Cheeseburger / Hamburger

BIJOU-REVIEW: Old Dutch Ripples Appetizers On The Go – Bacon Cheeseburger Sliders

/ duthow / Leave a comment

Rating: ©©©-3/4 chips  (notable)

Old Dutch Appetizers - Bacon CheeseburgerThese are our favorite kind of Appetizers On The Go – CHIPS!!

At first we sort of scoffed at the flavor name of these chips – Bacon Cheeseburger Sliders?!  Really, is the sliders aspect of that name necessary?  In essence the chip flavor would be the same regardless of what size the burger you are comparing it it is – so by simply calling these Bacon Cheeseburger flavored would have sufficed!   But then we realized that this line of Old Dutch Ripples were supposed to represent “Appetizers On The Go,” and in that case including Sliders as a part of the flavor name made a lot more sense.

The bacon flavor aspect really just consisted of a splash of some smoke, otherwise we did not get any rich porky fat flavor.

And as for the burger portion, no beef to be found here either!  Basically just salt combined with whey seems to be the representative combination for meat these days.

And although both mustard and tomato appear to be non-existent among the ingredients list, their presence or flavor is surely recognizable and quite prominent. One taster went so far as to call the chips ketchup and mustard chips (which isn’t a bad idea for a new flavor!!).

These are not bad chips in any way, in fact they are pretty easy to chomp on, but they were definitely lacking in any real definitive embracing or representation of the bacon cheeseburger slider….

Chips discovered at Kwik Trip; Plymouth, Minnesota

Old Dutch Official Website

Chip Ratings Scale:

(1/4 increments)

© – return to sender

©© – tolerable

©©© – notable

©©©© – lip-smacking

©©©©© – “A” list

REVIEW: President’s Choice World of Flavours – Canadian Burger Potato Chips

/ duthow / 2 Comments

Rating: ©©© chips  (notable)

President's Choice - World of Flavours Canadian Burger

Comments:

A little while back we did a chip swap with our friend Dani at The Daily Yum.  We sent her a bag of each of the three ‘Flavor Finalists’ for Lay’s ‘Do Us a Flavor’ contest – you can find her opinion of those right here.  In return, we were sent a lovely trio (Moroccan Spice & Smokin’ Stampede, in addition to these) of uniquely flavored potato chips from a local grocery store called President’s Choice.  Apparently, it wasn’t Dani at The Daily Yum, but Mr. Obama himself, who has chosen these chips for us to review!  How exciting!!!

So, what exactly makes a burger into a Canadian Burger?  A Canadian burger includes a grilled beef burger with white cheddar cheese, back bacon and a touch of ketchup.  In case you are not savvy, and up to par, with your Canadian pork products, according to our Canadian sources (which consists of The Daily Yum….of course), back bacon is Peameal or Cornmeal bacon, or what we call Canadian Bacon here in the States.  So, whatever you call it, this Canadian version of bacon uses the much more lean cut of pork loin, instead of the rich, fatty pork belly we are accustom to in the U.S.  Whether or not this is the reason for why we feel these chips were lacking a bit in their flavor depth, we can’t be sure?

The ingredient combination sounded good enough to us, but after tasting only a few chips it was obvious that these chips were unbalanced, and missing some type of acidity/sour ingredient to cut through all of the sweet and fatty flavors.  We feel that the addition of some mustard, or pickle, or any pretty much any type of fresh acid could have really livened these chips up.  Instead, what we tasted were some extremely rich and sweet potato chips.  Rich cheddar cheese and grilled burger flavors, combined with the very sweet ketchup and some rich, sweet and smoky back bacon, all equaled out to be a bit too sweetly-one-sided for our pallets.  The potato chips themselves were medium thick with wide ripples, and a soft and hearty crunch.

It is obvious that President’s Choice Grocery Stores care about creating and offering their clientele unique versions of everyone’s favorite snack foods (chips).  However, it is also apparent that they have not perfected those flavors in our opinion.  Maybe it will be different for the next two President’s Choice flavors we get to try, but let’s just say that the Canadian Burger potato chips are not the best burger flavored chips we have ever tasted, and they will definitely not be making Chip Review’s Top 5 Meat Flavored Chips list any time soon….

As always we would love to hear what you think.  Agree or disagree.  Let us know.

Chips provided to Chip Review by Dani @ The Daily Yum 

Chip Ratings Scale:

(1/4 increments)

© – return to sender

©© – tolerable

©©© – notable

©©©© – lip-smacking

©©©©© – “A” list

RATING: Pringles – Limited Time Only Cheese Burger

/ duthow / Leave a comment

Rating: ©©©-1/2 chips  (notable)

Comments:

When these Pringles Limited Time Only Cheese Burger Crisps came out a little while ago,  we could have sworn that we had already tried Pringles Cheeseburger flavored crisps at some point in the past?  Well, we checked our database, and low and behold, we HAD tried some, and they were called Restaurant Cravers Cheeseburger!  But, that was at a time before we were taking good notes or writing reviews.  So, we can’t be certain how similar those Restaurant Cravers are to these current day Limited Time Only crisps?

