Entree Barbecued Crispy Pork Classic Rock Extra Crunch

I'm afraid I am struggling with this crispy snack. I don't know who makes it and I'm not sure which parts of the English text on the packet should be included in the name.

Still a Student is back for a bit more holiday work and has just been to Thailand. She hasn't seen any of us for a year, and some of us not at all, so what does she do but bring us 6 packets of crisps. Amazing!

Anyway, knowing nothing about the Thai language or alphabet, I luckily stumbled on a website that will sell me this square crispy snack. Apparently it's made of pork, oh wait a bit... it actually says that on the packet. How silly of us not to notice.

That will interest Slightly Red-Haired Bristolian who said it reminded her of pork scratchings which she loves but can't eat (much too hard) and she really liked the taste. Graffiti Artist (the Chef's son-in-law and actually a Chef) was also reminded of pork scratchings, and pork crackling too.

And one of the reluctant tastes testers said the texture reminded her of skin. Now we can see why.

Apparently this snack is made by an old and trusted Thai firm called Sor Khonkaen  famed for their pork products. I hope the website I've found has got this right! I put that name into google translate to see it in Thai lettering but could not find anything similar on the packet.

Not sure I was made about his pork snack. Not sure we were prepared for it. To be honest I thought it looked more like a breakfast cereal than a crispy snack.

M&S Pork, Sage & Scrumpy Cider Hand Cooked

What an amazing flavour from a packet of crisps!

We know that M&S make extremely good crisps but you might suppose that pork flavour wouldn't work very well. Well, you'd be quite wrong. And so was I.

What we have here is roast pork, roast potatoes, sage and onion stuffing, and apple sauce. All packed into a bag of crisps using Taurus potatoes and the very highest in crisp flavour technology.

The crisps are a light golden colour with lots of tasty flavour dust showing salt and sugar crystals and tiny herby bits. Despite the lovely apple sauce flavour there are no apples in the recipe so I must suppose all this comes from the scrumpy cider. The hand cooking shows in the bubbles and the folds; these crisps do not look factory made (although obviously they must be).

Slightly to my surprise I really like these. Oh, you know. I'm never really quite sure about meat flavour crisps. Although I've found a few that work very well I have tried others which I thought quite unpleasant, not to say nasty.

The Chef thought they were "weird" and "odd" and didn't approve. The Chef's brother thought the taste seemed familiar but wasn't at all sure about it. I don't think he was very impressed either.

I still think this is a great crisp. And I ate too many of them.

Not suitable for vegetarians or anyone who doesn't want to eat pork.

Walkers Pulled Pork in a Sticky BBQ Sauce

Another exotic and unusual crisp from the Walkers Do Us a Flavour range. Pulled pork in a sticky BBQ sauce: flavour with pork from Norfolk. Wow: it actually has genuine pork in the recipe. I get so fed up with crisp flavours that sound suitable for carnivores but are actually vegetarian. So, not suitable for vegetarians.

Quite a strong barbecue flavour and not a bad taste if you like that sort of thing. Which you'll know I don't really. There's a sort of sticky sweet flavour, and a smokey barbecue thing, but guess what? I really never noticed there was actual meat involved. You might suppose one would notice - but no.

As we know, Walkers are running a Do us a Flavour vote on six different new flavours. You can read about this here, and about Paul, who thought this flavour would be a great idea.

I have to say I'm not convinced. But then (a) I'm not mad for "BBQ" flavour, and (b) I seem to be the only person in Britain who has avoided eating a "pulled" something over the last year. Almost everywhere you go food is pulled. Which, and it took me just ages to discover this, means that it has been cooked really slowly so that you can pull it apart with forks. After all these centuries developing knife technology we have to eat food pulled apart with a fork now?

Well, you know, they're not disgusting or anything. But I really wouldn't bother buying them again. Sorry Paul.