Tiger Sour Cream

This is a brown bag of potato chips with sour cream flavour. Enjoy:-) says the packet.

Tiger, or now they seem to have changed the name to Flying Tiger, sells all sorts of things you didn’t know you needed or maybe didn’t even know existed. I gather it’s a great place for craft supplies or cuddly cacti (yup! Just what you never knew you needed). And apparently sometimes they sell crisps.

Which are very tasty. Tech taste tester was a big fan. He said he really loves sour cream as a crisp flavour. I have to say I didn’t think this crisp tasted of sour cream, it’s more of a very gentle cheese and onion flavour.

Sour cream usually has that strange breathy effect. These crisps don't.

No matter. It’s a very tasty crisp and the reluctant taste testers were pleased to approve. Even Senior taste tester (he’s very picky). A nice crunch too. It’s a good quality crisp.

I bought wooden pig-shaped gift tags as well as a packet of crisps.

Lorenz PomSticks Sour Cream flavour

Tech taste tester says he doesn’t like fiddly little crispy snacks it’s hard to pick up. And you can’t deny this is a packet full of very small crispy sticks that are quite hard to pick out of the bowl. Or packet.

Tech taste tester did his best with the shape and ate quite a few because he enjoyed the taste. Because this is a tasty little snack. And then Cliffs of Moher taste tester said she thought they taste of cream of tomato soup. Really? Pretty specific don’t you think? I sampled several little sticks carefully thinking about this strange pronouncement. And decided she’s quite wrong. However, if you are a big fan of cream of tomato soup, don’t let me put you off. Or if you’re not.

I really don’t agree with the cream of tomato soup but I don’t think you get a particularly strong sour cream flavour either. There are herbs involved. Nice light crunch too,

And you know, you do get your money's worth with a packet of little sticks like this. Because they’re so little they can be packed close together without the gaps you get in a packet of larger snacks. I remember eating similarly small chip sticks when I was quite small. And they do suit little fingers. I know these days people choose snacks made especially for very little children (many with very little taste due to the lack of salt) but if that isn’t an issue for you I should think this would be a great choice for slightly older children.

Osem Apropo Sour Cream Flavour Corn Snack

So thanks to the wonderful resource that is google translate (although obviously it's not totally reliable) and a handy blog post I discovered from Daniela at  Isreveiw1, I have been able to translate something about this crispy snack in the privacy of my own home. The Isreview1 blog is about a different flavour bugle shaped snack from Osem, in fact Daniela seems to have reviewed two other flavours, but it shoved me in what I think it is the right direction. So that was a great help.

Thanks very much to Daniela although she doesn't seem to have posted anything since 2014 so perhaps she won't notice. (And how annoying! I see LinkWithin works on Isreview1 but has completely stopped working on this blog and I have no idea why.)

Anyway, I deduce that this crispy snack is made by Osem but as almost the whole of the text on this packet in in the hebrew alphabet (plus a little in arabic script) it was quite hard to tell.

And thanks to google translate (and Daniela)  I know it is a maize snack. It's hard for the non-reader of Hebew to be sure because the typeface on the packet is different from that offered by google. But luckily the Osem website comes in an English version. A savoury cone-shaped snack it says. Apropos has a delicate taste and a crispy texture and contains no cholesterol or preservatives. Thanks to its unique shape it has become the number one entertainment snack in Israel, alongside dips and spreads, but is also popular as a personal snack.

OK. What's a personal snack I wonder?

And the reluctant taste testers tested the crispiness so I can confirm that crispy is correct. And it's probably a corn snack although you can't really tell from the taste. But I'm really not at all certain what the flavour is meant to be. It looks as though it should be sour cream (see the packet) but you can't taste sour cream. And why doesn't the website have anything to say about the flavour? It really doesn't. Not helpful.

Noble Friend opined that this crispy snack tasted a little bit sweet, a little bit salty and a little bit nothing at all. But nonetheless a little bit tasty and moreish. (A little bit country, a little bit rock and roll perhaps?) But I could see what she meant. The Chef thought it tasted of nothing at all. But both of them ate quite a few.

So oddly tasteless in a strange way but quite a success.

