Krunchers! Sweet Hawaiian Onion Kettle Cooked Potato Chips

           What on Earth - or should I say, “what in the Pacific Ocean”- is a Sweet Hawaiian Onion?  As it turns out the Krunchers brand isn’t inventing a mythical pineapple-flavored onion, but rather is referring to the ‘Maui Onion’- so called because the best ones are grown off the side of a goddamned volcano in Maui called Mount Haleakala, and how much more awesome could something be than that? 

Despite it's volcano-loving
proclivities, the Maui onion can be
grown in a home garden.

That sinister red volcanic soil produces small onions with unusually low amounts of sulfer and high amounts of water- resulting in a vegetable extra juicy and sweet as a mob mistress.  In fact, these exemplary onions are recommended for raw-eating, which makes me want to one up Johny appleseed by munching away on Maui onions and planting them on every field I can find.  (Ok, to be fair, the Georgia-grown Vidalia onion is also similar in taste and consistency.)

According to Hawaian folklore, the demigod Maui's
grandma lives in the crater on Mt. Haleakala, and
one spring day she might yet pour a tide of liquid
hot magma death instead of onions down the
 slopes of her awesomely named home.

 So, has Kruncher’s really made specifically ‘Maui onion’ chips?  Well, unfortunately, I can’t tell for sure.  To their credit, ‘onion powder’ is nearly at the top of the ingredient list, but no details as to whether it’s Hawaiian onion powder (maybe it is, but I certainly can’t tell!), and the rest of the list is all chemicals of one variety or another with the exception of a hint of garlic powder.  The seasoning does taste mildly sweet, and mercifully light on salt (unlike many other otherwise tasty onion-flavored products).  Some might find themselves wanting to ramp up the sweetness or saltiness dial, but the principle shortcoming is unfortunately much more serious.

One of the few flavors I don't
want to taste in my food.

        That relatively mild sweet onion flavor is completely overpowered by the oil that crisps have been cooked in.  These otherwise impressive kettle-cooked chips have been thoroughly soaked in a (non-trans fat) corn oil that reeks of the sort of cooking oil usually poured on a skillet.  While some may feel that the rough oil brings an authentic touch, it may simply be that it is too authentic, and overpowers the flavoring by far.

An excellent image of Krunchers chips
courtesy of realfitmama.  Note that
they don't have visible seasoning.

This is truly tragic, because in most other regards the texture and potato crisps are really first class kick-ass.  The blonde potato rounds are extra thick (up to 2 millimeters!) , twisted and rumpled in beautifully complex shapes, and wonderfully crunchy in an organically uneven sort of way.  As you munch away at them, you can even feel the (too-strong) oils seeping coolly out of the saturated crisps onto the tongue.  (I should note that the nutritional information shows these chips to be no more unhealthy than an average bag of Lay’s potato chips- and these are gluten free!)

            Ultimately, the over-saturation of the cooking oil flavor and the comparative weakness of the seasoning leaves me feeling that these chips didn’t quite carry the day- Maui onion flavor is a neat concept, but the seasoning is too subtle and the cooking oil is as a discrete as She-Hulk before the red moon.  The amazing quality of the potato round does leave me intrigued about trying other Kruncher’s products; perhaps if I swiped some actual Maui onions and mixed them together I'd get the complete experience.

She Hulk making a subtle
entrance.

Stars: 2/4

Spiciness Rating: None

Pros:

- Incredibly thick and crunchy kettle cooked potato rounds impress with their class and texture

- Inoffensive and light sweet onion flavoring is pleasant and avoids the excessive saltiness common in the genre

Cons:

- Super-excessive corn-oil flavoring oversaturates the chips and overpowers the seasonin

- Many will find themselves wishing for a sweet and possibly slightly-saltier onion seasoning

- It’s unclear that the seasoning is really very ‘Hawaiian’

Golden Krispy’s Sun Chips Paprika

They’re called Sun Chips, use a yellow-orange color scheme, are identified as a multigrain snack, and boast of having 30% less fat than potato chips.  Why am I bothering to review this everyday American product?  Well, because these ‘Sun Chips’ are made by the Tunisian Golden Krispy company in the town of Zaghoun, and they have about as much in common with Sun Chips as MTV does with the music industry.  (Wait, did that just make sense?  Yes, it did.)

