Ever since my first visit to the USA (Florida, specifically, about 16 years ago) I have been a massive fan of Root Beer. For the uninitiated, it's a dark brown fizzy drink, but most definitely not a Cola. Its flavour is not for everyone - many feel it's too sugary, some describe it as medicinal (in fact, even I think some kinds of Root Beer tastes exactly the way Germoline - an antiseptic cream - smells) - but I appreciate that it has a flavour, rather than being just a sugary, syrupy carbonated beverage.
But while Root Beer is (almost) as ubiquitous as Coke in the States, it's not quite so common in the UK. Some of the larger supermarkets will carry the bigger brands (A&W turns up all over the place), and my local Tesco carried imported Boylan's for a while (still available at the larger branches, just not the Express branches). What really prompted this post was something of a quest for my new Holy Grail of Root Beers: Small Town Brewery's "Not Your Father's Root Beer", the draught variety of which I tasted - in all its 10.7% ABV glory - at Woodie's Flat in Chicago, the evening my girlfriend and I went to see some live improv at Second City. So impressed was I that I had to ask the waitress if it was available to buy anywhere... she had to ask the manager (who had ID'd both my girlfriend and I at the door! I took it as a compliment!), who revealed that there is a bottled kind (5.9% ABV) which is widely available, but the stronger version was, at the time, only available on draught, and only in Illinois. According to their website, Small Town have since started producing "limited runs" of the 10.7% version but, as a UK resident, I'm not sure how I'd get my hands on either version...
Coincidentally, slightly less than 16 years ago, a couple of friends and I would occasionally visit the O2 Centre at Finchley Road and spend the evening drinking in a cocktail bar that has since been replaced. I don't remember the bar's name, but I do remember it had a piano. Their extensive menu included a drink named 'California Root Beer', made with Kahlua, Galliano and Coke. I have tried to mix the cocktail at home many times, but never quite get the mix right... And the point of this digression is that, while 'California Root Beer' tasted almost nothing like yer average Root Beer, I was reminded of that cocktail by my very first mouthful of the rich, almost chocolaty "Not Your Father's".
In common with the difference between Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola (not to mention the myriad supermarket own brands and the Colas produced by smaller beverage companies), each brand of Root Beer is very different and so, urged on by my girlfriend, I'm going to do a comparison of those we've been able to find...
A&W
This is basically your bog standard Root Beer. I believe this is the make that's available on tap at the likes of McDonald's in the States, but the canned variety is (naturally) stronger of flavour. It's very sugary, and the 'Germoline' flavour is very strong in this one. Not bad, but certainly not the best soft Root Beer I've tried.
Boylan
Imported from the States by Empire Bespoke Foods Ltd in Northolt (quite near my neck of the woods) and sold by Tesco, this is an "All Natural" Root Beer, made with cane sugar, several natural ingredients and some 'colors' and 'natural flavourings' that are troublingly unspecific on the labelling (neither the importers' labels nor the original US label deign to elaborate). The flavour is far more subtle than A&W, cleaner and less sugary making it more refreshing to drink, but it lacks the kick and is also substantially less aggressively carbonated. Of the flavours involved, none are more prominent than the others, making it seem a little wishy-washy in comparison.
Bundaberg
In recent years, Australia seems to have had the attitude that if it can take over Hollywood, it can do anything. Australian bars would pop up in the most unlikely places, and this Aussie-brewed beverage has even appeared in the chiller cabinet in a slightly poncy café near where I work. Like Boylan's version, it's a more natural approach to the drink, properly brewed and not excessively fizzy. I'd have to say the sarsaparilla is the most prominent note on the flavour - almost fruity - followed by a very subtle touch of licorice, but without a hint of the ginger mentioned in the ingredients list... It's not necessarily a better flavour than Boylan's, but it's certainly very different. It comes in weird, squat bottles that look for all the world like medicine bottles, but definitely doesn't taste medicinal.
Hansen's Natural Cane Soda
Not simply 'Root Beer' but 'Creamy Root Beer', the taste of Germoline is strong with this one - stronger, perhaps, even than A&W's. It's also just as fizzy, but not as shockingly sweet - I actually drank a couple of cans of this which hadn't even been refrigerated (other than having been delivered on a slightly chilly day), and the sweetness didn't overpower the flavour. Curiously, it wasn't exceptionally creamy... at least, compared to the diet variety. Possibly the big selling point of this brand, stated boldly around the bottom of the can, is that it has no caffeine, no preservatives, no sodium and all natural flavour... The big question is whether that particular flavour is what you want out of your Root Beer.
