Doritos – Zesty Cheese

You know how sometimes people engage in self destructive tendencies for a multitude of reasons, but it always ends in tragedy? That’s sort of how I feel about a lot of snacks from my childhood. Every so often I get an urge to indulge in them even though I know it’s horrible for me and will likely take years off my life if I total all the instances up. And yet…it’s incredibly hard to say no. That’s basically my relationship with Doritos as this point.

I’m at an age where I should probably either not eat them, or spend the money and get something that won’t cut as many years off my life. But when that nasty little triangle calls to me, it’s hard to deny it. And so here we are, re-experiencing a flavour that I haven’t had in what is likely a decade at the least.

If you’ve ever had the quintessential nacho cheese flavour from Doritos, this may look, smell and taste similar, but it’s definitely different. From a smell perspective, they smell a bit more tangy, similar to an aged cheese might have a bit of a tangy or zesty quality to it, if you will. It doesn’t ever veer into pungent or complex though, it’s still quite straight forward.

The taste is very similar to nacho cheese, but it has a little something extra, like they added more cheese. Or rather, they added another cheese. While to nacho cheese flavour evokes memories of American cheese or cheddar cheese, this is like cheddar cheese and something a little extra. Research indicates that the additional cheese in question is like Parmesan, which I could see being the case. Parmesan tends to have a distinct smell and flavour to it and while I don’t get that fully here, it wouldn’t surprise me if a bit of that was sprinkled in to give it that tangy quality.

Texture is as you would expect from the mass market chip – it’s a bit on the thin side, but still enough of a light crunch to make it easy and addictive to eat in large quantities. That’s how they get you. The only reason my face isn’t completely stuffed like a nasty gullet is because I like my keyboard clean and these things attach Doritos dust to your fingers like flies on….well you know.

Overall, as much as I like to opt for quality over quantity when it comes to snacks, it’s hard to deny that the scientists over at Doritos labs haven’t managed to strike the perfect balance of cheesy flavour and maintained it well over the decades to make it just as addictive and tasty as I remember from childhood. All that to say that I would likely do this again, but I will try to tap into all my remaining available willpower to hold out as long as possible. Hopefully it will be more than a year…