The Salt & Vinegar Crisps of Éire - Part 4: They're just hunky dory

As I noted previously, while on a flight to Dublin I was told by a genuine Kerrygold eating, Guinness drinking Irishman what the best salt & vinegar crisps of Hibernia were.

His reply to my query about the best his country had to offer was "Tayto but the crinkled ones, not the regular ones." His accent gave the response an authoritativeness that a generic Midwestern one such as mine just could not muster.

Were they truly some pukka crisps?

Although I'd encountered Tayto crisps previously, this was their Hunky Dorys line - thicker, heartier crisps to tame manly appetites - and, unlike the previous crisps where cider vinegar reigned, these were made with malt vinegar.

I don't come across many crinkle cut salt & vinegar chips here. Surely the thicker cut and those crinkles must add more surface area that can accommodate even more vinegar dust than your normal crisp/chip. If only someone could invent a slicer that would yield chips in non-Euclidian shapes. Just think of all the magical vinegar dust they could hold! Lovecraft Snacks, LLC.

These crisps had a nice yellow hue with bits of brown on the edges. They appeared to have skin on them. Thick and crinkley as advertised. Sticking my face in the packet and taking a whiff I smelled a firm vinegar tang, the rich, greasy aroma of oil, and a faint bit of potato on the sweet side.

As expected they had a nice crunch as well as a good, firm tanginess. No need to eat a dozen chips to get an acetic burn on my tongue. They also tasted a bit saltier than normal and I suppose this can be attributed to the extra surface area. As for the potato flavor itself, it was rich & creamy and on the sweet side. 

I think my guide to the crisps of Éire was correct. These were the best. I adored the big malt vinegar tang and the thicker cut gave a big, creamy burst of spud flavor.

 

Well played Tayto megacorp.

 

Hopefully I will have the opportunity to sample more Irish salt & vinegar crisps some day.

The Salt & Vinegar Crisps of Éire - Part 3: Aggressively Pomaceous

The brand name "simply roasted." made me think of the movie Dazed & Confused. Should I eat these at 4:20?

These may have been the first lifestyle crisps I encountered on my trip. (I shall find out when I review the crisps I sampled in Britain.) They're roasted in "one-of-a-kind ovens" and so they have less fat and fewer calories than your typical deep fried crisp. In addition, their website boasts about sustainable business practices such as powering the crisp factory with solar, converting leftover cooking oils into aviation fuel, and so on.

I should note that these aren't Irish crisps, but rather English ones found in an Irish airport. They're made across the Irish Sea in Norfolk.

Given all of this, how did the roasted salt & vinegar crisps taste?

Let's begin with how they looked which was yellow with some brown patches. They appeared to have had the skin left on as the edges were uniformly brown. Without my calipers I couldn't be sure but they seemed to be cut a tad more thickly than their common American counterparts. The aroma was oil, followed by cider vinegar, and then a bit of sweet spud in the background.

These crisps were nice and crunchy. At first a sweet potato flavor predominated but it was followed by some mild vinegar tanginess. After I chewed some crisps into a paste the potato flavor took on some earthy tones. Although there was a paucity of vinegar zip, there was no shortage of its flavor as these puppies had a wonderful, firm cider vinegar taste. My notes say that I may have tasted sherry but I cannot recall if I tasted it before or after reading the ingredients which includes sherry vinegar powder. No doubt the addition of apple powder boosted my perception of the cider vinegar.

Although they were roasted and not deep fried, I couldn't tell the difference. What made these crisps stand out for me was the prominent apple/cider vinegar taste which was just delicious.

The Salt & Vinegar Crisps of Éire - Part Dhá: I go megacorp

One thing you won't see on a bag of salt & vinegar potato chips here in America is text in Irish Gaelic.

When I first got into the Dublin airport and began making my way to immigration to get my passport stamped, I saw a sign and didn't understand a word of it. Were my glasses dirty? Had my eyes suddenly gone bad? No, it was just in Irish. I was used to signs at airports in Spanish and Hmong but not Irish. 

Tayto is a much less posh sounding brand name than O'Donnells of Tipperary but my packet of salt & vinegar crisps were apparently made in a castle that long predates the founding of the United States which is pretty damn cool if you ask me. That castle is in Northern Ireland while O'Donnells are made in Ireland Ireland.

Google says that Tayto is the biggest brand over there, their Lays, I guess you could say, and I get the impression that the company is either not Irish-owned or is a subsidiary of a non-Irish company. But I don't trust AI.

How did megacorp do?

The crisps were a rather bright yellow but had many nicely browned edge bits. It seemed that the diameter of the crisps was on the small side and they were thinner than a typical American kettle chip but not as thin as your standard American chip. The surfaces were home to a fair number of bubbles. Putting my nose in the packet and taking a big sniff, I got a goodly dose of vinegar - hooray! - as well as some oil and a faint aroma of potato on the sweet side.

I found that they had a restrained crunchiness to them - less than the aforementioned American kettle chip yet more than your standard Lays chip. The aroma was a harbinger of the flavor which had a good, firm tanginess. It didn't seem extra salty to me but I did like the sweet-earthy balance of the potato taste.

These were some fine crisps. I appreciated the boost in vinegar tang and caught a flavor like barley that came with a hint of sweetness. The label did say that it may contain barley and I do not recall if I tasted barley after reading the label or before. My inclination is before based on my tasting notes. Again, rosemary extract was used as an anti-oxident. And again the oils were sunflower and rapeseed.

Large corporation or not, these were very tasty.