Diet Hansen's Sugar Free
Not simply 'Diet Root Beer' but, following the established Hansen's pattern, 'Diet Creamy Root Beer'. This one is substantially less Germoline-flavoured and substantially more like Cream Soda with a hint of Root Beer. The former is the first flavour that hits and the majority of the aftertaste (with the addition of that slightly nasty tang left by artificial sweeteners - specifically Splenda, in this case), but the typical Root Beer flavour surfaces briefly in between. Were it not for the aftertaste, I think I'd prefer this to the regular kind... but that may be because I also really like Cream Soda...
Hartridges Celebrated
Whereas most of the Root Beers sampled herein are made of a mixture of flavours, Hartridges pins all its hopes on the sarsaparilla, making it taste almost unique. It's somewhat similar to Bundaberg, in that the sarsaparilla is accompanied by hints of licorice (very brief for me, lasting longer for my girlfriend). It is, however, fizzier than Bundaberg... which won't necessarily be to everyone's taste.
There will be more to come in this - as soon as possible in the New Year, basically - because there are quite a few root beers that are only available in 24s or 32s, so we decided to hold off ordering them for a while. I'm aiming to get to 'em all, though... Maybe not in the next round (which may end up being only one or two additional Root Beers), but it is definitely my intention to be as complete as possible in my assessment of fizzy beverages sold as 'Root Beer'. Already on the list are Dad's (possibly the source of the name of Small Town's alcoholic version?), Old Dominion (which I've tried in some restaurants) and Dr. Brown's, amongst others.
And if anyone knows how I can get my mitts on imported "Not Your Father's", please drop me a line!
Sunday, 13 December 2015
Thursday, 5 November 2015
Morrisons Kitchen Made to Share Selection
Well, who'd have thought it? Another Thursday, another post about guilty pleasure foodstuffs. Generous readers might be tempted to credit me with foresight, or think I actually planned this.
Truth be told, when I picked out a selection of (reasonably) quick and easy things from the Made to Share range at my local Morrisons, my girlfriend did suggest I could write it up for this 'ere blog but, since the last choice in my "3 for £5" selection was their Smoky BBQ Mini Ribs, there seemed a strong chance I was in for a very disappointing meal and I'd basically decided there would be no write-up. After all, long-term readers if this humble blog will know that my experience with ribs in the UK has been decidedly mixed.
The full Made to Share snack dinner I cooked just for myself this evening, aside from the ribs, featured the amusingly alliterative BBQ Pulled Pork Pockets and the old favourite Loaded Potato Skins. Setting them all up to cook should have been very easy, but my attention lapsed on the final stage and, having timed everything carefully up to that point (25 minutes for the ribs on their own, adding the potato skins for two minutes, then finally adding the pockets for the remaining 13 minutes of the 40 minute total) I neglected to activate the kitchen timer and had to guess when the final 13 minutes had elapsed. If anything, it all stayed in the oven a little too long, though. On the upside, I did notice that the instructions for the ribs state that they should be allowed to stand for a minute before serving. I doubt that's where I've gone wrong in the past, but it's something I'll look out for in future.
As far as the Loaded Potato Skins go, there's really not much to say... They never work especially well when home-cooked, often sticking to the baking tray and splitting apart when removed. They're ultimately just slightly hollowed out thick slices of potato filled with cheese and bacon and, in the case of this package, supplied with a soured cream and garlic dip. This kind of this is good and filling, but never really outstanding in any way.
The BBQ Pulled Pork Pockets were something reasonably new... kind of like miniature Cornish pasties, but filled only with pulled pork. I can't say the BBQ aspect was particularly impressive, but the pockets were at least properly full... if rather small. Probably the most outstanding feature of the pack was that it contained nine pockets - I guess they're acknowledging that a pack of these might actually be bought as part of a selection to be shared between three people, rather than the more usual two or four...
And so we come to the ribs... which were actually pretty good. Each rib had a decent quantity of meat attached and I didn't find any large blobs of gristle or fat (though there were one or two bone fragments). The meat looked good - with none of the rubberiness, toughness or over-dryness that can occur with supermarket ribs - and, while it didn't actually melt off the bone, it tasted more or less as I'd expect pork ribs to taste. The sauce was even fairly impressive for a supermarket own-brand product - not the strong barbecue taste that I prefer, but certainly not the disappointing non-flavour that is so often applied to this kind of thing. It was possibly a little oversweet, given the lack of full-on smoky flavour, but it wasn't sickly. Had I actually set them out in a more sensible ovenproof container than the small, circular Pyrex bowl I pulled out of the cupboard, so that they were all laid out flat rather than jumbled up, and given equal access to the sauce, they might even have turned out the way they look on the packaging photograph. As it was, the sauce didn't have much of a chance to crisp up anywhere. It did actually adhere to the ribs fairly well, though, and I didn't have to scoop the sauce out of the bowl to drizzle it over any of the ribs.
