Calbee Tomoriko Snack Sticks – Grilled Sweet Corn
Calbee is famous and well-known for all the savoury snacks they come out with. It seems like they come out with a lot of different stick shaped snacks. It seems only logical for them to branch out from just doing potato sticks, as tasty as those are, into other food items. I feel like potato and corn are both the most commonly used veggies for snacks, so this isn’t much of a stretch. I’d love to see some some of hybrid snack that takes the best parts of corn and potato chips and combines them into some super chip. It would also probably be super expensive, what with all the research and development and testing required to perfect it. Or you know, create some franken-potato-corn hybrid crop. Why do I get the feeling that a lab somewhere is already doing that?
These little sticks are made from sweet corn. The way these look are very reminiscent of the Jagariko potato sticks. They look like a cylindrical, pretzel stick shape that is a tad thicker. Looking at the cross section, it isn’t solid on the inside, and has a bit of a crisp texture look to it. The smell very much like a fresh corn on the cob. It might be me but I feel like it reminds me more of a steamed or boiled corn on the cob as opposed to a grilled one.
The pieces are fairly hollow. By this I mean when you bite into it, it kind of shatters into a hundred pieces, and there’s not much resistance. Odd that it reminds me of that book, A Million Little Pieces. Unlike some of the fabrications in that book though, this snack does feel fairly legit. It kind of reminds me of an airy pretzel, where the inside is fairly hollow and light, and it has the sensation of biting into a shell. It gives it a very light texture, but for some reason it doesn’t work for me. I guess I’m just the type of person who prefers something heartier and more substantial. It kind of reminds me of a corn puff with a hardened, crispy outer shell that doesn’t really melt, and you have to chew. I can’t tell how much actual corn is used, but what I can tell you is that after chewing through a piece, I got what felt like the skin off a kernel. As odd as that sounds, I feel like that lends itself to the authenticity of how much actual corn is used. I feel good about that at least.
The flavour is fairly corny. Not in an artificial, sweet corn way, but rather in a “this is made of corn” kind of way. It tastes as if you took kernels off a corn cob and put them into a blender before reshaping them into a stick and putting it into a fryer. It’s quite subdued as far as typical corn snacks go, but it’s kind of what I like about it. It has a very natural corn flavour to it. While the flavour isn’t anything remarkable on it’s own, it does actually remind me of eating a corn on the cob. More so the taste of chewing all the kernels in my mouth, and the feeling I get. You know, without the pieces getting stuck between my teeth as it inevitably always does. Am I eating my corn wrong?
I’d say this is a great product for trying, just to marvel at how they managed to pull it off. I don’t see this occupying brain space or my pantry. These weren’t cheap, and there’s not a lot in each bag, so it’s hard to recommend as something to make a habit of. I guess part of the downside of making a snack that is so good at capturing the taste of corn on the cob is that it’s probably cheaper and easier to just get an actual corn on the cob. So there you have it. If you are adventurous, this will be a fun try. If not, maybe just go eat some actual corn.