The Salt & Vinegar Crisps of Éire - Part 1: It's a long way to Tipperary

It's a long way to go for crisps

As we waited for take-off from O'Hare, I struck up a conversation with the gentleman to my right. He appeared to be in his mid-30s and was a ginger who spoke with a decidedly Irish accent. Our flight was to Dublin and I discovered that he was returning to his home in the suburbs of Ireland's capital from a holiday in Chicago. I learned that he had lived in my hometown for a few years but had moved back to Ireland so we were able to talk about Chicago and the U.S. more broadly in some depth. Ireland, however, was a different matter.

I fessed up that all I really knew about his homeland was The Troubles, Guinness stout, Kerrygold butter, and, taking the piss, Lucky Charms cereal. Fortunately he had a good sense of humor and, if his fellow countrymen and women have senses of humor as dry as his, I will enjoy spending time in Ireland. He was quite surprised that I knew of Kerrygold and when I told him that it was available in my little city of 300,000 people he beamed with pride and bragged that it was the best butter on the planet.

I gave him my story about going to Britain for pleasure to see IQ and that one of my goals was to eat as many salt & vinegar crisps as I could get my grubby little hands on. He then offered the brand of his favorite and I vowed to keep an eye out for it with the earnestness of a new seminary student as I do not take salt & vinegar crisp recommendations lightly.

About 9 hours later I saw bags of them on display at the Dublin airport as I made my way to another gate to catch my flight to Birmingham. Although severely tempted to grab one and enjoy some salty, tangy goodness, I refrained thinking that I'd be able to find my fellow flyer's favorite in England. Birmingham is, after all, Britain's second largest city. Surely they'd be on sale somewhere; Tess would cooperate with me on this.

Wrong!

And so, on my return trip, I scoured the shelves of a WHSmith at the Dublin airport and bought every salt & vinegar crisp I could find - four (4) of them, including the recommended brand.

This is the story of one of them.

I think "O'Donnells of Tipperary" is a fine name for a crisp. It just sounds classy and maybe even a little aristocratic. (The American equivalent might be the much lamer "Lays of Plano".) Although the crisps have only been made since 2010, the company owner's family has been farming longer than the United States has been a country. Does Irish cider vinegar taste different from British or American cider vinegar?

The crisps were actually a bit darker than you see in the photo. More of a medium yellow with a tinge of tan. Edges were frequently brown while the surfaces were strewn with bubbles. They were cut more thickly than the average American chip. Taking a whiff from the packet, I smelled oil and a hint of potato that was on the sweet side.

That thickness yielded a big, loud crunch. Vinegar flavor, er, flavour was fairly mellow and I didn't taste any extra salt. On the plus side, these crisps had a really nice cider vinegar flavor and I found that the tanginess built up to a more desirable level after munching on several of them. They also had a very delectable spud taste that had a nice earthy-sweet balance.

While I would prefer these crisps get more vinegar, I enjoyed them greatly and appreciated their nice, hearty potato taste.

Oils on the label were sunflower and rapeseed (apparently we call this stuff canola) and I also spied "sea salt flavour" which flummoxes me. Also on the label was rosemary extract used as an anti-oxident. Immediately upon reading that, I started tasting rosemary on the chips. Not an unpleasant experience but I am unsure if it was genuinely present or just my brain messing with me.

Before the tariffs: Keogh's Atlantic Sea Salt & Irish Cider Vinegar crisps

A friend of mine, aware of my salt & vinegar potato chip addiction, snagged a bag of the Keogh's Atlantic Sea Salt & Irish Cider Vinegar variety while in Chicago not too long ago. I was pleased to discover that they were imported from Hibernia and don't think they were unduly expensive so they must have reached these shores before the tariffs kicked in. At first I thought that these would be my first foreign salt & vinegar chips but then realized that I have sampled some from our friends up north in Canada. And so these would be the first to traverse the Atlantic Ocean.

How does one pronounce "Keogh's"? (Apologies to any Irish folks out there.) The name refers to the family that owns and runs the company that grows potatoes somewhere in the vicinity of Dublin, it looks like, and has been turning them into chips/crisps since 2011.

Going in, I was curious as to what kind of potatoes Keogh's uses for their crisps. Presumably a different variety or varieties than American chip makers use. Keogh's doesn't say but, then again, neither do most American purveyors of this tasty snack. But it would be interesting to taste if there was something unique about the potato flavor here. 

These crisps looked mighty fine. They generally had a medium yellow hue, although there were some that veered towards tan, and, with the skin on, had brown edges. I spied an occasional bubble. Putting my nose in the bag, I smelled a nice earthy potato aroma followed by oil and a hint of vinegar.

"Thick cut" said the bag and so the crisps had a good, solid crunch to them. Perhaps not quite as stentorian a chomping clamor as kettle chips but darn close. The Atlantic Ocean's salinity does not suffer from these chips as the salt level seemed average to my taste. Vinegar was on the mild side. My tongue tasted the tang but didn't feel threatened by it.

The potato flavor was excellent - earthy with a bit of sweetness. I couldn't really distinguish these Hibernian spuds from their North American cousins. Perhaps the vinegar got in the way of being able to taste fine distinctions. But I'd guess not. And about the vinegar: what makes it sweet? Is it actually sweetened or is apple cider vinegar, which the website says is used here, considered "sweet"?

These were tasty chips. Despite needing a bit more vinegar they had a nice crunch and I'd eat them if they were to come my way again or if I found myself on The Emerald Isle.