Oh, and today is the 80th birthday of television. So let's all celebrate that amazing fact. And the first TV show was broadcast not 5 miles (not exactly sure how far it is, but not very far) from where the Chef and I live, at a place called Alexandra Palace. All us locals call it Ally Pally. Amazing eh?

Zweifel Wave Chips Sour Cream Flavour

This packet of crisps from Swiss crisp giant Zweifel  was ferried home by the Chef last time he drove back to London.

A couple of the taste testers said they weren't at all sure about Sour Cream as a flavour for crispy snacks but then it turned out that we all liked this crinkle cut crisp quite a lot. Very tasty.

Interestingly at first glance this crisp looks almost exactly the same as the previous crisp the reluctant taste testers and I tried: Tesco Finest Hand Cooked West Country Cream Cheese & Roasted Herb Crisps. And then we tried them.

And we really did like these crisps. Very tasty, great crunch (still not sure whether I would really say this crisp is "extra crunchy"), and a very nice taste.

The reluctant taste testers recommend this crisp.

Migros Jumpy's Sour Cream

Here's a new flavour of the fabulous kangaroo-shaped crispy snack from Germany. And I only just noticed it isn't spelled Jumpys but Jumpy's. And oh no! I failed to photograph them.

Oh well. That's not the end of the world. You can see roughly what they look like here in my 2013 first encounter with Jumpys. Except add in a sprinkling of little herby bits on each tiny kangaroo. There are some larger than life images on the packaging too.

If we buy them again I can add a photograph later.

And in fact it was quite interesting looking back. Because the first packet of Jumpys doesn't have an  apostrophe. I wonder why that was changed? Plus, that crispy snack was made by Chio. These Jumpy's today seem to be made by Migros.

So Migros is a Swiss (and French) supermarket chain but I can't discover this product on their website. And in any case I'm pretty sure this packet was bought at a Co-op (which is a different Swiss supermarket). Truly the world of crispy snacks can be confusing at times.

Der Kartoffel-Snack mit Sauerrahm-Geschmack, der auf der Zunge hüpft! The sour cream flavoured potato snack that jumps on your tongue! And despite being made in Germany the packet features all the info you need in German, French and Italian; all the major Swiss languages.

Very tasty for a miniature kangaroo-shaped snack although I think I prefer the original Sunny Paprika flavour.

Oh look at that. The Chef just admitted to having a small stash of Jumpy's. So here's the photograph. Each little kangaroo is about 25 x 27 mm (toe to tail x height). That's about an inch not at all square.

Roger's Hand Cooked Sour Cream & Onion

Let's step away from M&S for a moment (even though they do make a lovely range of crisps) and try a brand which is new to the Chef and me.

We found these Belgian crisps from Roger's in the wonderful basement food department at Globus in Bern. I could have gone quite mad and bought up half the shop but had to restrict myself slightly as we were going home by train. As it turned out, the train was very crowded with both commuters and people taking their families away for the weekend and there wasn't really much room for such limited shopping as we had.

Anyway, it was interesting to find Belgian crisps. I'm sure I've not tried any before. And interesting to find that the front of the packaging is all in English.

But on the back. Oh my goodness. The ingredients are in 23 different languages. Including Finnish, Czech and Hungarian. Another great way to learn a language. Who knew that brambůrky was Czech for potato crisp?

On to the crisps... which are a pale golden, slightly strewn with tiny herbs, and with the skin left on. Rather a hard crunch but not in a bad way. A good lot of tasty flavour dust and a very nice way of looking hand cooked with many of the crisps folded over or featuring a large bubble.

The onion is not too harsh and the sour cream works extremely well. All in all a very nice crisp. I liked them a lot, and the Chef (always more reserved in his opinions) agreed that they are quite nice.

But really! My predictive text has gone a little mad today. I typed onion. The computer thought lion would be better. I typed pale golden. I got apple golden. Which could be a good description but not in this case.

So I thought you'd like know we rather liked these lion and sour cream crisps.

Kettle Chips Sweet Chilli & Sour Cream

I've been looking for this crisp flavour for ages because of this wonderful wicker work and corn dolly advertisement. It's such a great ad I had to find the crisps so that I could post it. Never mind the crisps; look at the effort the advertising agency went to. I love it. You can read about Stella Harding the basketry artist here.

