The intricacies of running a supermarket are a mystery to me. There are times when I witness the shelves being stocked with fresh goods and then find myself out in the main aisle next to a palette of cans of crushed tomatoes with an inch of dust on them. I will buy a certain tried and true brand for months or even years and then one day it is gone. Nowhere to be found. Well, not on any shelf at my local supermarket but perhaps still available at other stores in town.
Are the managers always on the lookout for aging canned vegetables sitting in some warehouse that can be sold for just a few pennies less? Do my favorite products go missing because of a personal beef between distributor and buyer? Such are the vagaries of the supermarket business, I guess.
But sometimes the winds of the grocery trade are in my favor. Such was the case on a recent shopping trip which saw me slowly wandering aisles and casting inquiring glances at the end caps which held snacks by brands I’d never heard of while others held bags of junk food by familiar brands but of flavors unknown to me.
One end cap held bags aplenty from Herr’s, a brand out of Pennsylvania. While I’d seen their chips around town before, I didn’t recall ever them at my local store nor of ever having run into their salt & vinegar variety. Realizing my luck was in, I eagerly grabbed a bag of them before the winds of Fate changed.
The bag I bought notifies eaters that it had been made with artificial flavors. Looking online for more info, I see many pictures of bags without that warning. Had the formula changed? The ingredients list I find on the net is:
Potatoes, Vegetable Oil (contains one or more of the following: Corn, Cottonseed, Sunflower), Salt, Lactose, Sodium Diacetate, Malted Barley Flour, Citric Acid, and Natural Flavor.
Perhaps this is the old one and I just haven’t stumbled across the new listing with the synthetic ingredients. The need to artificially flavor a salt & vinegar potato chip still eludes me even after all of the sampling I’ve done.
Herr’s sliced these chips thicker than your average potato snack. Poking my nose into the bag and inhaling, I smelled mostly oil but also a little potato. The vinegar became apparent after some up close sniffling. The chips were uniformly lightly colored. That yellowish off white was rarely punctuated with brown except on the edges where it looked like the skin remained.
These had the requisite crunch of a kettle chip and enough salt to fell a horse. I suspect they could double as ice melt for your sidewalk in winter. In addition to satisfying the salt half of salt & vinegar, Herr’s ensured they did the same for the other as these chips had a good, firm tang to them. After some extended sampling, my tongue got numb.
Herr’s did themselves proud here. They are like a thicker version of Vintner’s, the platonic ideal of a salt & vinegar potato chip. Highly recommended for some serious snacking.
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