Weekend Eats 12

Weekend Eats are always my favourite posts to write, if only the weekend came around quicker and lasted for longer though. They fly by way too fast for my liking. I don't always do a Weekend Eats post because lots of times we have the same meals because we love them so much, but this weekend I made some new discoveries.

Years and years and years ago I used to visit South Devon quite often, on one of these visits I discovered the wonderful Burts Crisps which were lovingly created and cooked there. I swear they were called Burts Crisps but seemingly now they're called Burts Chips, hmmm.

Anyway, a few years later Burts became a mainstream brand and you could get them in pretty much every supermarket, previously I had only had them on my trips to Devon. I enjoyed various flavours but then one appeared that not only caught my eye but grabbed my taste buds with both claws without me having to try one.

I present, the Firecracker Lobster flavour:

Firecracker LOBSTER!!!

There could be no flavour more ME than this.

Somewhere along the line they got discontinued and I got coeliac. I thought no more about them.

During our weekly food shop I was trying to hunt down some particularly good crackers that I'd had a few weeks previous, I was going to do a review, but alas, they couldn't be found. I figured I'd have a look at what gluten free crisp offerings there were as a snack replacement. The familiar pink and navy blue pack screamed at me!

Then I realised, 'oh well'. 'There's no way I can have them'.

*Checks ingredients*

No Pepper - tick!

*Checks rest of pack*

GLUTEN FREE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You may wonder why I checked for pepper first, well, I always do, on any label. It's incredibly frustrating to find that something appealing is gluten free only then to find it has pepper in it. One step forward, one step back. If something isn't gluten free and without pepper I don't feel cheated.

4 bags found their way into our trolley.

These are really thick wave cut chips with a perfect even amount of flavoured coating. I hate it when you open a packet of crisps and the coating is only on a few leaving the others with just the flavour of potato. Hardly a flavour by itself. 

Inside Bag Shot!

Paprika gives these crisps their lovely rich colour. The actual flavour is a well balanced mix of lobster with just a little kick of red bell pepper, it's very moreish. The crisps have a lovely crunch and what I love to do is squish the pack a bit so the very large crisps break down into more dainty mouth sizes.

I've always loved how Burts do their packaging, the little blurbs about their crisps screams passion for the art of making them. I also quite enjoy knowing who fried my pack. This stems back from years ago when I was a kid and McCain's frozen pizzas would say who topped them on the back of the box. I remember that Steve was particularly generous, Valerie, not so.

In this instance it was Roddy who fried all 4 of my packs:

Roddy Did A Good Job

I figured it would be cool if I could tell you what other Burts Chips flavours were gluten free, so I headed over to their website. Imagine my excitement when I saw that you could put a face to the name of the person who fried your crisps!

Except. WHERE'S RODDY?!!!

My mind was thinking the worst, we only bought these crisps on Saturday, he can't have fried them that long ago. Had he had a crisp frying accident?! Was he sacked for crisp offences?! Is Roddy a ghost*?!

I did a little panic.

Sean, Linda, Clement, Ian M, Liz and Biju, but no Roddy!!! They've lied to me!!!!!!!!!!!

It was at this stage where a conversation from Saturday post shopping was recalled:

Me: "Ooooh, I wonder who fried these ones"

OH: *funny look*

Me: "Oh, it was Roddy!. When I was a kid we had pizzas that told you who put the toppings on, I really liked that"

OH: *questioning look*

Me: "They DID!"

OH: *shakes head*

Me: "Well Roddy fried these!" *holds up packet*

OH: "No"

He was right. Roddy didn't fry them, I'd been duped. Steve from McCain was definitely real though, there was a little form you could fill in on the back of the pizza box to say you enjoyed his pizza topping skills and so I sent one and got a letter back from Steve thanking me**.

I still didn't want to believe that Roddy hadn't fried them, mainly because I had an image of another Roddy doing so. Roddy Piper, I'd like to see him fry crisps it'd be funny. But potentially, very, very dangerous.

Anyway, I went back to the website and sure enough, I had missed something. There's a drop down menu where you can select from yet more fryers!! Seems that Jock, Mike, Richard, Scott and Sony as well as Roddy aren't front page material just yet. I can only speak on behalf of Roddy as I haven't sampled the others frying skills but Roddy fries a mean Firecracker Lobster Chip, I think he deserves a spot.

So there, Roddy DID fry them after all! And they were delicious, so well done him, I'm a big fan now! I feel a bit guilty though, I may have to actively source out samples of the other fryers so they don't feel left out.

I'm afraid that I came to no conclusions about the other flavours being gluten free :(

You can see Roddy and his chums by going here and clicking on Who. Don't forget the dropdown!

Please don't tell Roddy about this.

If you're still with me, I thank you for reading all that. I'll save the other stuff for tomorrow. 

* I've been watching too many episodes of Ghost Adventures

** I SWEAR that happened. I'm going to ask my mum if I'm mad.