Wild Bill's Bacon Jerky

It's Thursday!  And on this particular Thursday you shall get another non-chip review!  Aw yeah!  Bacon.  I know.  Bacon.  I was at 7/11, a surprisingly good place to find strange chips and/or snack products, and saw these in the beef jerky section.  There was no way I was leaving the store without these.  And now they are mine!

Wild Bill himself looks a bit odd, but I have high hopes for his bacon jerky.  Also, it's 'bodacious' apparently.  And why wouldn't it be?  Bacon.  Aw yeah.  At first glace this is actually kinda promising.  It smells super bacon-y and it looks like thick cut bacon.  The color is a little off, but I'm assuming that's because it's jerky.

But what does it taste like?
Saltier than regular bacon (if that's possible).  Super salty.  That's actually what I taste more than anything.  The bacon taste is secondary to the extreme saltines.  And I like salt - don't get me wrong.  But this might actually be too salty, even for me.  You kinda have to look for the bacon taste under the salt.  Still, it must be said - it does taste like bacon.  They actually do a really solid job with the taste (under the salt).  It's also a little disconcerting how old it seems.

I know it's jerky and it can last, but I can't quite shake the feeling that I'm just eating old bacon.  You'll also never confuse this with actual bacon.  Something critical is missing - these just look kinda lonely and weird.  I don't think it's something that's fixable necessarily, but if you're expecting these to be exactly like bacon... well... they aren't.  These are so salty I actually think I won't be finishing them.  It's just too much.

Would I get these again?  No, I probably wouldn't.  I know, I'm shocked too.  But it's just too salty to really be appealing.  I like salt and I like bacon, but too much salt can ruin anything.  As long as you're prepared for how salty it is... if you want some bacon without actually doing any work you could do worse than this.  Also, they somehow gets less appealing as time goes by.

Rating

 

Southern Recipe Original Pork Rinds

It's Thursday and that means it's time for something that's not quite a chip, but is still rather strange!  Dudes, I have no idea what to expect right now.  Like many people, I consider bacon to be pretty freakin delicious.  It's majestic.  In fact, why aren't there more bacon flavored chips?  I'd buy those in a second!  But, back to the point: bacon = magnificent.  Bacon comes from pigs, as do pork rinds, so I'm hoping to find some similarity.  I'm expecting to taste mostly salt, though, and maybe some pork flavor?  I really have no idea - that's one of the reasons I'm looking forward to trying these.

It's not starting off well.  They smell unpleasant.  I can't say I'm surprised since this is a bag of pork rinds, but I'm disappointed.  I had high hopes for this bacon substitute.  It smells like fried...something, but definitely not pork.  Some of them look really weird, too - one has bits of red on it.  I don't think I'll be eating those ones.

But what do they taste like? 
Not at all what I expected.  At first bite they taste kind of like what I expect styrofoam would taste like and then there's a weird taste.  Not sure exactly what it is - it's like a mild taste of 'fried nothing' and then the rinds practically disintegrate.  Before you take more than a couple bites, the rinds sort of melt into a gritty sludge in your mouth.  These are just overall unpleasant. I've only had a few of them, but I already know I won't be finishing this bag.  Into the trash they'll go.  I've heard of ones you can microwave and maybe those are better, but these are decidedly subpar.

Luckily they only cost a dollar.  People actually enjoy these?  I know this is a short review, but there really isn't much to say about these.  They taste pretty blah, aren't enjoyable to eat, and smell weird.  Overall a rousing 'bleh' for the pork rinds.

Rating:

Homemade Chips: The First Experiment

On the excellent suggestion from my friend Ciara (of Northern Irish Crisps fame) I have made my own potato chips!  I used a recipe I found online that calls for nothing more than parchment paper, cooking spray, a potato, a grater, and a microwave.  I can do that!  Wait... can I do that?

I was pretty skeptical about making chips in the microwave, especially our tiny microwave, but what the hell - I'll give it a shot.  I like the idea of knowing what went into my chips.  It makes me feel better about eating them I guess?  I dunno, but I'm all for new chip experiences!

Our tiny kitchen is sans mandolin so our trusty grater will have to do.  Luckily it has a near perfect sized blade on the side that sliced up the potato nicely.  I read that they need to be thinly sliced otherwise they won't crisp evenly so I tried to keep them as thin as possible.

