Pringles Xtreme Screamin’ Dill Pickle



There seems to be a remarkable
number of haters out there.
People be like 'I hate pickles
and these chips taste like goddamn
pickles!" and I be pitying the fools...

I’ve always been a fan of vinegar impregnated pygmy cucumbers, aka pickles.  However, in my youth I principally ate French cornichons- gherkins averaging only 3 inches in length and soaked in tarragon to produce an extra-crunchy hyper-vinegary experience.  The larger American standard, the dill pickle, uses medium sized cucumbers rather than gherkins, resulting in a ‘creamier’ inner texture.  Initially, I felt the American pickles were a little weaksauce in comparison to their miniaturized French cousins, but over time I’ve grown quite fond of them as a traditional accompaniment to deli sandwichs, and I’ve discovered not a few varieties that pack their own uniquely garlicky punch.

The French cornichon: about the size
of your pinky, but with twice the amount
of vinegar.

            My first encounter with some of Lay’s pickle-chips a few years earlier left me distinctly underwhelmed, so my expectations were guarded but hopeful when my partner returned from Christmas vacation in the United States with a tube of Pringle’s Xtreme ‘Screamin’ Dill Pickle’ chips.  In general, I think the Pringles Xtreme line has succeeded in creating the sort of strong flavorings I appreciate, though some of their products have proven more inspired than others.

The American Dill pickle, rather girthy
in the good sort of way.  Many of them
are even longer than this too...

            Screamin’ Dill Pickle chips, however, proved to be a vinegary torpedo blast completely deserving their hyperventilating title, and I immediately and irrevocably swooned to their considerable charms.  The super-sour vinegar flavor pervading each chip never failed to impress with its briny power, and it’s all tied together with an unmistakable aroma of dill seed that powerfully evokes the classic American sandwich spear.  I deliver this praise despite having never been a fan of dill seasoning, (spare me the dill havarti!), but here it so perfectly nails the flavor that it leaves me trembling with a thrill of homesick nostalgia.

Koolickles: pickles mixed with Cool-Aid,
apparently all the rage in the American
South, along with pork braised in Coca
Cola and the like.  I've never liked sweet
pickles, but I'd be lying if I didn't say
I was curious... 

             In short, these chips are a delight to eat and an inspired homage to the dill pickle, and I have little trouble recommending them to anybody who appreciates exotic chip flavors, vinegar, or phallic vegetables in a jar.  For now, I shall have to content myself with the slightly more piquant charms of French cornichons, (traditionally eaten with paté), but I have these to remind me of the larger (as usual) American variety.

Stars: 3½/4

Spiciness Rating: None

This French recipe involving cornichons
looks completely awesome!

Pros:

-          Flavor emulation at its best! Remarkably evocative of actual dill pickles.

-          Excellent and powerful sour vinegar flavor

-          Exquisitely subtle dill seasoning

Cons:

-          As for any Pringle, the quality of the crisps reaches a fairly well established ceiling…

Pringles Xtreme Exploding Cheese & Chili

          As if acknowledging the regular inadequacy of the seasoning on many Pringle’s chips, the Pringle’s XTREME series sets out to show that they can cover their crisps with enough seasoning if they really want to.  As far as this particular variant is concerned, I can assure you that they have succeeded in rectifying this habitual shortcoming, (though my experience with the XTREME Ragin’ Cajun chips was far different) and the crisps are not lacking for strong flavors.

            Unfortunately, I’m not sure I entirely understand what they’re trying to do here- the flavoring says they are cheese and chili, and by chili, the illustrations on the canister make clear they mean chili peppers, not chili soup.  Unfortunately, while melted cheese on top of a bowl of chili is a very natural combination, I don’t feel that eating straight cheese with straight chili peppers is something any of us is likely to have done- (queer ones, on the other hand…) 

This is what you will find if you Google 'Gay Chili';
it mustbe tough when your country is one spelling
error away from being Tex Mex cuisine. Question:
is the police officer a pretty boy or a butch womyn,
and tell me those are not bedroom eyes...

“Jalapeno Poppers” I can hear you suggesting, but though the peppers on the box may be green, they flavor is not specifically that of jalapeno.  In fact, the only sense that it is ‘chili flavored’ is that it’s spicy, although the spiciness seems eerily concentrated on the tip of the tongue, rather than being distributed more naturally along its length as you would from an organic seasoning.  Still, the chips are fairly piquant, so I won’t complain too much about it.