These are not the crunchy rumpled multigrain crisps you are used to, but actually little cheeseball-like confections that appear to be made of puffed corn, but are actually composed of potatoes and corn.  So, multigrain, but not necessarily in the healthy ‘I’m good for your digestion’ way.  Still, there’s nothing objectionable about the format- they are relatively soft textured and the size of playing marbles (that is, a little larger than a Coco Puff), a pleasant light orange in color with the occasional speck of black pepper, and melt swiftly in the mouth.  The pebbles are lacking in density, but at least they aren’t rough or brittle on the outside.

The seasoning certainly isn’t very paprika-ish, although faint overtones of the Hungarian spice can be detected amidst the broadly sweet flavoring, with the occasional seasoned-salt surge and perhaps even a slightly sour element that elicits saliva from the tongue.  The flavoring on each individual puff tends to make a pleasant first impression on the tongue, but like a visit from your favorite mistress, doesn’t last as long as you would like, so I ended up gobbling three or four at once to saturate my mouth with the tasties.  Overall, a slightly higher seasoning content would have been better, but this shortcoming proved far from fatal.

Although Golden Krispy’s product has nothing to do with everybody’s favorite multigrain chips, they are still pretty fun to munch and deliver a seasoning that’s fairly compelling with its blend of sweet and salty, even if it seems a little off topic.  I’m vaguely curious if Golden Krispy actually has some licensing arrangement with Sun Chips to take advantage of their brand name (certainly the marketing is remarkably parallel), but I don’t want to give the game away if they don’t!  If I ever end up going to Tunisia myself, I’m definitely going to seek a LARGE bag of these so I can mindlessly munch away at them as I bake away under the sun of one of the world’s latest revolutionary states and trust that the the masses will even everything out.

Stars: 2/4

Spiciness: None

Pros:

- Reasonably amusing sweet-and-salty flavoring

- Fun to pop three or four in your mouth like coco pebbles

Cons:

- Not particularly Paprika-like, or spicy

- The individual balls could use more seasoning

- The chips are a little thin in texture

Lorenz Monster Munch Gout Jambon & Fromage, Gout Sel, Gout Barbecue

           So every time I go shopping, I’m confronted by a rack full of Monster Munch bags, which honestly are very unfrightening in their little parade of of smiling ghost faces.  However, they do remind me of Pac-Man, and at a loss for more interesting things to buy at that particular store, I resolved to try them out, having been assured they were everybody’s favorite child hood snack.  Now having done some research, it turns out Monster Munch is a big deal in the UK, where they are available with distinct monster-bodies and flavors like ‘Pickled Onion’ and ‘Roast Beef.’  The French flavors are more pedestrian, and in appearance more unified; it appears that the brand has been licensed by a French company which proceeded to do whatever the hell they wanted to with them, so I am not really passing judgment on the UK Monster Munch, which appears to be a whole different bag of (rather interesting-sounding) chips.

As this food analyst acidly put it,
"they are clearly ghosts", not monsters
as in the UK. Anyone used to exploring
dungeons understands this means they
are more likely to drive you insane or
possess you, but not as talented at the
whole bite-your-face off routine,
lacking, as they do, physical form.

            Now in addition to feeling sheepishly infantile for eating ‘Monster Munch’, I was a little reluctant to try them based on my last experience with a Lorenz product, which proved to be brittle and rough on the outside and empty on the inside.  Well, true to form, these ectoplasmic chip-cracker-things (they are made 24.5% out of sunflower oil, and 22% out of pureed potato powder, so make of that what you will) aren’t so rough on the outside, but they’re still empty on the inside.  In texture they are reminiscent of Asian shrimp chips minus the fish flavor, fortunately for me and my anti-piscine ways.  So all in all, these phantoms are acceptable vehicles for flavor delivery, though I still hold the lack of inner substance against these ethereal marauders.

If only they looked like actual
ethereal marauders, everybody's favorite
transdimensional velociraptor that never,
ever wants to close its mouth.