Next step: put them on parchment paper that has been liberally sprayed with Pam.  Honestly, the Pam spraying was the worst part out of all of this.  Our kitchen has very few surfaces so I didn't have anywhere to spray the Pam other than on the stove.  Placed the chips on the paper and sprayed them again with cooking spray so both sides of the chips were covered.  Now!  To the microwave!

I kept thinking of Ian Malcolm's line from Jurassic Park "No. I'm simply saying that life, uh, finds a way." because even though I tried to get the parchment paper to fill the microwave and maximize the amount of space I had to put chips on and not rotate, our microwave still managed to rotate it.  No idea how since it was pretty well wedged, but turn it did.  Bravo, microwave.

The recipe said '3-5 minutes', but after 5 they were clearly not done.  Put them in for another minute before I decided they were done enough for government work.  Some of them weren't fully crisped and some were pretty well browned, but whatever!  Mission success!  I decided to go all out with seasonings and picked Himalayan salt, oregano, basil and garlic powder.  I figured as a test run I'd salt them all and then put the three remaining seasonings in thirds.  The bits that are shiny in the picture below are places that didn't crisp properly.

The verdict?  Pretty good!  My roommate and I both agreed that the garlic was the tastiest of the three flavors and that mixing all the spices would be worth a try.  Well then!  I didn't re-spray the parchment paper, but I sprayed the potatoes when I put them on.  Microwaved for 8 minutes this time and it was way better.  All of the chips were crispy and kinda stuck together where they were touching.  I put all of the spices on and it was pretty good! 

I still had yet more potato slices so why not make one more batch?  Why not indeed.  I put Parmesan cheese on the final batch .  Why?  Because I could.  The cheese really didn't make much of a difference to the flavor, but I enjoyed them all the same.

The overall verdict?  Good!  I'll probably make them again.  There's a strong potato taste and then the taste of the seasoning I put on.  It's not surprising, but it was refreshing to have a chip taste exactly like what was on it.  I think the biggest problem was that the spray had dried by the time the chips came out of the microwave - that meant the spices didn't stay on the chip.  If I tipped it a little I lost all the spice.  The good thing is that the browned ones didn't taste burnt - they just tasted like chip.

I'm not going to start rating them until I got the formula right and put some thought into how I'd like them to taste (other than 'use the spices in the pantry').  I mostly just wanted to put the first attempt out there and let you know this mission is in the works!  I'll still be posting store brand strange chips on Tuesdays, but I'll be tossing in a couple homemade posts on other days!  Maybe Thursdays?  Check back, friends!

Chips of Northern Ireland!

It's time for the first random post!  It's not Tuesday, friends!  But I'm posting!  My friends in Northern Ireland ate a bunch of chips and sent me their thoughts and pictures!  This is sort of half a guest post I guess?  I am jealous because I want to try these strange, nearly mystical flavors.  Especially Flame Grilled Steak holy crap!


The Reviews!
All Tayto chips are immense.  Tayto are the most popular over here.  They always have lots of flavour on them that would melt on the tongue.  And Tayto does lots of what we call normal flavour crisps such as cheese and onion, salt and vinegar, prawn cocktail, roast chicken, and then they do funky shape crisps like Xys and Ozys and Rollers.

And you can only get them over here.  They're even hard to get in England.  Oh and Space Invaders - they're class.  Prawn cocktail has a fishy smell.

 Nik Naks look like twigs.

Gemma's Favorites at the moment:
Rollers, cheese and onion, prawn cocktail, roast chicken, and Space Invaders.

Ciara's Favorites at the moment:
Flame grilled steak, paprika, smoky bacon, Wotsits and Skips.
Flame grilled steak is legit the best flavour ever.  Your mouth feels overloaded with flavour.  Your lips would burn with it.

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Ok!  It's me again!  Dudes - I want to try all of these chips!  Why do we not have easy access to such awesome flavors?!  I wish I'd been doing this blog a few years ago when I was in Northern Ireland and Australia - both those places have crazy chips.  I can't really provide a rating for these (though I assume it would vary from chip to chip - awesome sounding flavors aren't always awesome tasting), but someday I'll go back there and try them all.  Also Nik Naks totally look like Cheetos.

Tune in on Tuesday at our regular time for the next post!