Hardbite – Smoked Paprika & Garlic With Avocado Oil
Hardbite has been around for some time now, and I’ve had enough run ins with it that I have a generally positive impression of them. They may be a higher price, but when on sale they are pretty good bang for buck when I’m craving quality chips over quantity of chips. That distinction is important, because sometimes I feel like I want something cheaper that comes in a bigger bag so I can feel like a pig and get near instant regret after consuming an entire bag in a single sitting. But surely, I’m not alone in that am I? Am I?! Anyways….
As part of their interesting product lines, Hardbite has a series of flavours that are cooked with avocado oil. I honestly don’t have the culinary chops to really know what the difference is beyond all the marketing and hype. What I do know is that the previous flavour I had in this series were some truly awesome chips. I don’t know how much of that is due to the oil they used, and how much was the flavour, but one thing was for sure – the texture was nothing short of mouth watering and I just had to get myself some more.
The combination of paprika and garlic powder isn’t something I would actively seek out. To be quite honest, I only got this flavour because it was available, and I just wanted to experience that delightful texture. I like my chips like I like my food, nice and crunchy. It should come as no surprise then, that Hardbite is one of the first brands that comes to mind when I’m looking for exactly that. They tend to have a good balance between hearty crunchy and not losing a tooth or causing mouth cuts from jagged corners.
They smell very aromatic. Like a tiny hurricane the size of a child’s palm swept through half of your grandma’s spice rack. It doesn’t smell like any pepper or strong spices though, and it just tastes like a big dinner is about to be cooked.
These taste fairly mild, but in a good way. They have a very natural albeit faint paprika and garlic flavour to it, like it was lightly seasoned after being fried up. It actually reminds me a lot of restaurant style kettle chips – the places that would give you potato chips in lieu of fries. Something about the seasoning is very light, and yet distinct, and for me evoke memories of those restaurant style chips I could never seem to find in packaged form. Well I think I finally have. Speaking of which, these have a hearty flavour to them, and still have the potato taste to them. These almost remind me of lightly seasoned french fries, if they were flattened out and dehydrated. It definitely makes sense why some restaurants would use these instead of french fries. They’re just as satisfying.
I don’t know how much of it has to do with avocado oil, and how much is simply the selection of potatoes they use, but the texture of these is top notch. Nice, thick chips with a real hearty crunch. If I ever got off my lazy ass and decided to make home made potato chips, these are how I imagine they would taste. You know, if we assume that I magically knew how to cook and had years of experience under my belt at the snap of my finger. Oddly enough, these also remind me a bit of an actual freshly fried up batch of fries. I can’t quite put my finger on it.
While this might not seem that different from a regular, lightly salted chip, the flavour is still distinct enough that I would typically prefer these, if for no other reason than recapturing that restaurant style experience that I’ve always wanted in packaged form.