I've never done any basket weaving, but a million years ago I used to know how to make corn dollies (like the chillies). Well, I had a great-aunt who lived in darkest Suffolk surrounded by cornfields and a moat and a windmill, and somehow I learned how. Although I'd be pushed to build a corn dolly these days it might come back to me.

Living in a moated house sounds romantic doesn't it? Let me assure you there were many many mosquitoes.

And there was the time that one of my little cousins threw his mother's wedding ring into the moat. Oh the drama! You never saw so much mud in your life. They found the ring though.

Anyway, to the crisps. I took this 150g packet (which according to the packet is 5 servings) to work and set out a bowlful in the kitchen. And they were very popular. Two of the taste testers were particularly enthusiastic.

The chilli flavour is quite gentle for all there's a lot of flavour dust, but then there's a nice aftertaste of mild to medium heat. It would be a good introduction for anyone who never tried a chilli flavour crisp before.

Kettle Chips are always good quality with a terrific crunch, sliced a little bit thicker than many crisps, and usually with a good golden colour. And they keep producing new flavours which are mostly not too complicated. By which I mean not made from 400 different ingredients, or named to sound like a dish at a five-star restaurant.

We liked these, and would probably eat them again, but in my opinion this Sweet Chilli & Sour Cream flavour isn't going to set the world on fire. Which sounds as though I am damning them with faint praise. No not really. Only somehow, for me,  they don't have that extra special something.

Kettle Chips Sour Cream & Sweet Onion

I had hoped for something more interesting but basically what we have here is cheese and onion flavour.

It's a bit of a disappointment really. Especially as (and this shouldn't make a difference but it does) the packet is such a pretty colour.

I know. The fact that the packet is such a lovely green shouldn't influence they way I look at a packet of crisps. Don't judge a book by its cover etc etc. But I was led astray.

So there we are.

The aroma is really lovely, the crisps have a good crunch, the sour cream does that weird thing at the back of your palate (don't ask me how - it just kind of does), and the sweet onion is very sweet.

But the after taste is pretty much cheese and onion. True, it's a gentle cheese and onion but a bit sweeter than usual. Suitable for vegetarians, absolutely nothing artificial.

Not bad. Really, there is nothing whatever the matter with these crisps, but not very special. The reluctant taste testers and I were not that impressed. Sorry Kettle Chips.

Great packet though. Love the green!

Chio Oven Chips Sour Cream

As far as I can tell (reading the packaging) these crisps are made in Germany. So why the product description "Oven Chips Sour Cream" is in English is anyone's guess.

Chio is owned by Intersnack and judging from the ingredients list Chio products are available  in Germany, France, Italy, Slovenia, Romania, Hungary, Croatia and Bosnia, and Bulgaria. But not Britain. Which is a shame because they're rather tasty. And I can't help feeling that the residents of Slovenia, Romania, Hungary etc etc would not object to the product description being in German.

Weirdly it looks as though you can buy this Intersnack product almost all over Europe except in the UK or (for some reason) Slovakia. I say for some reason when it comes to Slovakia but not for the UK because I am accustomed to almost everything about the UK being different for some silly reason. And mostly we wish it wasn't different. But there we are.

Ah.... it seems Intersnack has a special brand, or perhaps brands, for Slovakia. But I can't seem to access the Slovakian part of their website. So no further information available on this gripping fact I'm afraid.

Anyhow, this is a rather good fine crinkle cut crisp with a light sprinkling of little green herby bits (parsley and chives). The crisps themselves are, just as shown on the packaging, mostly not very crisp-shaped. It's quite an odd shape which doesn't look like a slice of potato, and in fact, as these are made from potato starch and maize starch there really is no reason why they shouldn't be a completely fake shape.

A very good flavour crisp that tastes just like a top quality sour cream and chive dip. Recommended.

Keogh’s Shamrock & Sour Cream

St Patrick's Day is approaching fast, so what better way to celebrate than with a packet of shamrock flavour crisps?

Shamrock flavour? Yes, really. And the shamrock is grown by the master shamrock growers (if that's a job description) who supply fresh Irish shamrocks to the President of the United States, and have done since 1952. Well, obviously you can't expect the President to manage without proper Irish shamrocks, can you? You can see President Obama accepting his shamrocks here.

