Walkers new Market Deli crisps!

It’s not often you get excited about a new range of crisps, but when it’s Walkers creating a quality range of snacks you have to sit up and pay attention. Like most people in the country I’m a fan of Walkers classic range of crisps, so when they invited me to an evening to launch their new ‘Market Deli’ snacks with none other than Michelin starred chef Tom Aikens, this was an event I was not going to miss.

The Market Deli range includes tortilla chips, potato crisps and pita crisps. It was explained that the focus is all about the quality of the ingredients, Walkers have travelled far and wide to find the finest available products from Cornish Quartz Cheddar cheese to Turkish sun dried tomatoes. Each type of snack was displayed with the relevant ingredients next to them, this really put the flavours into perspective. The tortilla chips come in two flavours first up was the sea salt and cracked black pepper. This is a simple and classic combination but it’s all too easy for the pepper to overpower a humble tortilla. I’m pleased to say this wasn’t the case, you still got that wonderful corn flavour (even though they use grains like millet and buckwheat) with just the right amount of peppery zing and mixed with the sea salt made for perfectly seasoned chips. It was then on to the sun dried tomato and chilli tortillas which again had great flavour and good balance not too sharp a tomato flavour and not to spicy with the chilli.

The first potato crisps I tried were flavoured with the Cornish Quartz Cheddar and they certainly had a deliciously bold cheesy flavour and a great crunch. Next I tasted the Wiltshire ham, Cheddar and pickle. These were a little ‘busy’ for my tastes and didn’t give a clean balance of flavours like the others. The pickle kind of overpowered the ham flavour and they were quite sweet. The balsamic vinegar crisps were very nice the clean sharp balsamic taste worked well with the crispy potato, no complaints with this one! Chorizo and roast onion flavour didn’t have enough of that smoky chorizo coming through. Personally I would have liked that to have been the more dominant flavour. The pita crisp flavour I enjoyed the most was roast garlic and Mediterranean herbs, simple but effective.

After trying the snacks we went on to see a demonstration by Tom Aikens who made mac ‘n’ cheese using the very same cheddar as used in the crisps. He then made a mouth watering chunky gazpacho with the sun dried tomatoes. This really did hit home the quality of the ingredients used in this new range of snacks. The Market Deli range will be available from Monday 23^rd June 2014. That means you can get your hands on them slap bang in the middle of the World Cup. This is a good thing, because they all went very,very well with a cold beer! Remember to share below when you get to try the Market Deli range and tell me what you think. Michael Robinson