Tesco Finest Limited Edition Sweet Potato with Cheese Fondue Hand Cooked Vegetable Crisps

Oh dear. What was Mr Tesco thinking?

Tall Elegant taste tester and I took a snap decision to throw these sweet potato crisps away before the rest of the reluctant taste testers had the chance to try. Noble Friend smelled the overpowering... I really hardly know how to describe it... and didn't try to stop us.

These crisps had a far too strong would-be-cheesy taste, and an aroma that pervaded half the office before we had a chance to stop it. And a frankly horrible taste not far off soap. Let’s just say we were very unimpressed. Oh dear.

Tall Elegant taste tester was much more polite than me: she didn't open up the bin and spit hers out.

I’ve got to say that I had my doubts about this flavour when I saw the packet but I wasn’t expecting it to be quite so nasty. Perhaps a lucky escape for all of us that this was a limited edition flavour.

The Chef's brother (not technically my brother-in-law but you get the picture) gave me this packet of crisps for Christmas. Impressive! One of the very nastiest crisps the reluctant taste testers and I have tried.

We spend quite a lot of time in Switzerland (lucky us) and have fondue quite often. It never tastes like this.

Co-op Fine Foods Vegetable Chips

When the Chef & I were in Switzerland we were invited to supper with a French (actually from Alsace so possibly German) friend and her son who is half Corsican. Both of them spend a lot of time in Switzerland, and both of them spend a lot of time in Peru where they run trekking holidays which I suspect are not for the faint hearted or the dilettante tourist. And I wouldn't be able to cope at all because so much of Peru is very high and I am not at my best at altitude.

If you had asked me to name anyone who wouldn't eat crisps I would have bet on Alsatian friend. And I would have been quite wrong. Because she introduced us to a fine packet of vegetable crisps from the Co-op. And very nice too.

In fact, not just very nice but delicious. Once again I'll remind you that I don't normally buy vegetable crisps as potato crisps keep me plenty busy, but in this case I think I would make an exception. And anyway the Chef liked them so much he went out and bought 2 more packets so we could try them again.

Parsnip (weirdly called panais in French), sweet potato, carrot and beetroot.  And I enjoyed them all. As always a duller crunch than you get from a potato crisp but not too dull, and really, very tasty.

Pret a Manger Vegetable Crisps Parsnip, Sweet Potato & Beetroot

I don't normally buy vegetable crisps because there are simply so many potato snacks of all kinds that life seems too short to branch out into vegetable snacks. I mean, I've posted about 800 mostly potatoey crispy snacks. Seriously 800? That seems an awful lot doesn't it?

Yup. Just boasting. And you know what? I really haven't scratched the surface of available crispy snacks.

Well, I may not buy vegetable based crispy snacks but Tall Elegant taste tester doesn't follow my rules and she picked up this packet when she rushed out to Brent Cross at lunchtime. You've got to eat lunch after all, and I was pleased to try a sample of her choice.

I think I tried a bit of parsnip. It was wonderfully tasty. Nicely crunchy and pleasantly salted. Very nice indeed. And Tall Elegant taste tester thought this was a pretty good packet of (not actually) crisps.

Pret a Manger crisps are usually vepppaand (what do you suppose my iPad meant here? I have forgotten what I wrote yesterday and am quite baffled at this weird word!) Tall Elegant taste tester and I decided this was no exception. (No. No clue what we decided.)

Well, baffled by the above I may be, but there's still time to tell you that the packaging here is tip top. Very simple, very clever. Very handsome snail.

Dao Fruits Mixed Fruit Chips

Yes, I know. Not my usual territory, but this packet was brought home from the Far East by Tall Elegant taste tester who has been away for a couple of weeks.

This snack was provided by Lao Airlines and included banana, jackfruit, sweet potato, pumpkin, taro, and pineapple. I'm not convinced that sweet potato is a fruit but I'm not going to argue with the manufacturers.

The packet suggests you could try this snack at home. At tea time. On a picnic. Or outdoors. Which is weird considering the packet also says quite plainly "Lao Airlines"! Outdoors? On the wing perhaps? Maybe they just expect you to stuff it into your hand luggage and take it away to eat in a jungle.

The reluctant taste testers and I did not get to try this fruity snack as Tall Elegant taste tester ate it on her Lao Airlines flight. But it was handsome of her to bring the packet home for posterity.