Recently, Chip Review also reviewed Lay’s Stax Cheeseburger crisps.  We thought that they were OK.  The consensus seems to be that everyone thinks they taste like McDonald’s cheeseburgers.  So, how do we describe Pringles Cheese Burger chips then??  Are they like White Castle sliders?  Burger King’s Whopper?  Five Guy’s Little Cheeseburgers?

Well, not sure if we would compare them to any restaurant cheeseburger, because they were definitely not as cheeseburger-y (it’s a word, trust us) as the Lay’s Stax.  And by this we mean that Pringles did not really attempt to mimic the meat flavor aspect of the cheeseburger at all, and their seasoning even allowed for some of the potato flavor to shine through.   Whereas Lay’s Stax were actually able to create, to certain extent, a meaty quality (using what we believe to be some salty MSG-hybrid combination of ingredients), Pringles was satisfied with simply giving us many of the cheeseburger’s condiments’ flavors, and hoping that our minds (in conjunction with calling them cheeseburger crisps) would make the association.

You know what, we did make the association, and we actually liked them a little bit more than Lay’s version as well.  Right away, we tasted the strong, predominant flavors of mustard and pickle, followed relatively closely behind by hints of onion.  Underneath those powerhouses were the smallest hints of sweetness from tomato powder and maybe just the tiniest bit of smooth tang from the cheese.  To be honest, these crisps sort of reminded us a bit of the seasoning used by Doritos on their Late Night Cheeseburger chips.  Except for the fact that Pringles was missing that ‘wow factor’ (always include the wow factor – Chips 101), along with the little detail that Chip Review feels that the cheeseburger flavor definitely works better with tortilla chips, than potato crisps / chips.

As always, these are our thoughts, we would love to hear what you think.  Agree or disagree, let us know.

Chip Ratings Scale:

(1/4 increments)

© – return to sender

©© – tolerable

©©© – notable

©©©© – lip-smacking

©©©©© – “A” list

REVIEW: Lay’s Stax – All-American Cheeseburger

/ duthow / 3 Comments

Rating: ©©©-1/4 chips  (notable)

Comments:

At Chip Review we are huge fans of the cheeseburger flavored chips.  The harmonious combination of cheese, pickle, onion, mustard, ketchup and salty meat flavors, is truly an All-American favorite.  Our favorites of the genre being Doritos Late Night Cheeseburger.  So, whenever we see a new brand try their hand at the great flavor combo, we get really excited, and need to try it right away.

Before going any further, and saying anymore, one of us at Chip Review needs to confess something….

“I have never, in my 32 years of life, eaten a McDonald’s cheeseburger.  In fact, up until approximately 4 years ago, I had never tasted any burger of any type.  Well, since that miraculous day 4 years ago (Anchor Bar, Superior, Wisconsin – still one of my favorites to this day), I have tasted 73 different burgers (and a large number of those burgers, countless more times), and yes I have kept track and documented them all.  So, yes it has been a conscientious choice that I have made to specifically not try a McDonald’s cheeseburger.  I prefer not to go into any of the specifics as to why, because there are numerous….”  DDH.

All that being said we’ve decided to simply say a couple of words regarding our thoughts on these All-American Cheeseburger Stax, and then pass the buck to one of our favorite food writers, Ed Levine of Serious Eats, and let him tell you his opinion.

According to some at Chip Review, the flavor of these chips does indeed taste like a McDonald’s cheeseburger.  Very pronounced mustard and onion, and extremely salty MSG, meat-ish flavor.  What you won’t get from these chips are any of the great mouth textures – juicy, rich meat, the creamy cheese, some slightly crunchy/cooling pickles, ketchup/mustard and soft, comforting buns – so in our opinion, these chips are not as good as the real thing!

Ed Levine says:

“Yup, I was on my own, so I fearlessly opened the tube and proceeded where no man (at least) in the office had gone before me: to eating an All-American Cheeseburger crisp. And damn it, what a fine All-American Cheeseburger crisp it was: salty, crunchy, well-seasoned with a reddish-orange tinned array of dried spices. I had one, then another, and finally a third before it hit me like a ton of bricks—or perhaps I should say a ton of Big Macs or Quarter Pounders—that these crisps tasted exactly like a regular single McDonald’s cheeseburger. The more I ate (and yes, I finished the rest of that first tube in a matter of minutes), the more clear the flavor comparison was. There was mustard, ketchup or tomato, dill pickle, something cheese-y, onion, and somewhere, buried deep in this surprisingly felicitous flavor combination, something resembling beef.” (Serious Eats, 2012, read the rest of his story here).

As always, these are our thoughts, along with the thoughts of another, and we would love to hear what you think.  Agree or disagree, let us know.

Chip Ratings Scale:

(1/4 increments)

© – return to sender

©© – tolerable

©©© – notable

©©©© – lip-smacking

©©©©© – “A” list