Crusticroc Snack Balls Jalapeño-Cheddar

After immense difficulty
I finally found a website
with a pic of the bag
titled Sack Balls .

I’m juvenile enough to find any junk food called ‘snack balls’ automatically hilarious, and of course, detailing that they are made out of spicy cheese is an open invitation to sophisticated humor of the South Park variety.  The Buck Rogers style retro Sci-Fi title adds a delightful kitsch factor to what I can only anticipate to be yet another mediocre product from discount snack-food producer Crusti Croc (a store brand of Lidl.)

If every episode of South Park featured
mutant laser-spear toting sea otters
mounted on ostriches in the ruins of
NYC, I would become a regular viewer.

But nein, the canny German proletariat-feeders at Lidl have in fact formulated an eccentric work of mad (though by no means refined) genius, not unlike their well-documented plot to raise a zombie army to win World War II.  The Corn-Puff Balls are extra-large- about an inch in diameter each- are satisfyingly lumpy and crunchy, and feature a reasonable amount of chewy inner density to make for a snack which floods the mouth with pleasing flavor.

Agent Blaskowicz's escape from Castle
Wolfenstein played a critical role
in the defeat of the Nazi Zombietruppen.

            Now the seasoning itself is no way ‘life-like’ or ‘sophisticated’, and yet is ‘powerful spicy’, as they say in Gone with the Wind, and quite effectively infused with jalapeño.  Unlike far too many other snack foods, there is no lack of flavor, and an extra salty, super-picante experience awaits your mouth for each crackling snack ball you suck into your saliva-gushing maw like a Tyranid Mawloc. 

Mawlocs may not mouth off as much as
your teenage son or a Sandworm of Arrakis
but their gullets do seem to moistly slaver
more gratuitously.  Painted by C-Bomb13.

Unfortunately, the flavor-sensation is rather marred by an undeniable degree of over-saltiness, and fondness for drinking salt water may be a prerequisite for extended eating of these cash-concession corn-puff confections.  The saltiness also rather obscures the cheese flavoring, but overall I found this shortcoming of the Snack Balls rather tolerable when weighed against the lightning those joy-spheres were packing, and recommend them as a flavorful though crass diversion for a night’s entertainment.

Of course one could actually make real
jalapeño cheese balls if one wanted to
as pictured from this recipe by Kooksfood.

Stars: 2½/4

Spiciness Rating: Hot

Pros:

- Nice extra-large corn-puff balls are thick and crunchy

- Flavorful and spicy

Cons:

- Salty balls are too salty

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

Cape Cod Sweet & Spicy Jalapeno

           Jalapeno chips are a growing sub-genre of flavors in this day and age, and Cape Cod’s Sweet & Spicy Jalapeno is a generally solid offering.  Many Kettle-cooked chips deliver excellent texture but end up being very stingy when it comes to providing adequate flavoring- fortunately, Cape Cod’s chips generally deliver enough flavor with each bite, though they do suffer from not necessarily having of each kind of spice on every chip.

Every chip-wright should seek to make
their chips as bubbly and crunchy looking
as a Mon Calamari Star Cruiser.  Only
the space going fishmen can tell you if
it's a trap or not.

            The individual crisps are well textured rounds between 1-2 inches in diameter and relatively thick, often wrapped into pleasantly complex shapes that would do a Mon Calamari Star Cruiser proud.  They are coated with a pleasant but not over-strong sweet seasoning, with additional notes of onion, garlic, green pepper, and jalapeno.  In terms of spiciness, the chips build up to a moderate burn in the mouth over time, but are generally pretty mild individually.  For all that jalapenos are fondly renowned for their spiciness, chip manufacturers are curiously reluctant to make their jalapeno-flavored products anywhere near as hot as the real thing.  This is probably more in agreement with the average consumer’s palate, though, and the heat with these chips does manage to be adequate.

Note found inside the Matilda tank: Must
resist urge to waltz ahead on a maniacal
rampage, leaving the supporting infantry
in the dust who would otherwise save
me from all the hidden anti-tank guns.

When all of the different flavors come together on a particular chip- the sweet, the spicy, and the onion/garlicky- these chips are excellent.  Those seasonings are team awesome, a force of heroes, an unstoppable ass-kicking machine in spice-form that when working in concert, will conquer your tongue like a master of french kissing.  But therein lies the major flaw in this otherwise commendable product: the different flavors are scattered throughout the bag, and any given chip may only boast one or two of the spices out of the group.  Like a Leroy Jenkins style raiding fiasco, or the British expeditionary force defending France in 1940, the various elements too often fail to work together, instead doing their own thing on each individual chip.  Tellingly, the best chips I had were at the bottom of the bag, where the spices had accumulated and made each of the remaining morsels a complete, satisfying experience compared to the more random offering of many of the chips on the top.