So while I was expecting something bland and disappointing, what I got actually went some way towards restoring my faith in supermarket ribs... and, having tried Iceland's Jim Beam chicken tenders, I'm far more inclined to give the boozy-sauce-enhanced ribs a try than I was before this evening.
Truth be told, when I picked out a selection of (reasonably) quick and easy things from the Made to Share range at my local Morrisons, my girlfriend did suggest I could write it up for this 'ere blog but, since the last choice in my "3 for £5" selection was their Smoky BBQ Mini Ribs, there seemed a strong chance I was in for a very disappointing meal and I'd basically decided there would be no write-up. After all, long-term readers if this humble blog will know that my experience with ribs in the UK has been decidedly mixed.
The full Made to Share snack dinner I cooked just for myself this evening, aside from the ribs, featured the amusingly alliterative BBQ Pulled Pork Pockets and the old favourite Loaded Potato Skins. Setting them all up to cook should have been very easy, but my attention lapsed on the final stage and, having timed everything carefully up to that point (25 minutes for the ribs on their own, adding the potato skins for two minutes, then finally adding the pockets for the remaining 13 minutes of the 40 minute total) I neglected to activate the kitchen timer and had to guess when the final 13 minutes had elapsed. If anything, it all stayed in the oven a little too long, though. On the upside, I did notice that the instructions for the ribs state that they should be allowed to stand for a minute before serving. I doubt that's where I've gone wrong in the past, but it's something I'll look out for in future.
As far as the Loaded Potato Skins go, there's really not much to say... They never work especially well when home-cooked, often sticking to the baking tray and splitting apart when removed. They're ultimately just slightly hollowed out thick slices of potato filled with cheese and bacon and, in the case of this package, supplied with a soured cream and garlic dip. This kind of this is good and filling, but never really outstanding in any way.
The BBQ Pulled Pork Pockets were something reasonably new... kind of like miniature Cornish pasties, but filled only with pulled pork. I can't say the BBQ aspect was particularly impressive, but the pockets were at least properly full... if rather small. Probably the most outstanding feature of the pack was that it contained nine pockets - I guess they're acknowledging that a pack of these might actually be bought as part of a selection to be shared between three people, rather than the more usual two or four...
And so we come to the ribs... which were actually pretty good. Each rib had a decent quantity of meat attached and I didn't find any large blobs of gristle or fat (though there were one or two bone fragments). The meat looked good - with none of the rubberiness, toughness or over-dryness that can occur with supermarket ribs - and, while it didn't actually melt off the bone, it tasted more or less as I'd expect pork ribs to taste. The sauce was even fairly impressive for a supermarket own-brand product - not the strong barbecue taste that I prefer, but certainly not the disappointing non-flavour that is so often applied to this kind of thing. It was possibly a little oversweet, given the lack of full-on smoky flavour, but it wasn't sickly. Had I actually set them out in a more sensible ovenproof container than the small, circular Pyrex bowl I pulled out of the cupboard, so that they were all laid out flat rather than jumbled up, and given equal access to the sauce, they might even have turned out the way they look on the packaging photograph. As it was, the sauce didn't have much of a chance to crisp up anywhere. It did actually adhere to the ribs fairly well, though, and I didn't have to scoop the sauce out of the bowl to drizzle it over any of the ribs.
So while I was expecting something bland and disappointing, what I got actually went some way towards restoring my faith in supermarket ribs... and, having tried Iceland's Jim Beam chicken tenders, I'm far more inclined to give the boozy-sauce-enhanced ribs a try than I was before this evening.
Thursday, 22 October 2015
Iceland Let's Eat American Loaded Burger with Pulled Pork & BBQ Sauce
One of the guilty pleasures of the occasional evening when my girlfriend goes out is the option to eat something quick and dirty. More often than not, I've tended to pop to one of the local takeaways, or the local KFC but, since the latter recently gave me a case of food poisoning that lasted through at least half my recent holiday to Chicago, I'm starting to think better of all that.