Ham and Cheese Flavored

So now that we have established, in the model of a proper college science experiment, the commonalities in texture between the three case samples, we are left to identify in turn the variations in flavoring.  First in order of tasting is Ham and Cheese, which go well together in real life, and should do so as well as in the ‘let’s pretend’ world of flavoring.  The melted-gruyer Croque-monsieur (literally translated: ‘man-snack’, rrrow!) is the ur-sandwich of the French lunch table, so the folks at Lorenz clearly know what they’re doing from the culturally specific marketing angle.

There's something almost American about
the French preference for literally soaking
their ham sandwiches in additional cheese
and cream until it is a sopping wet mess of
hot melted cream and meat.  Mmmm,
romantic!  No wonder it's called a man snack.

            Fortunately, for them, it works pretty decently, with intimations of gruyer cheese contrasting tonally with a saltier ‘ham’ like accent.  The flavor emulation is far from evocative of the real thing, but you still have a sort pleasant creamy cheese-and-salt flavor rolling around in your mouth after you mash more than a few- and you will probably be tempted to eat more than a few at a time because of the aforementioned lack of density.  Unfortunately, this also means that they can fill a medium sized bag of these up, charge a ‘regular’ French price for them, and end up receiving only 80 grams of content rather than the more standard 100 or 135 grams.  So all in all, nothing to write home about but nonetheless a passable snack .

Salty Monster Munch

            What do you get when you take the unremarkable crisps of the Ham’n’Cheese munch and subtract the flavoring for some old fashioned saltiness?  Nothing especially good.  I will grant that ‘plain’ Monster Munch is all right for some mindless eating, perhaps while drunk on the side of a canal, but it fails to be very compelling because basic unflavored Monster Munch crisps are just not all that good.

Barbecue Monster Munch

            Like the final action scene in a Vin Diesel movie, the location of my last sampling of the French Monster Munch occurred on the docks of the Ile Saint-Louis in the middle of the Sein, where finally the proverbial Monster united with a proper flavor for maximum appeal (did I mention there were motor boats and Germans present?)  Unlike nearly every other barbecue flavoring I’ve had in France, this one reflects an understanding that barbecue should be sweet as well as salty, a combination which it offers to satisfying effect.  While we aren’t talking about a really sophisticated flavoring made with natural herbs and spices, the sweet-and-salty flavor that’s there is genuinely enjoyable, hitting the right notes and finally giving the inoffensive crisps something to swagger about.



Typical riverine scene from the Ile-
Saint Louis.  Please note that the shark
is mechanical and controlled by Nazis.
Also, a great picnic spot.

            So in summary, these obviously are meant to have a sort of unsophisticated appeal, and at that level they are fairly enjoyable as long as you don’t ponder the metrics behind the price-for-quantity ratio.  If you like to eat your chips seriously, sitting on a leather chair glass of gin in hand, contemplating the deep dark darkness of the human soul, Monster Munch really won’t be deep enough for you.  However, they make fairly compelling eating for those in a sociable (and quite possibly drunk) mood who don’t need to pay close attention to the refinement (or lack thereof) of what they are eating.  These munches look exactly like the ghosts from PacMan after eating one of the Power Pellets (did you know that each ghost has a different name and programmed hunting behavior?) and who hasn’t wanted to experience that vicarious thrill in real life?  (Ok, don’t overwhelm my inbox with responses to that one…)  Monster Munchies: for the kids and the PacMan in all of us.

If you enjoy sitting in your antique leather
armchair, pondering your inevitable descent into
madness and corruption and the crunchiness
of potato chips, too numbed by inner suffering
to pay heed to the fawning attempts of your slave
girls to earn your favor, you may find Monster
Munch too crude for your refined sensibilities.
Then again, you may prefer a diet of
unwilling souls.

Stars: 2 for Ham and Cheese

            1 for Salt

            2½ for Barbecue

Pros:

- Chips for a Ghostbuster!

-Easy and pleasant to eat when you don’t need to pay close attention

- Ham and Cheese: There is a fun salty and creamy vibe with these once you really start crunching them

- Barbecue: pleasantly sweet as well as salty, balancing the flavor well

Cons:

- The crisps are airy and insubstantial in the middle

- Flavoring is more suggestive than evocative

- Salty: Don’t bother with these unless inebriated