I've not tried Keogh's crisps before but these seem rather good. Reasonably sized crisps with a good crunch, not too many breakages, plenty of flavour although most of it is sour cream with a hearty dollop of onion and garlic. As for the shamrock: well, to be honest I have no clue what shamrock is supposed to taste of. There does seem to be a faint aftertaste of that stuff they force on you in Chinese restaurants, you know, the seaweed stuff. I've always thought it terribly dull. Who wants deep fried cabbage anyway? There are plenty of nicer ways to eat it. (Yes, yes, I know; lots of people order it on purpose.) Anyhow, there seems to be a very faint taste of cabbage in the background if you concentrate very very hard so maybe that's the shamrock.

I took the bag in to work so the reluctant taste testers could try this unusual flavour. Most of them won't actually admit to liking them very much but I notice they managed to eat almost an entire packet. Several people said they thought the shamrock was a fiction "who on earth eats shamrock?" they asked, and in one case "what is shamrock?".

Some of the taste testers suggested the crisps are possibly cheese and onion in disguise. Although extremely nice cheese and onion. And I see that, along with the onion and garlic, there is cheddar in the list of ingredients. Parsley too, which may be the little herby bits. Where the Irish shamrock extract goes I don't know. Suitable for vegetarians though, and not chock full of MSG and other chemicals.

Keogh's is a family firm based in County Dublin. The family has been growing potatoes for over 200 years and now they are hand cooking Ireland's finest crisps on their farm. My packet of crisps was made from Lady Rose potatoes grown in a field called Ballamadun which I can pin point using the handy Spud Nav™ on the website and you can too. And my crisps were cooked by Darren. Thank you Darren.

I bought these crisps from the World Foods section in my local Tescos. Who knew Irish groceries would be sold alongside a selection of Polish or Caribbean foods?

And for those of you who really don't know, the shamrock is the national symbol of Ireland and is of course worn with pride on the feast of St Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, which is celebrated around the world on 17th March.

Shamrock

Pringles Xtra Kickin' Sour Cream & Onion

"Uma explosão de sabor", "Barstensvol smaak", "Une explosion de saveurs", "Wybuchowy ładunek smaku" and sadly I cannot find a cyrillic font so you don't get what is either Russian or Bulgarian. Sorry about that.

I haven't bought a tube (can?) of Pringles for ages. I quite like Pringles but I always have this weird idea you have to put them into your mouth whole. I have no trouble biting into other kinds of crisp if they are too large to fit in all at once, but for some reason I have this thing about not biting into a Pringle. Only they are quite big. My mouth isn't really large enough - maybe I mean wide enough -  to fit in a whole Pringle comfortably so I struggle them in and hope I'm not going to cut the corners of my mouth. Which I have done in the past.

I know they are specially manufactured like this to fit neatly into the tube and thus prevent the usual breakages, but who has a mouth this wide? Why not make them a bit smaller, the tube a bit narrower? OK, yes, it's only me isn't it?

So anyhow, I tried this, er, "kickin'" flavour out of interest. And you know what? I have the same trouble with the size of the Pringle and the apparent smallness of my mouth, but this favour is rather fabulous.

It starts out all sour creamy (which is interesting as all the other creamy flavours I've tried have kept the cream taste to the end), and then there's the onion, and then there's a great kick of.... something hot. The list of ingredients includes the somewhat vague "flavourings". But the drawing on the front of the tube shows onion, spring onion and chilli. So I guess the kickin' part of the flavour is probably chilli. The real problem, of course, is that so much of the Pringle flavour comes from chemicals and not from real ingredients. Nowadays so many varieties of crisp trumpet the virtue of their real ingredients so a crispy snack crammed full of MSG is rather a disappointment.

I am interested to see that in French this savoury snack is an aperitif. Which to the English mind is a drink. Here I guess it is a crispy snack to go with a drink, although what drink I'm not sure; the taste is kickin' enough to defeat most drinks.

Pringles come in a number of weird flavours and this Huffington Post article has some very strange ones for us to consider. Read about them here. Old American Circus flavour anyone? I know. It makes sour cream and onion sound dreadfully pedestrian.

I mustn't forget to tell you that this crispy snack gives an Intense Xperience and is "Bursting with Flavour" which is pretty much correct. I think they taste pretty good. But I also think that all that MSG, disodium guanylate and disodium inosinate cannot be a good thing. Oh, and I never knew Pringles belonged to Kellogg's. did you? Yup. Proctor & Gamble sold the brand to Kellogg's in 2012. And these Pringles were made in Belgium.

