That Voodoo That You Do So Well

Zapp's New Orleans Kettle Style VooDoo Heat

I picked up these at Potbelly's recently, and I'm really glad I did. I was a bit concerned because of the name - "Voodoo Heat" sounds like one of the Takis flavors that is intended to burn a hole in your stomach. I like spicy foods just fine but I also like them to have some flavor other than just HOT. Reassuringly, the guy behind the counter saw my selection and said it's his favorite flavor.

On opening the package I was greeted by a nice fragrance, both sweet and spicy. The chips have a good amount of color to them without it coming off on your fingers.

The taste of these is really quite good. It's a mix of barbecue, vinegar, and sweet that reminded me a bit of South Carolina barbecue chicken. There's a good amount of heat but it's not at all overpowering. I could eat a heck of a lot of them. In fact it's going to be hard to resist buying more even though I already have a bunch of other kinds of chips at home.

Rating: 5/5

Sweet Chilli of Life

Walkers Sensations Thai Sweet Chilli

We needed something to help us recover from the horrific ordeal of Tingly Prawn Cocktail, so we opened up this bag. Given the past performance by the Wizards of Walkers, I had no doubt that these chips would provide a pleasant experience. We were not disappointed.

While there was nothing really remarkable about these chips, aside from a notable afterburn, the flavor was still very nice. Most importantly, the flavor was also recognizable ... and in a good way. Slightly sweet, with a light chili pepper flavor and a burn that slowly built over time but was never overpowering.

Everyone liked them well enough, and three-year-old Evelyn polished off the bag. That being said, I'm not sure I'll remember them next week.

Rating: 3/5

A Cautionary Tale

Skips Tingly Prawn Cocktail

On Sunday I took another trip to Jungle Jim's (because I can) and, of course, I picked up several more bags of chips. Among them was a bag of "Skips Tingly Prawn Cocktail" caught my eye. Tingly, huh? The Walkers Prawn Cocktail had been ... interesting, but what the heck would make that "tingly"?

On opening the bag I was greeted ... no, assaulted ... by the odor of a pound of raw shrimp left in the trunk of a car for a week in July.  To paraphrase Chef, these don't have a fragrance that promises, they have a smell that threatens.

Dumping a few out, I discovered that they're not potato chips.

They're some kind of puffed, processed ... thing. Well, I like all sorts of processed things, so I might as well try these. How bad could they possibly be?

Answer: very. They taste almost exactly like they smell.

The weird part is that I ended up eating three or four of them. It wasn't because they were strangely compelling. It wasn't even because shock caused me to keep forgetting the experience of eating them. No, it was because I simply couldn't believe that they were really that awful. It was essentially the culinary equivalent of a double-take.

The maker of this fine product is KP Snacks, who describes Skips this way:

Playful by nature and fun to eat, Skips is the uniquely fizzy, light, melt in the mouth snack.  Forty years on, it's just as popular as ever, selling three bags every minute.  Best known for its legendary prawn cocktail flavour.

I can see why the flavor would be "legendary", after all the bubonic plague is legendary so why not.

I really don't get the "fizzy" aspect though. They didn't fizz at all for me. What they did do was melt, and in the exact same way as those ecologically friendly foam packing material pieces.  A quick check of the ingredients label explained why.

Skips are primarily tapioca starch. The dissolving packing foam is mostly corn starch.

These things really are just flavored foam packing material.

Um ... no, thank you.

Rating: 1/5

It's BACON!

Tayto Smoky Bacon

Bag five of the Jungle Jim's haul. I almost didn't buy this one because artificial bacon flavoring can be so over-the-top that I feel like I've been licking the floor of a smokehouse just before it was shut down by the health department.

This package turned out to be a pleasant exception. On opening, I was greeted by a light scent of bacon, but it wasn't even close to overpowering. In fact it was subtle enough that I actually sought it out. That gave me the necessary courage to actually eat the chips.

The taste was also pleasant and not too strong, and more importantly it was dead-on accurate. With the saltiness and crispiness of the chip the experience was surprisingly close to eating properly cooked bacon (which is to say, cooked until crisp enough that it will shatter - anyone who says they like floppy bacon is just plain nuts).

If I were inclined to like bacon-flavored stuff (rather than just eating actual bacon) I'd buy these regularly. As it is I quite enjoyed trying them.

The whole "BIG BAG" thing still bugs me. Just how small are regular bags of chips/crisps in Ireland?

Rating: 3/5

They didn't shrimp on flavor

Walkers Prawn Cocktail

Bag four of the (not so) big Jungle Jim's excursion. I'll admit to a little trepidation on this one. I'm a pretty adventurous eater, but something about the idea of shrimp flavored potato chips seems a bit ... iffy. Still, it's for science, right?

On opening the package I was greeted with a strong smell of cocktail sauce - notes of vinegar, ketchup, and a little horseradish in a reasonably pleasant mix. There was also a faint touch of fishiness that was similar to the one in the Wuster chips. That being said, it wasn't a bad smell though, so I continued undeterred.

The taste of the chips was pretty much all cocktail sauce, and pretty good at that. If I stuck my nose into the bag and inhaled deeply at the same time as eating one of the chips the flavor did shift into shrimp cocktail territory, but it didn't really last.

All of this would be good and fine, and I'd say this was a winner of a flavor ... if I hadn't stopped eating them. About a minute after I did though I started to get a strong shrimp aftertaste, and not a good one. It tasted like those precooked, frozen shrimp that you can buy at the grocery, half of which get eaten and the rest sit in a plastic bag for months getting freezer burn before being thawed, sniffed at, and thrown away.

Yeah, iffy.

Rating: 2/5

Wuster?

Tayto Wuster Sauce

Bag three of the Recent Jungle Jim's purchase, Tayto is a brand from  Northern Ireland (easily confused with Tayto Crisps in the Republic of Ireland which is a separate company).

By "Wuster Sauce" I assumed these were meant to be Worcestershire sauce flavored, and I was right. I was greeted with the smell of Worcestershire on opening the bag, and the taste was dead on right. The only iffy part of the experience was a slightly fishy odor from the package that I noticed after a few chips, though given the ingredients in Worcestershire sauce I suspect that's how it should be.

I was a bit amused at the "BIG" bag label. The package seemed like a typical size for a single portion. I'd hate to see a small bag.

I could eat a lot of these.

Rating: 4/5

ONION!

Walker's Pickled Onion

This is the second bag of chips from the (not so) wild shopping spree at Jungle Jim's. After having such a good experience with the ketchup chips, I thought I'd try another Walkers flavor.

On opening the bag I was greeted with a strong, but not unpleasant fragrance of vinegar. These things smell pretty much the same as every salt and vinegar chip I've ever had. I have to admit that this led me to expect disappointment - but it was not to be so.

With the very first chip there was a serious taste of onion. Not just any kind of onion either, but those little pearl onions. It was a taste I can only describe as "green". Oh, and by "serious taste of onion" I mean something along the lines of "my taste buds were just scolded to death by a potato chip for presuming they knew what an onion tasted like."

While these weren't bad, they're not something I would willingly eat a lot of. Kristen liked them, but then she didn't care for the ketchup chips, so ... well, actually I'm not sure what that means.

Rating: 3/5