            If the chips are a little thin on the “spicy pepper” side of things, that mostly leaves the cheese flavor, which at least isn’t subtle in announcing itself.  Unfortunately, it does hit you over the head with its saltiness and doesn’t taste like any particular type of cheese, so I’m not that impressed, but at least it’s an improvement over more half-hearted flavorings. The main ingredient in the ‘chili-cheese flavoring’: MSG.  No, really, look at it yourself, it’s the first ingredient listed!  Though after you get through the first three or four chemicals after the MSG, you do find it also includes garlic and onion powder, and some generic cheese and chili powder.

The second time  I had these chips, a pack of ghouls
had just emerged from a secret door in the  pyramid
 to ambush my sleeping comrades.  We  survived, minus
 significant chunks of our  mortal flesh.
 The chips did not.

            So you may have gotten that I’m not a big fan of them, but I shouldn’t exaggerate: if you want an unsubtle salty and spicy cheese flavor, you can definitely find it here, and there’s not a hint of the lack of seasoning problems afflicting many other types of Pringles.  However, the flavors just didn’t come together for me in an evocative way: I just couldn’t figure out what they were supposed to taste like, but clearly it was not anything natural.  However, the drunken girls in the kitchen last Friday night gobbled them right up, so maybe there are times when subtlety is unnecessary.

Stars:  2

Spiciness: Moderate

Pros:

- The flavoring is strong and well spread across the crisps

- Chips are genuinely spicy

Cons:

- The spiciness is somewhat unnatural seeming, like the ingredients themselves

- Cheese flavoring is too salty

Pringles Xtreme Ragin’ Cajun

This is the second bag of chips I’ve reviewed that invokes the original angry native of Louisiana, James Carville, the Clintonite political adivsor married to the Republican political operative Mary Matalin, and on a level that is completely unrelated to the flavoring, the title was completely appropriate, because when I produced my first crisp from the tube lovingly air-transported for my delectation, I probably resembled Carville after a husband-wife chat on the future of American healthcare:

The photographer did not survive the fire-breath and laser-beams-from-the-eyes that  followed.  Also, for some reason, the camera did not capture my horns, second row of fangs, and the blackness of my heart. Well, maybe the last one.

Those of you who are not color blind may note that what you can see is the image of a white Pringle crisp with an extremely thin trace of flavoring along the ridge of the crisp.  Which is to say that the rest of the supposedly Cajun-themed crisp has no flavoring.  For chip, after chip, after chip.  While I have no Cajun ancestors, I am half French and this outrage is enough to inspire in me the famous battle frenzy of my Louisianan not-really-forbearers as they routed the English in the battle of New Orleans in 1815.

Take THAT for burning down the White House!
Note that they learned after the battle that the peace treaty had already been signed weeks earlier.  Woops!

Pringles often (but not universally) exhibit abysmal incompetence in their application of flavoring, but this particular batch was beyond the pale ale- countless chips with the most insultingly miniscule amounts of flavoring applied in a thin line on the edge of the crisp.  Can you not feel your blood pressure mounting at this calculated insult or blithering incompetence, as surely as if you had just received the glove-slap of a young aristocrat who has just finished soiling the graves of your ancestors?  Pringles without flavoring are simply not that impressive, thank you, and as the brand coasts by on its reputation it should really address the dangerous fundamental issues in its flavoring application before they go the way of the US economy at the end of the housing bubble.

Those hard eyes promise cruel retribution
for heretical views on American
exceptionalism...IN BED!

The truly great tragedy here, though, is that the seasoning on the crisps is actually pretty damn good, and if it had been appropriately and consistently applied I would be singing its praises to high heavens (where presumably Xena in angel form could appreciate them.)  Towards the middle of the tube, some of the crisps began exhibiting something more like 50% coverage of seasoning, and it was enough for me to realize that, in marked contrast to the Ragin’ Cajun Cheetos, (which were good but basically renditions of sour cream and tabasco), these crisps were genuinely spicy and evocative of Cajun seasonings.

NO PRINGLES IN HEAVEN!  WRATH! Now
there is nothing to divert me from my ambiguously
sado-masochistic relationship with Gabrielle!

Yes, you heard that right, the Xtreme label is there to denote the supposed intensity of the flavoring, and if you are so lucky to eat a crisp with even half of the appropriate amount of flavoring, you will see that these crisps are actually burning hot.  Hot enough in fact to burn your lips collaterally, but it’s all in good fun, and what’s a little pyromania without innocent victims?  Suffice to say, these Pringles were satisfyingly spicy when the seasoning was actually there, and I was favorably impressed.

Sadly the tellingly unpretentious original
location has closed, but was reopened
at a different location- I should definitely
check it out next time I'm in town!

