Review (x2): Walkers Do Us A Flavour Potato Crisps: Ranch Raccoon & Cheesy Beans On Toast
Junk Food Nation, while my mind explodes with the release of Apple’s Watch and the idea that sports betting may be allowed in New Jersey, let’s move on with the Walkers Do Us a Flavor reviews. Today: Walkers Ranch Raccoon & Cheesy Beans on Toast potato crisps!
Ranch Raccoon & Cheesy Beans On Toast: The Money Shot
OOH BABY. Ranch Raccoon! This is the flavor everyone has been wondering about. Not that Cheesy Beans on Toast sounds any better. Honestly, what the hell are cheesy beans? Is this like when you mix refried beans and queso together? Because that’s not bad…but then do people from the UK eat this on toast as opposed to tortilla chips? I’m so confused.
Well, whatever – let’s just get to it. FIRST UP: Walkers Ranch Raccoon Potato Crisps!
Walkers Ranch Raccoon Potato Crisps
Walkers Ranch Raccoon Potato Crisps
Walkers Ranch Raccoon Potato Crisps
Walkers Ranch Raccoon Potato Crisps
And, like yesterday, we’ll begin with Brit’s review:
BRIT: This may disturb you but neither ranch dressing nor raccoons exist in the UK. This makes me sad.
These smell pretty awful, like sour cream gone bad with almost a greasy smell. Think sour cream and chive Pringles but weaker, without the chives and slightly off.
The taste is surprisingly not as bad as I’d thought it would be but it doesn’t taste of ranch. It’s a very weak sour cream with a tiny hint of coolness. I do pick up the “off” note that I could smell and I find it unpleasant, mainly they just taste of potato chips though. These are a disappointment and I don’t see them winning.
I actually went to the official site after I’d tried these, and after reading the description I can’t imagine how they ended up with this as the final product. Gamey meat? Garlic? Nope and nope.
JFG: What?? Ranch dressing doesn’t exist in the UK? How do you eat your salad/broccoli/buffalo wings/car seats/poison then? No ranch? NO FREEDOM.
Anyways, according to the Walkers website: “A delicious combination of gamey meat flavour, with accents of sour cream and a garlic kick. They complement one another beautifully.” Yikes. I have to admit – while I have eaten game meat before at restaurants (rabbits, venison, etc.), I was a little scared to try these. BUCK UP, ERIC. YOU CAN DO THIS.
I opened the bag and smelled, fearing the worst…and smelled, well, not much. Huh. I did pick up the sour cream smell…and there was a little bit of meaty funk to the aroma. It wasn’t a good smell to be sure, but it wasn’t anything specific. Smelled a lot like the Haggis Chips I’ve eaten before.
Placing a good mouthful of crisps into my mouth, I chewed and tasted…and interesting flavor. Brit was right – I didn’t pick up gamey-ness. I could taste the sour cream flavor but it was light…the whole thing had a sort of burnt meat flavor. The sour cream/garlic flavor maybe helped round out the savoriness? But to me, the most accurate flavor I could pin down was burnt chicken. It tasted like burnt chicken. Ever get a $5 chicken from you local supermarket, one of those pre-roasted ones? You know how there are some dry semi-burnt edges on that chicken? That’s what this tasted like. Burnt chicken. Not a BAD flavor…but certainly not an appetizing one.
Is that what raccoon tastes like? Burnt chicken?
SECOND UP: Walkers Cheesy Beans On Toast Potato Crisps!
Walkers Cheesy Beans On Toast Potato Crisps
Walkers Cheesy Beans On Toast Potato Crisps
Walkers Cheesy Beans On Toast Potato Crisps
Walkers Cheesy Beans On Toast Potato Crisps
BRIT: I have high hopes for these; cheese and baked beans is a really popular topping for toast and jacket potatoes over here. They definitely smell cheesy and I can pick up a little tart tomato sauce, pretty good.
Taste-wise they’re good but too salty and definitely too weak. Salt and cheese are the main flavours with a tiny hint of tomato-y bean sauce in the background. I’m disappointed; these could easily have been the winner.
Again I looked these up after I tasted them and sorry, Emma C; there’s no “classic baked bean taste.” Maybe Walkers tried to sabotage her? If these had been better they clearly would’ve been frontrunners.
JFG: I still don’t know what cheesy beans are, nor do I know what jacket potatoes are. Apparently, it is this. Which actually doesn’t look half bad, so …there’s that.
The website describes these as: “Sweet tomato sauce overlaid with hints of mature Somerset cheese and backed up by that classic baked bean taste. Classic combinations.” I opened the bag and sniffed…I smelled a slight tangy cheesy smell. Tangy cheese? Maybe that’s the tomato? But yeah…a tangy cheesy smell.
Placing some crisps into my mouth, I chewed and got not much flavor at all. Brit describes them as having a salt and cheese flavor, but the cheese flavor I picked up really only came in at the end…it started out just as a slight creamy taste that towards the end of the chew turned slightly sharp that gave me a cheese kick. Otherwise, it was pretty lame.
