Popchips Sea Salt & Vinegar

Product name: Popchips Sea Salt & Vinegar
Purchase details: £0.99 for an 85g bag (tesco.com)
Calories: 94 per 23g serving (349 per bag)
Country of origin: Europe

It’s time for me to try another flavour of Popchips from my stash: Sea Salt & Vinegar.

These chips were the same concept again as the Barbeque and Original varieties but, this time, the packaging was a gorgeous shade of turquoise.

The bag contained 3.5+ servings of 18 chips which featured ‘the tangiest pairing of flavours since, well, ever!’ and these discs had a very strong, tingly vinegar scent that went right up the nose...I quite liked it in a weird kind of way!

Interestingly, the flavour wasn’t as strong as the scent had suggested. The base flavour was very much like Popchips Original, but much less salty, and this was well-balanced with the barley malt vinegar which had a cooling effect, lifted the flavour, but wasn’t overpowering and didn’t sting the lips. In relation to more traditional salt and vinegar crisps, these had a much starchier taste, as well as the same enjoyable texture as the other Popchips I’ve reviewed.

I found these Popchips Sea Salt & Vinegar to be another great part of the range and I can’t wait to tuck into the smaller bags that Popchips kindly sent me recently!

Appearance: 7.5/10
Aroma: 7/10
Taste: 7.5/10
Texture: 8/10
Overall score: 7.5/10

Popchips Original

Product name: Popchips Original
Purchase details: £0.99 for an 85g bag (tesco.com)
Calories: 95 per 23g serving (351 per bag)
Country of origin: Europe

Since it’s been nearly a year since my first and only review of Popchips, to date, I thought it was about time I cracked on with some of the other flavours! For this post, I will be going back to basics with the Original variety.

These Popchips came in a cool blue bag that had the same overall style as the Barbeque version. However, this was a bigger packet that was supposed to contain at least 3.5 servings of around 19 chips. I’m sorry, but I didn’t get the point of that – surely it would be better to make it serve either three or four rather than somewhere in the middle? (I had enough spare calories for the whole pack but that wasn’t the point!)

Issues of logic aside, I was really quite keen to get tucked into these. The discs looked the same as the Barbeque ones, too, but without the red powder. I also found my mouth watering, once more, at the smell of the crisps – it was surprisingly powerful despite essentially just smelling of salt and potato! There also seemed to be a slight oily element to this which may have been down to the sunflower oil they’d been popped in.

Unlike Walkers Pops: Original, these chips were simply flavoured with sea salt and contained no additional flavourings. For that reason, they were much more like your traditional ready salted crisps. However, the level of starchiness in their potato flavour reminded me of something even more specific: Walkers French Fries. Despite being plain, I didn’t find these Popchips tasted boring and, if anything, I sometimes found them a bit too salty on the back of my tongue.

The chips felt a tiny bit greasy between the fingers but, aside from that, their texture was the same great one that the Barbeque variety had.

One minor criticism was that the bag these Popchips came in was far too big for the contents but, thankfully, this was deceptive as there were a lot more crisps in there than it first appeared. Furthermore, despite being lighter than most normal crisps, these Popchips still felt like a real treat...one I’d happily buy again.

Appearance: 7.5/10
Aroma: 7.5/10
Taste: 7/10
Texture: 8/10
Overall score: 7.5/10

Lindt Hello My Name Is: Salted caramel

Product name: Lindt Hello My Name Is: Salted caramel
Purchase details: £0.60 for a 39g bar (tesco.com)
Calories: 199 per bar
Country of origin: Germany

Back in my early blog days I reviewed the new (at the time) Lindt Hello My Name Is range (Caramel brownie, Cookies & cream, Crunchy nougat and Strawberry cheesecake). Having really enjoyed them, I was please to find out about this new addition: Salted caramel.

To my memory, this was the first time I’d had a mainstream salted caramel product, so I was interested to see what Lindt & Sprüngli had come up with.

The overall branding was the same for this bar and I noticed that the wrapper was actually identical to last year’s Caramel brownie – it just featured a puddle of caramel rather than a brownie image. The shape and design of the bar was also unchanged but the inside looked phenomenal and was full of a gooey, viscous caramel.

The bar was described as ‘filled milk chocolate with caramel (45%) and a touch of salt’ and, as much as I like the idea of salted caramel, I was glad of the suggestion that the saltiness would be mild as I prefer sweet flavours! The chocolate contained a minimum of 30% cocoa solids and 14% milk solids and produced an immediately noticeable and strong milky Lindt scent on opening.

As usual, the thick chocolate shell didn’t disappoint. It had a voluptuous melt and a sweet, milky flavour. The caramel popped out of this with ease and provided a soft, smooth and thick sensation, as well as adding to the richness of flavours. The salty aspect almost felt like an afterthought, if I’m honest, but it was still recognisably different to standard caramels.

I would never class caramel-filled chocolates as my favourites, and I definitely prefer sweet tastes to salty ones, so this bar didn’t absolutely astound me in terms of flavour. However, there was no denying its excellent quality, and it did look and feel amazing.

I wonder when we’ll get a peanut butter variety?! 

Appearance: 9/10
Aroma: 7.5/10
Taste: 7.5/10
Texture: 9/10
Overall score: 8.25/10

Cadbury Dairy Milk: Ritz

Product name: Cadbury Dairy Milk: Ritz
Purchase details: £0.50 for a 35g bar (tesco.com)
Calories: 183 per bar
Country of origin: UK 

Although new to Cadbury, I first tried the combination of milk chocolate and ‘salted crackers’ over a year ago, thanks to Monster Sweets who sell the Milka Tuc bar. Although I acknowledge that teaming chocolate with ‘moreish crackers’ sounds a bit weird, I knew from this previous experience that it definitely works!

This Dairy Milk: Ritz bar was made by Mondelez and featured the usual Dairy Milk chocolate recipe that made up 80% of the overall product. Bearing in mind that this still left room for eight crackers, I figured they must be really small.

The wrapper gave an indication of the bar’s unusual shape – it was wider and flatter than most Cadbury bars and it contained crackers on each side. I thought their positioning made the bar look like a little window! There was also a chocolate teapot on the packaging which, whilst completely random, did make me smile.

The chocolate was pretty thick but, due to the heat, it had a soft break to it. It had the usual Dairy Milky scent that had combined with a slightly salty, savoury smell. However, the aroma as a whole wasn’t very strong.

The style of the salty crackers confused me slightly as they had the very crispy texture of McVitie’s Mini Cheddars so I kept expecting a cheesy flavour to follow. Thankfully, in the circumstances, this wasn’t the case, so I really enjoyed the contrast between this savoury aspect and the sweet, delicious Dairy Milk which was by far the dominant flavour.

Although the chocolate in my bar was bit softer than normal, it remained nice and solid and the texture was another good contrast with the Ritz. The crackers did mean it was a Dairy Milk product that couldn’t easily be sucked, but I didn’t find this was a problem when the alternative was so satisfying.

I’m really glad to see Cadbury continuing to branch out with their available varieties.

Appearance: 7.5/10
Aroma: 7/10
Taste: 8/10
Texture: 8/10
Overall score: 7.63/10