Yet, still, the urge to have something quick and dirty is strong, almost undeniable... and so, while trawling my local Iceland for something vaguely sensible (their Pizza Pala range, while currently small, is worth a look), my wandering eye alighted upon a selection called Let's Eat American. Having only recently been in that very country, you can imagine my curiosity was piqued. There's quite a variety of products in this line, but there's nothing quicker or dirtier than a burger that you cook in the microwave.
Nothing, that is, other than a burger with pulled pork slapped on top that you cook in a microwave.
The product comes in a (frankly, oversized) cardboard box containing two separate bags - one with the burger and pork in a plastic tray, the other with the ready-cut sesame seed bun - which must be irradiated separately, the former taking four minutes, the latter a mere thirty seconds. After that, it's just a case of opening the bags, removing their contents, and throwing them together.
The result is, naturally, nothing like the picture on the box. For starters, the edges of the burger/pork crisp up and stick to the sides of the tray, so it doesn't look as moist or appetising as the promotional image. There's also some weird, gelatinous stuff in there which I generously presumed to be some sort of cheese component. The packaging does describe the contents as "A cooked quarter pounder beefburger, topped with a BBQ flavour sauce, pulled pork, fried onions and grated red Cheddar cheese", but it's clearly a miserly quantity of cheese that ends up as a mildly disturbing goop that's not even plentiful enough to ooze convincingly... it just sort of lurks, looking unappetising. And, if there are fried onions in there, I can't say I encountered any... but then, in all honesty, I can't say I encountered anything "BBQ flavour" either.
The pork itself is not bad, but it certainly lacks flavour - and not just the BBQ flavour of the questionable sauce. The texture is good and, for something that's been microwaved from frozen, it was nice to see it didn't turn out too soggy or too dry - microwaving frequently goes one way or the other, and it's very difficult to fine-tune the timings for a better result. The burger, meanwhile, was decidedly average for this type of product... which is to say of limited flavour, dubious texture, and with a quantity of gristle/bone flecks sufficient to make the likes of me wary of the next bite.
That said, for a mere £1.50, it's not offensively bad - the burger is certainly a decent size (slightly larger than the bun, in fact) and the quantity of pulled pork is reasonable - but given the underwhelming flavour and the typically rubbery nature of the microwaved bun, this isn't a product I'll be picking up again in a hurry.
Yet, still, the urge to have something quick and dirty is strong, almost undeniable... and so, while trawling my local Iceland for something vaguely sensible (their Pizza Pala range, while currently small, is worth a look), my wandering eye alighted upon a selection called Let's Eat American. Having only recently been in that very country, you can imagine my curiosity was piqued. There's quite a variety of products in this line, but there's nothing quicker or dirtier than a burger that you cook in the microwave.
Nothing, that is, other than a burger with pulled pork slapped on top that you cook in a microwave.
The product comes in a (frankly, oversized) cardboard box containing two separate bags - one with the burger and pork in a plastic tray, the other with the ready-cut sesame seed bun - which must be irradiated separately, the former taking four minutes, the latter a mere thirty seconds. After that, it's just a case of opening the bags, removing their contents, and throwing them together.
The result is, naturally, nothing like the picture on the box. For starters, the edges of the burger/pork crisp up and stick to the sides of the tray, so it doesn't look as moist or appetising as the promotional image. There's also some weird, gelatinous stuff in there which I generously presumed to be some sort of cheese component. The packaging does describe the contents as "A cooked quarter pounder beefburger, topped with a BBQ flavour sauce, pulled pork, fried onions and grated red Cheddar cheese", but it's clearly a miserly quantity of cheese that ends up as a mildly disturbing goop that's not even plentiful enough to ooze convincingly... it just sort of lurks, looking unappetising. And, if there are fried onions in there, I can't say I encountered any... but then, in all honesty, I can't say I encountered anything "BBQ flavour" either.
The pork itself is not bad, but it certainly lacks flavour - and not just the BBQ flavour of the questionable sauce. The texture is good and, for something that's been microwaved from frozen, it was nice to see it didn't turn out too soggy or too dry - microwaving frequently goes one way or the other, and it's very difficult to fine-tune the timings for a better result. The burger, meanwhile, was decidedly average for this type of product... which is to say of limited flavour, dubious texture, and with a quantity of gristle/bone flecks sufficient to make the likes of me wary of the next bite.
That said, for a mere £1.50, it's not offensively bad - the burger is certainly a decent size (slightly larger than the bun, in fact) and the quantity of pulled pork is reasonable - but given the underwhelming flavour and the typically rubbery nature of the microwaved bun, this isn't a product I'll be picking up again in a hurry.
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