Review: Barrow Boys Potato Crisps


Vegan Cheese & Onion and 5 other flavours. We finally got our hands on Barrow Boys vegan crisps at WMVF after having chased them since August. Barrow Boys promised to ship us some for review but they never arrived (never mind guys, we forgive easily with a pack of vegan cheese and onion in hand). Ethical Treats were able to supply us with all the flavours except Bombay Spice...that's Simply Salted, Salt & Vinegar, Sweet & Sour, Hickory BBQ and of course...Cheese & Onion:


These crisps (potato chips for US readers) are at the 'premium' end of the snack market, with posh packs and delicious thick crisps. They're more substantial than a pack of Walkers and the bags are also on the larger size too at 40g each.


Simply Salted: Plain Crisps as we say here in the UK. These are great quality, thick and crispy...but what else can you say about plain crisps. Good with a sandwich.


Sweet & Sour: The colour of this pack makes us think these are prawn cocktail flavour, and there's certainly an echo of that in there. Nothing fishy, but sweet like a chinese sweet 'n' sour sauce with just a hint of sour. Plenty of flavour all round. 


Cheese & Onion: The headline act. These are distinctly cheese and onion flavour, but not quite in the way some of the more common brands do it. Obviously there's no cheese in there, with the cheesy taste supplied by yeast powder. There's also both onion and garlic in there. A sophisticated cheese 'n' onion flavour.


Salt & Vinegar: Tangy and salty. These are not a vinegar explosion like you get in cheap crisps and won't leave you grasping for a glass of water. Quite salty but with a subtle vinegar flavour. A British classic snack, done well.


Hickory BBQ: We didn't expect the flavour we got when we opened these. BBQ usually means tasting of sweet BBQ sauce, but that's not what you get here at all. This is more of a smoky taste, without the smothering sticky sauce flavouring.

Round Up:

These crisps retail at around a pound a bag, so aren't cheap. They're great quality premium crisps though and are Vegan Society approved...the only crisps to hold the trademark.

If you haven't tried them yet, then obviously you'll want to give the cheese & onion a try...for novelty value if nothing else. Give the other flavours a chance though, and let's see if we can get animal-friendly crisps more widely stocked as a result.

Verdict: Boy are these good


Veganoo Score: ★★★★☆
Barrow Boys Potato Crisps


These crisps would have scored 5 stars but a couple of flavours include MSG for which we have deducted a point.

Footnote: Ingredients
Here are the ingredients panels from the packs we reviewed:









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4 comments:

  1. I don't really mind the MSG, but there's saccharin in the sweet & sour ones. Don't understand making premium crisps and then putting ingredients like that in.

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  2. Felicity...just realised that you're thriftyliving...great blog. Veganoo recommends this: http://thriftyliving.net/2009/12/25/seitan-turkey-roast-version-2-0/

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  3. Why, thank you! I do love the seitan turkey roast, and make it every Christmas. BTW, glad I found your site, lots of useful info here, and I have added you to my blogroll!

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  4. Why have you deducted a point for MSG? Unless you're allergic to it, it's an excellent and tasty ingredient!

    ReplyDelete

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