Walkers Sunbites Sour Cream (and cracked black pepper) Flavour

Walkers Sunbites are obviously Walkers' healthy option crispy snacks. In fact, they are multigrain crispy snacks and you can't go wrong with multigrain. Especially not 67% wholegrain (unless you are allergic to corn, wheat or oats) which makes them irresistibly crispy. Or so says the packet.

I have to admit they are very tasty. Somehow, and I'm not sure how, Sunbites taste much healthier than most crispy snacks, but there's no denying they are very good. In fact, I was pushed not to finish this 28g packet all at once.

Somehow these are quite different from other crispy snacks. You can see on the packet that they are wavy (not at all like a crinkle crisp) and all speckled with (presumably) the multigrains. I expect the pretty little grasses on the packet are the much-vaunted multigrains but I do hope that the ingredients do not include butterflies or small singing birds Probably not.

• Tiny moments of extraordinary pleasure. 
• Natural flavours that charm your taste buds.
• We insist that Sunbites are made using no artificial colours. flavours or preservative. Insisting on this seems odd - it's as though Walkers are having trouble with argumentative factory workers who want to make Sunbites with artificial ingredients. However, they still manage to make these crisps suitable for vegetarians and with 30% less fat. Although, I can't help wondering 30% less than what exactly?

And once again the mysterious Walkers department for throwing rubbish away in a responsible fashion has come up with a healthy little person throwing their packet away. I suppose it's a healthy person because he/she has a sort of coronel or tiara thingy like the rays of Sunbite sunshine.

As with other sour cream flavour crispy snacks I found the sour cream difficult to identify. But they are very moreish and I would try them again... if I ever get to the bottom of my giant bag of crisps waiting to be tasted that is.

Thanks very much to The Family Vegetarian and the Graffiti Artist for sending a packet of Sour Cream Sunbites as part of my birthday present.

Kettle Tortilla Chips Cool Sour Cream

I wasn't quite sure I liked these on first try.

Perhaps they don't go terribly well with the Prosecco I felt was a good accompaniment to building and decorating the Christmas tree. Perhaps I needed to go away and think about it.

Anyhow, on second thoughts these are rather good. Naomi appeared to eat a fair number. And Terry likes them too.

So what have we got? Good crunchy orangey tortilla chips with quite a lot of purplish black bits. Reading the list of ingredients I'm not sure if these dark spots are red and green peppers or black pepper or what. But the chips have a good hot zing at the same time as a lovely cool creamy taste.

Not sure I could indentify the dill though. Dill features in the ingredients and on the package so it must be there somewhere. Pity I couldn't spot it in the taste because I like dill.

But, just as it says on the back of the package, you really can taste the corn. So all in all a good tasty crunch. Which works very well indeed with a sour cream and chive dip. Yum.

I'm not mad for tortilla chips but these are rather good. And I really like the packaging. It's a good green.

M&S Sour Cream & Red Onion Hand Cooked

Yes, I know. I just can't stop trying Marks and Spencer crisps.

This is partly because there is a great big branch just up the road from where I work. And partly because they make some really good crisps. I mean, the Sea Salt & Lemon Vinaigrette is a sensational flavour and the Spicy Tomato is top quality too: both are also from the Hand Cooked range.

So here we are again, this time trying the Sour Cream and Red Onion. Some people out there sneer at "own brand" crisps calling them knocks offs or copies. Who cares? I tried these because I thought they'd be tasty. And they are.

I never like it when you buy a burger and it comes with a totally unnecessary salad made up of three lettuce leaves, a quarter of a tasteless tomato and two slices of red onion. That red onion is much too strong to eat. But here we have a recognisable red onion taste in a crisp. But it's not so strong as the real thing. Luckily. I'm guessing that the onion taste is toned down by the sour cream but I can't detect any sour cream taste at all.

What I do get is a sort of breath of sour cream at the back of my palate. A gentle reminder that there's sour cream in there somewhere. And it works very well. This is another great crisp from the M&S crisp development department (I wonder how many people work there?); great crunch, good to see the skin from the Hermes potatoes left on, and a good lot of flavour which tastes good but doesn't shout at you.