The girls at Hot Chick Eatin' Spicy Chips
wrote a love letter to these crisps, as well
as offering this salacious image of the
crinkly-cut crispy delicacies.

            I still enjoyed this bag, and I do think anyone interested in Jalapeno chips should consider giving them a try, though their relative mildness in terms of spiciness may be a turn off for a dedicated spice maniac.  My eulogy for this deceased, ex-bag of chips: there were a good variety of flavors, and when they did come together, these chips more than satisfied.

Stars: 2½/4

Spiciness Rating: Moderate

Pros:

- Lovely diversity of well-realized and authentic seasonings

- Very thick and crunchy crinkly-cut kettle style chips

Cons:

- Flavorings not applied densely enough to really come together in a consistent fashion

Tim’s Cascade Snacks Jalapeño Seasoned

            Today I’m breaking into the second bag of chips sent to me from the United States, and also the new up-and-coming genre of Jalapeño flavored potato chips.  To be honest, we are a bit past up and coming: like superhero movies starting circa 2008, they came and they’re here to stay.

            Who can’t help but be fond of the jalapeño, the noble workman of spicy peppers?  I will tell you who, people who don’t like spicy food.  Fortunately, I am not among their number!  Really they are splendidly versatile, and can be easily deseeded to ramp-back on the heat if necessary.  Americans by now have been exposed to enough of them in Mexican restaurants that they were ready to hit it off mainstream by the turn of the century.

            This is the second bag of Tim’s Cascade Style chips I’ve tried, and it absolutely shows its common pedigree in regard to the crisps, which are crunchy kettle-style chips that should please anyone looking for a complex texture, but which suffer a little for their fairly small size.  The flavoring is evenly applied across the chips in adequate quantitites, though it doesn’t obscure the natural russet brown coloration of the chips.

You always tell yourself you know
better than to eat the slices by them
self.  Then you do it anyway.

            I must say that the jalapeño seasoning on these chips was the most authentically jalapeño-like spices I’ve had on chips.  Have you ever had one of those moments contemplating a large slice of jalapeño pepper on your dish, knowing it’s a bad idea to bite into it, but then succumbing to some combination of foolishness, hunger, and masochism?  After the first bite, you tell yourself, that’s not so bad!, and then you suddenly feel this ominous flavor in your mouth, the foretaste of your own doom.  As any auteur of the sinister knows, it is not the fires of hell, but the dire portent that they will soon arrive that is the ultimate thrilling sensation.  It was precisely that spooky, very jalapeño-like sentiment that greeted me after munching through a few of these chips, though unlike actual jalapeños, the subsequent blaze was of the controlled kind.  In other words, these are pleasantly spicy, but not so much as to cause discomfort to your average palate.

Cat realizing the horror of its
inevitable fiery doom.  Maybe
he even ate a jalapeno.

            So, with that hefty praise offered, I must sadly report that these chips suffered from some of the same limitations that have plagued earlier jalapeño chips.  Just like you don’t eat jalapeños alone but mixed in with other food, jalapeño flavoring really works better matched with something else, rather than all by its lonesome.  Too many other jalapeño chips leave you with just spicy and salty, which isn’t enough in my opinion- you want duality in flavoring,  (sweet and salty for barbecue flavoring, sour cream and onion, creamy and salty for cheese flavors, etc.), but ‘pure’ jalapeño chips lack the mixture.  While these chips throw in some nice hints of garlic and onion into the mix, those flavors don’t do enough to counterpoint the dominance of the salty crisps and spicy jalapeno.  Cape Cod’s Sweet and Spicy Jalapeño are a good example of a chip that found a better balance of flavor elements (I should have a review for those up eventually)- unfortunately, these chips are not as multi-dimensional.

            That shouldn’t take away from the sheer evocativeness of the jalapeño flavoring as it menacingly crawls up your tongue with its message of gastronomic dread, and I should restate for those that favor purity of flavor, of the pureblood Jalapeno chips these are the best I’ve had.  However, as Hermoine will attest, sometimes a mixed foundation yields richer rewards.

Stars: 2½/4

Spicines Rating: Moderate-Hot

Pros:

- Highly evocative jalapeño pepper taste that builds up in your mouth like the real thing (but isn’t as painful at its peak!)

- Thick and crunchy kettle style chips, baked to a beautiful russet brown

- Flavoring is well distributed across the crisps

Cons:

- Jalapeño flavoring is at it’s best when combined with something else

- Crisps are on the small side

- Some people may want a little more burnination in their spicy chips