The flavor of the seasonings didn’t stand out as much (being more limited by the unevenness of their distribution than the spicy aspect), but all in all they exhibited a salty-sweet blend that evoked childhood meals at a Washington DC area institution, the Louisiana Express, and its use of orange-colored seasonings usually prominently featuring ground-cayenne and paprika matched with a smoky aroma.  (The ingredients list additionally denotes garlic, onion, and tomato powder, as well as habaneros in the mélange.)  A whiff of my hands after the guilty snack reminded me more than little of my grubby youthful self after having devoured an Andouille sausage or paella, and just about to get my sticky fingers covered in powdered-sugar coated beignets.  So, even though the screw up on applying the flavoring seriously limits the degree to which you can appreciate the flavoring, on those occasions that there’s enough there to taste, you’ll feel that they did it right.

The chips don't actually taste like beignets
but I felt like putting a picture up anyway.
They're like donuts but Frencher!

So there you have the tragedy of the Ragin’ Cajun: like a talented art student that flunks out of college out of failure to actually turn anything in, the seasoning on the Pringles is brilliant and provocatively spicy when present, but all too often there is a serious problem with attendance.

Stars: 2/4 (3 if the seasoning had consistently applied, 1 if every crisp had been as poorly coated as the first half of the tube)

Spiciness: Hot

Pros:

- Intensly spicy flavor that lingers without slaying

- Delightfully evocative Cajun spices seasoning, that when present, reminds you of bayou cuisine

Cons:

- SEASONING MIA, PRESUMED AWOL (to varying degrees on 2/3 of the crisps)

Pringles Multigrain Cheesy Cheddar

            I have heard it argued that every movie is really the plot of two older movies combined, and if this is so, I think the same might be said of chips.  Someday there will likely be barbecue-Cheetos and Sour-Cream-and-Onion tortilla chips, and on the same premise some bright developer at Pringles must have woken up one day and thought “let's make Sun Chips that are actually Pringles!”  Now I’m fine with this mix-and-match approach which can produce some interesting hybrids, and so it is with an open mind that I tried out the Cheese Cheddar Multigrain Pringles.



Gene Wolfe wrote these books
after inventing the technology
to mass produce Pringles.
Coincidence?  Surely not!



            It must be especially tricky to mix it up with Pringles, because certain elements of the brand demand a product that is consistently of the same shape and texture to fit in the trademark Pringles cylinders.  What mind would invent such baroque chip-making technology in the first place?  Why, only the science fiction author Gene Wolf, the same mind that gave us an apprentice torturer on post-apocalyptic Earth saving the world and running away from his crazy ex-girlfriend.  If you read his account of how they were created, you may notice the same ‘dedicated mind driven over the brink of sanity’ themes that he puts into his writing- now we know what inspired the Citadel of the Autarch!

In any case, what they did with this variety is basically create a ‘Pringles’ chip with the same sort of multigrain cornmeal texture you expect from the generally excellent Sun Chips brand.  However, to make sure they stack neatly together, the chips can’t have an irregular texture, and most importantly, cannot be especially thick.  Within these limitations, multi-grain Pringles do their jobs and deliver a multi-grain corn-meal flavor, but the constraints upon their form are a little too steep for them to achieve their potential.  The crisps are simply too thin and smooth to evoke the best qualities of Sun Chips.  The orange cheese flavoring layered on is decent and adequate in quantity, but unfortunately was applied in random sprays that do not cover the entire crisp, (something which others have noticed as well),  so I found myself having to strategically target which part of the Pringle I lay my tongue upon to make sure I actually tasted the flavoring.  (Yes, I am that ridiculous.)



Those interested in a closer look at
the crisps should check out this
review of them at Gigi's Review's and
it's beautiful chip photography. 
She pretty much disagrees with me on
every point in my review!



            Another much appreciated quality of sun chips that the Pringles version fails to live up to is their fat calories ratio of about 35%.  The Pringles Multigrain crisps clock in around 140 calories, of which 50% are fat, which is significantly fewer calories than most other Pringles chips (tending around 180) but still not in the healthier-than-average ratio of fat calories that Sun Chips can claim.

            While perfectly edible and reasonably tasty, this experiment in hybridization is simply not as good as actual Sun Chips, though I suppose if you are Pringle fanboy and will accept no substitute (or face space restraints that only Pringles canisters can solve), they will at least broaden your horizons a little bit.  Now if only they would broaden the chips themselves, then they would do more to satisfy.

Stars: 1 ½

Spiciness Rating: none

Pros:

- Within the contraints of the Pringle’s form, does a reasonable job of making a multi-grain crisp

- Cheese flavoring is ok

- Less calories than most Pringles

Cons:

- Unfortunately, the constraints of the Pringles form really do prevent them from having the thick and rough texture that we appreciate from multi grain chips

- Cheese flavoring is sprayed on with annoying randomness

- Ratio of fat calories not as good as those of Sun Chips