A Salt & Vinegar Miscellany XXIII: Fully Loaded

Gah! I cannot recall exactly where I bought these. My best guess is that they were procured at the Aldi in a mall (a.k.a. - shopping centre) on Market Street or High Street in Manchester. As I recall, they were nestled in amongst lots of candy on a shelf that you walk by as you are making your way to the register.

Here in the States Aldi is a downmarket place yet the one where I got these is smack dab in the middle of Manchester's shopping district in the city centre. Is it a bit more upscale over there? I'd expect the UK equivalent of Trader Joe's/Whole Foods to be in that mall. Has the UK fallen on hard times? 

Snackrite appears to be one of Aldi's house brands. With the words "FULLY LOADED" on the label, I had a slight hope that these would be nice'n'tangy.

They smelled, well, like peanuts with a hint of vinegar. They were tan which I presume means they were dry roasted and had white dust on them - magic vinegar dust, I hoped.

The nuts had a nice, mild roasty taste along with a slight sweetness and a mellow tang. No extra salt was applied, as far as I could taste. For those familiar with Planters peanuts, these were closer to their lightly salted variety rather than the normal salted one. The ingredients list had barley malt vinegar powder which gets bonus points from me. But the vinegar flavor is faint enough that you need to throw a bunch of these into your mouth at once to get a decent zip and discern the barley malt taste.

More vinegar flavor would have been nice, especially since it was malt vinegar, but these peanuts were fine. A tasty diversion from my normal peanut diet.

A Salt & Vinegar Pilgrimage to the UK: The Real McCoy’s Salt & Malt Vinegar Coated Peanuts

The first salt & vinegar snack that I sampled in the UK came in a family-sized sack - The Real McCoy’s Salt & Malt Vinegar Coated Peanuts. McCoy's is a brand that belongs to KP Snacks, a British company that dates to 1853. According to the internet, it started out making jams, pickles, and such but transitioned to peanuts in 1948.

This was not my first salt & vinegar peanut rodeo having tasted Planters' version. Unlike those, these came coated in a fluorescent yellow shell. I neglected to check if they glowed in the dark.

The tangy cocoon was nice and crunchy with a medium-low level of vinegar tang. If you pour some in your hand and throw them back, you get a nice sour on your tongue. The malt vinegar flavor was delicious. Eating these was like eating Tootsie Roll Pops in that you get the tangy shell before you get to the nutty centre.

These were addictive.

A Salt & Vinegar Miscellany XIII - Mr. Peanut meet Mr. Acetic Acid

Several weeks back, I found myself perusing the new snack aisle my local Woodman's and came across a couple salt & vinegar treats from Planters - peanuts and cashews.

After wiping the drool from my goatee, I thought to myself that, not only would they be tasty, but also that they need to become part of my ongoing salt & vinegar saga. Then it occurred to me that I've had them before and that they've already been reviewed. I got home and queried my blog only to find that I, in fact, hadn't reviewed them. Yet.

For 2-3 weeks I bought both fully intending to review them but I instead just gobbled the precious down with not a care. And then a few weeks ago, I found that the cashews were unavailable and the part of the snack shelf where they once resided has been lamentably empty since. I don't know if this is because of a supply chain issue or if the product has been discontinued. (Forsooth!) But the peanuts have been there every shopping trip like an old friend. And now I have finally gotten around to a review.

Perhaps Planters should put something on the label about shaking the can well before opening because, while the nuts had a fine dust on them, they weren't very tangy. However, after eating my way to the bottom of the can, I found that a lot of the precious vinegar dust was just sitting there peanutless. Maybe peanuts just aren't very adhesive.

There wasn't an excess of salt here and the vinegar was very mild. A definite accent as the peanut flavor shown through. Tasty but not particularly tangy.

As I ate them, I thought about how I have pondered potato varieties in the past and how they taste when turned into a chip. Then I wondered about peanut varieties. Surely there is more than one. Indeed, the internet notes such.

What type does Planters use? According to this site, Runners are the most common in snacks. I might just have to seek out the different varieties and do some flavor comparisons.