the taste.

Lovely, was what we thought. A very nice bacony taste. We enjoyed these a lot and decided we didn't mind at all about the broken bits. Such a good taste, who cares about the shape?

This product seems to be available in the UK, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia. A slightly odd selection of countries but again who cares? You can buy them in our local shop.

Jungle Sticks

A second packet of crispy snacks from the Mediterranean island of Malta. Chosen by Noble Friend this retro 1980s style packet was crammed full of yummy extruded potato and maize chips (French fries) or chipsticks. It's always hard to know just how to describe this type of snack.

This is a real triumph of fabulous crispy crunchiness and brilliant bacony taste. I thought they were great as did Tall Elegant taste tester. Dutch taste tester and History Graduate were enthusiastic too. Even Tech taste tester, who says he doesn't usually like this sort of crispy snack, had to admit the taste was very good indeed.

A terrific crispy snack. We liked these a lot. Very easy to have another, and maybe another...

Unfortunate fact of the day: none of us is planning to visit Malta any time soon. We'll just have to make Noble Friend go back.

Zweifel Snacketti Bacon Strips

How fascinating it is that bacon seems to be English, and French and Swiss (all sorts of Swiss), and even Italian for bacon. Why don't they have others words for it?

And these bacon flavour crispy snacks from Swiss crisp giant Zweifel are even pretend bacon shape. The pretend meaty stripe is a bit pale (and completely the wrong colour in real life) but basically what we have here is extruded potato starch pretending to be smoky bacon. With painted on stripes.

Not my most favourite ever crispy snack but I didn't expect it to be. Somehow I usually don't like bacon flavour that much but it is better than ham flavour (which can be really horrible and I'm not sure why). But not so bad either.

The crunch is good and you can get the bubbles to burst on your tongue (if that makes sense). The taste is sweet and smoky.

I wasn't mad keen - you probably worked that out for yourself - and neither was the Chef, but some of the reluctant taste testers liked these a lot. I think they ate 2 bowlsful.

So, a success for some. But not really to my taste. Or the Chef's.

Bénénuts Fritelle Goût Bacon

And yet another choice from the lovely motorway service stations of North Eastern France. OK, mostly they aren't that lovely but they do feature interesting shopping: car accessories (especially faux Ferrari stickers*), maps, produits du terroirs, lots of drinks, and many crisps.

According to an online dictionary, fritelle are sweet fried rice cakes eaten on St Joseph's Day in Chianti. That's interesting because these fritelle look like chips or fries such as you might eat with steak, but made of maize meal and potato powder; pommes frites... only not. I am, however, comparing an Italian fritelle with a French fritelle so let's ignore this little excursion into etymology.

The packet calls them bâtonnets soufflés which is a pretty good description so perhaps we'll stick with that.

Well.... lovely texture. It's a very nice crunch and not as dry as some products like this. But I'm not crazy about the bacon flavour (since when was 'bacon' a French word anyway?) which is a little too smokey for my taste. The reluctant taste testers ate plenty so I suppose it must just be me.

I think I'd try these in another flavour if I could find it.

* Why would you want a Ferrari sticker on your Ford Ka or your Volkswagen Up!? I imagine the Chef would get pretty upset if I suggested putting one on his Audi.

M&S Maple Bacon Flavour Popcorn

I have to admit I bought this packet of popcorn thinking it would probably be rather horrid. But it's not. And a good thing too. Just for a change it made an interesting addition to today's lunch.

I thought it would be horrid because I've not had a good experience with bacon flavour crisps. They can be (in my opinion obviously) really disgusting. But you know, this was actually quite nice. The popcorn looks just like popcorn should, quite white, no extra colour, and well-popped. So good texture and just the right crunch. The flavour wasn't particularly evenly distributed with some of the popcorn tasting of not very much while other bits were maple syrupy or bacony or both. But I felt that wasn't a bad thing.

David at work thought my bag of popcorn was very smelly (lucky thing I haven't attempted some much smellier crunchy snacks in the office) and tried a handful. He thought the bacon flavour followed the maple sweetness too quickly but he finished his handful. Ruth also tried some and didn't complain. Most of the people I work with are a bit conservative in their crispy snack tastes. I'm trying to educate them but it's an uphill struggle!

I thought this popcorn was OK. A good mix of sweet and savoury. Fun packaging design; the snowman is rather charming. M&S have special sandwiches supporting Shelter, the housing and homeless charity, each Christmas. I had the Brie & Grape Shelter sandwich today. It's very good. I've not noticed Shelter crispy snacks before. I think it's a good idea but perhaps I would? Weirdly though it was really difficult to any reference to this popcorn online.

It's good to know that 5p from the sale of each packet goes to Shelter. Give it a try if you can. On sale for the Christmas season only I should think.

Red Sky West Country Bacon & Cream Cheese

These crisps advertise themselves as entirely natural with all natural ingredients and bunnies and moles helping to pick the potatoes.

The packaging is very pretty, showing a homeward bound tractor silhouetted against a red summer sunset (red sky at night shepherd's delight); there are swallows and swifts in the sky and the barn or farmhouse has a weather vane on the roof. All very rural.

"Nature's promise of a glorious day" it says, and "Supporting the Prince's Countryside Fund"; I assume that is Prince Charles's fund, and "Let's make sure our countryside stays pleasant and green".

And very nice too.

Oh yes, and don't forget to throw your rubbish away carefully because that protects the countryside too. The throwing rubbish away man doesn't usually get to wear a hat so this is rather a fine example.

The smell is rather plain (pretty good in fact) but there's no sense of the bacon & cream cheese flavour. And the bite and crunch is fine. And what do they look like? Pretty normal for a crisp. Not very large but a good golden colour.

But oh dear. The 100% Great Taste, with 100% Natural Seasonings really isn't very nice at all. I do get the bacon taste on first bite but it's a bacon that's been sitting in the fridge for far too long and gone off. Yuk. The after-taste is better by far but after one crunch into that off-tasting crisp you don't want to attempt another. I did try several more because I was searching for the cream cheese. Couldn't find it.

Lucky thing these crisps were on special offer. Or could that be, no wonder these crisps were on special offer?  What a disappointment.

Red Sky crisps are made by Walkers, who of course are owned by PepsiCo. The packet encourages me to look at the website www.redskysnacks.co.uk where I can let Red Sky know what I think. No I can't. It's one page with a picture of the same red sunset and a postal address (as already spotted on the packet) and that's it. You even get this link on the PepsiCo site. PepsiCo also advise me I could have looked on Twitter or YouTube but I slightly lost the will to live. And no use looking on the Walkers website because that's all about Gary's Great Ingredient Hunt just now.

The Prince's Countryside Fund has quite an interesting website though.

There are two other Red Sky flavours that I've not tried yet but to be honest I'm not sure I really want to. Although I must admit I have always had my doubts about ham - and bacon is essentially a species of ham - as a flavouring for crisps. Perhaps I started in the wrong place? With the wrong flavour I mean. I don't know. Perhaps pioneering food writers (that's me!) must suffer for their art.

I do like the plane pulling the slogan along.


Verdict: surprisingly nasty. I wanted to like them but I couldn't.