I asked her if these fruit chips were good and she said yes. Yes, very nice, really really nice. She was very impressed with them. So fly Lao Airlines then for the highly recommended fruit chips.

"Dirty" All Natural Potato Chips Gourmet Medley

So this little 1.5 oz (42.5g) bag of crisps was kindly donated by a dear friend (known to everyone who knows me as) Lynn from Buffalo. Even though she doesn't exactly live there any more. And they survived the trip in her suitcase pretty well.

And the crisps were super-kindly donated to her by the lovely lady (who I have never met and she's not met me) who runs Lodgical in Hamburg NY. Which was very thoughtful and generous of her.

I gather these crisps were sourced in the Adirondacks (forgive me if I've got this wrong), and the "Dirty" Potato Chips firm seems to be based in Gramercy, Louisiana; Oxnard, California; and Hanover Township, Pennsylvania.

"Dirty" potato chips are kettle cooked one batch at a time and use premium, all natural ingredients for a crunchier tastier chip says the packaging. We thank you for purchasing "Dirtys". The Chip Master.

The gourmet medley is made with a blend of white, blue, sweet and russet potatoes. Flavoured with nothing at all but sea salt and cooked in sunflower oil.

It's a selection of simple, lightly salted crisps, and the four different kinds of potato make for a really interesting bag of crisps. The different potatoes seem to give a different size crisp, and of course a different colour and taste too. Which makes this little bag just a bit different from most. I'm not trying them with a dip although I imagine that would work very well.

And why "Dirty"? They don't wash all the goodness of the potato slices. Which I suppose means they wash the earth off the potatoes, but not the starch off the sliced potatoes. Which gives a better flavour. Or so they say.

If you never eat anything but the fancier flavours of crisp these might seem a little dull. And goodness knows I try enough crazy flavours. But actually, these are rather good if you give them a chance. I think I might be in danger of eating too many. I keep thinking, mmn... I'm not sure about these.... and then I eat a couple more, try a different colour, and maybe another. So I guess they kind of creep up on you.

I've read about other "Dirty" products on Taquitos.net but they don't seem to have tried this particular product. And you can check out the "Dirty" website here. I'd like to try another flavour.

M&S Summer of Flavour Purple & Orange Sweet Potato Crisps

I think I need to rein back on the trying weird crisps. There just seem to be so many new not-potato (un-potato?) crisps around at the moment. Many of them part of M&S's Summer of Flavour which also seems to be a great big campaign to encourage more colourful eating which is supposed to be so good for you.

Well, I suppose that's all very fine but I don't think I'm convinced. I really think I prefer real potatoes. I like the taste, the texture, the crunch...

So anyway, here we have a small bag (55g) of sweet potato crisps.

Obviously I know about sweet potatoes being orange. But purple? Really?

Parade.condenast.com calls them a flavourful lavender cousin of the familiar orange variety and directed me to this exciting sweet potato ice cream recipe from Sea Salt with Food. Apart from the fact that the recipe uses cups which I can never get my head around, it does sound rather good and simple to make. I had been thinking about investigating ice cream makers because we go to this amazing restaurant in Italy which has the most fabulous lavender ice cream. It would be fun to try making lavender ice cream, so why not sweet potato while we are about it? Which brings me around in a lavender-coloured circle.

Back to the crisps. I wasn't that impressed. The crunch is very hard, the crisps themselves are very very orange and extremely purple, and the "seasoned with sea salt to bring out the flavour" isn't really salty enough for my taste.

On the other hand other people liked them a lot more than I did and the family vegetarian finished the packet in double quick time.

I am a bit bothered that the packet contains only 71% sweet potatoes. And then sunflower oil and salt. That's it. So 29% is made up of what? There cannot be all that much salt on these not very salty crisps: the bag says 0.34g. The NHS recommends no more than 6g per day for adults so the salt content seems not too bad. But the fat? 15.5g in each packet which is 22% of the recommended daily intake. It seems like a lot more than I was expecting. Maybe I need to read this sort of information more carefully in future.

What bothers me about this is not that I can read the "these crisps really aren't very good for you" information. But that they look a lot better for you than the average packet of salt & vinegar potato crisps. And they don't seem to be after all.

Not really for me. But eaten enthusiastically by others.

Update: fresh new packaging for summer 2015. Doesn't it make last year's design look old fashioned?
These crisps still look pretty but they still have rather a hard crunch. The reluctant taste testers snapped them up but I am still not convinced.