And I like the packaging. Another top design from the M&S packaging department.

Top marks all round. Unless you really don't like onion.

Propercorn Sour Cream & Chive Popcorn

I think I made a mistake trying these guilt free snacks (that's what they call themselves on the bag). Well, I don't get guilty when I eat crisps and cheesy snacks because I don't eat masses of sweets or biscuits. And I'm definitely not going to feel guilty about these because I'm not going to eat them.

When I opened the bag the smell was ice cream cone. You know, the thin crispy cornet thing. Why should popcorn smell of that?

I love salty popcorn, and butter is a great flavour too, and you can't beat yummy toffee popcorn. So why don't I like these?

They are far too oniony for me and there's a weird after-taste of washing up liquid. Which lasted ages! And I really wasn't sure I could detect the sour cream. So I'm not impressed.

Also, you know that at the top of the packet you get lots of fluffy white exploded corn but the more you eat the heavier, less exploded kernels with more of the hard bits of corn skin take over. And the hard bits of skin do stick at the back of your throat if you aren't careful. So I was unpleasantly surprised to find quite a lot of hard bits at the top of this packet. Maybe I'm being very picky (surely not?) or maybe the bag was stored upside down. But combined with a taste I wasn't keen on... well; it didn't help.

Anyway, I asked Ruth to try one to see if she agreed with me but she likes them. And she's going to take the packet home and finish them off. In fact, I think she said they had a road trip tonight and she was planning to take the despised popcorn as a snack. Well, it's good to know somebody likes it! I'll be interested to see if Sam likes it too.

So, here's the science bit: 89 calories per serving, high in fibre, wheat free (so I should hope), suitable for veggies. And made in Britain. With roasted onions as well as chives. And crème fraiche as well as sour cream. Hmn...

Well I'm sorry Cassandra; they aren't for me.

I quite like the green packet and the little drawing of chives and sour cream and the joined up writing like an old-fashioned Barbar book. But I don't think the green goes any too well with the photograph of popcorn.

Seems like a good idea but I'm not sure this flavour works for me. However, I gather that Ruth and Sam happily ate the rest of the packet while stuck in traffic on the M1 and no sinister after-taste. So that's just me then.

M&S Sour Cream & Onion Pitta Chips

I have to admit right from the start that I'm not mad keen on these pitta chips from Marks & Spencer. They seem very hard - perhaps they're meant to be hard but that doesn't seem such a good thing - and once you get past the seasoning it's a little like eating one of those famously hard biscuits, the Bath Oliver. Never had a Bath Oliver? What about a Rich Tea? Both of them taste of nothing but plain biscuit with a hard crunch. Bath Olivers definitely win in the hardness stakes although they are rather more buttery. (There is a Chocolate Oliver biscuit which has a very thick layer - very hard - of dark chocolate over the plainness that is the Bath Oliver. Rather good. You can nibble the chocolate off so you don't actually have to eat the biscuit if you don't want.)

These crisps are supposed to be square. Or squarish. The top (or front) is shiny and toasted, with a scattering of onion flavouring. The bottom/back looks like badly toasted bread. In my packet the square chips were few and far between. It seemed that many of them were broken which was a shame.

The oniony part of the flavour seems to be mostly on the shiny toasty top. So that all gets licked off at once. Then when you bite there is a waft of sour creaminess which is quite an interesting sensation - and a good taste. And then there's all the dry biscuityness.

Apparently they are baked with genuine pitta flour. Yes? So how come pitta bread isn't all dry and biscuity?

I find online that you can buy pitta chips made by a company called New York Style. They appear to be an American company although it is very difficult to tell from their website: they have no address or any other details. The only thing that makes me fairly sure is the recipes which feature cups. English recipes never feature cups as a scale of measurement.

Perhaps Marks & Spencer sent their product testing team to the USA and brought back a suitcase full of pitta chips and thought it a good idea to develop their own? On this evidence I'm not certain that was such a top plan.

So. Really hard and rather dry and biscuity.
Not nearly enough flavour, although I like the onion a lot.

Unless this is what pita chips are always like I feel this is a missed opportunity to introduce the UK to something tasty and new. I left these a week and went back and tried again. No. Sorry. Not worth the effort.

And seriously, if pitta chips are all like this, the question is why?