Beany-ness? Zippy. I got none. I personally didn’t really pick up on ANY tomato/bean taste, and I’ve HAD good bean-flavored chips. This is definitely a lost opportunity for Walkers. Sad.
Ranch Raccoon verdict – not as offensive as I thought. Cheesy Beans on Toast verdict – weak sauce.
So far, the Walkers Do Us a Flavor flavors are not wow-ing me AT ALL. Wasabi Ginger still reigns supreme in my mind!
PURCHASED AT: UK!
COST: 1 pound per six pack.
Thoughts? Please comment below or hit me up on Twitter @junkfoodguy or LIKE my Facebook Page and message me there. I also have Google+!! Let’s hang out.
Sincerely,
Junk Food Guy
Discuss - 18 Comments
Dude, a jacket potato is a baked potato. It’s been baked in a tinfoil “jacket”. That’s all. And I’ve effing told you there’s no ranch dressing in the UK. Hence the whole Doritos Cool Original nonsense. Those poor, poor, ranch-less bastards.
This is a duo of flavours that definitely could have used the American / Canadian style of bag art. A picture of the thing that’s supposed to be represented. At least then, we could figure out what the hell Ranch Raccoon was supposed to be trying at. And you’d have known what cheesy beans look like.
What bugs me now is that previous iterations of Do Us A Flavour have included Cajun Squirrel, as if the British concept of American food is driving on country roads in our giant cars and eating what we run over. To that end, we have *got* to stop exporting new episodes of Duck Dynasty.
@Shorneys: +1
“Ranch dressing doesn’t exist in the UK? How do you eat your salad/broccoli/buffalo wings/car seats/poison then?”
When I was in Scotland on a school trip, they served us an “Americanized” meal that included wings and they thought it was weird we ate the wings. Except they’re version of sauce tasted more like orange marmalade. (Granted, we were stuck eating most meals on a college campus that made the airline food on the way home taste good).
@Jessica: Wings dipped in marmalade…..yikes
An authentic raccoon flavor would need to include rabies: http://www.cdc.gov/rabies/location/usa/surveillance/wild_animals.html No thanks.
@Lindemann: STOP IT.
Proof that we actually live in the Matrix. Which begs the question – how do the machines know what Raccoon tasted like? Maybe they got it wrong. Maybe what I think Raccoon tasted like actually tasted like oatmeal, or tuna fish. That makes you wonder about a lot of things. You take chicken, for example: maybe they couldn’t figure out what to make chicken taste like, which is why chicken tastes like everything.
@Steve : +1
Hi, jacket potato is baked potato, the jacket is the skin lol. We do have ranch dressing along with various other salad dressings!
@Emma: Why don’;t they just call it a baked potato then? lol.
Lol, you guys have no idea what Baked beans with cheese on it on a piece of toasted bread is… X) (way too funny) tbh, after trying all the flavours their are, my most favourite was the Chip Shop Curry Flavour. my least favourite was the Ranch Raccoon – it had too much of a like rubbery taste to it, rather nasty.
@Geebee: One of these days I need to just come over there to try this curry
I think a tin of pork and beans (without the pork since rationing) will be close to our Heinz Baked Beans. Into which grated cheese is often melted, when your fried breakfast is just not artery clogging enough.
Jacket potato/baked potato….don’t you guys ever have more than one name for a thing?
@Ben: Re: jacket potato / baked potato – yeah, I have two names for a lot of things – just never heard of the alternate “jacket potato” name! 🙂
Where does this myth that the UK has no dressings/sauces etc come from? Our supermarkets have entire aisles full of all the sauces under the sun.
Cheesy Beans on Toast is amazing comfort food you can knock up in 5 minutes. It’s just baked beans (in tomato sauce) with cheese (Mature Cheddar is good for this) grated in and melted poured over a slice (or 2) of regular bread. Cheap and cheerful!
I just tried the Ranch Raccoon crisps. Burnt chicken and past it’s best sour cream really is the best description for it. I’m just glad there were only 2 packs in the multipack.
@Mike: LOL – burnt chicken and rotten sour cream. I AGREE with your assessment!
“I still don’t know what cheesy beans are”. Dude, re-parse it. There’s no such thing (that I know of) as cheesy beans. There’s this thing called beans, baked beans to be specific, which is beans in a tomato sauce. Beans on toast is just that: a slice or two of toasted bread with baked beans dolloped on top. Yum. There is only one way to improve beans on toast and that is to sprinkle some grated cheddar cheese on top of the hot beans so it starts to melt into the sauce. Eat. Hyper-yum. You have *got* to try it. Your review is spot on though: tasting the real cheesy beans-on-toast will merely accentuate how far the Walkers flavour is from recreating it…!
@Dave: Good to know. I love the term hyper-yum