On day two of popcorn blogging and I’m loving the research involved. So today I got me a small 2oz bag of ike & sam’s Original sweet & salty kettle corn popcorn. To be fair, this was eaten on a very empty stomach, so the review may need to skew to the fact that it was somewhat of a hunger appeaser in addition to a taste testing. Anyway, back to the popcorn.
Coming off my experience with the ike & sam’s kickin’ cayenne flavor I knew I would subconsciously compare the two from the moment the popcorn hit my mouth. True to my beliefs that’s exactly what happened. Unlike the ”instant wow” I had with the cayenne, this flavor worked me slowly. I was quite unimpressed with the crunch factor of the sweet and salty and while it wasn’t like rubber, the kernels definitely gave off a somewhat stale crunch. It wasn’t until I had 3 or 4 mouthfuls that I got into rhythm and the stale feeling went away.
The sweet to spice ratio was very proportioned, though the flavoring was pretty bland. The popcorn starts off with this faint salt flavor and then eases into a barely-there sugary bit. I vividly remember re-checking the front of the bag to see if I had misread the label. This wasn’t very salty and yes this wasn’t very sweet. Proportionate yes, but flavortastic no. One thing that actually struck me was the fact that they call this sweet and salty and yet the first thing I felt was the faint salt taste that just barely gave way to a sweet feel. They got it backwards. They should have named this flavor “diet salt and sweet”, “salt and sweet (um, kinda)” or “salt and sweet light”.
One good thing about this flavor was that the shells stayed very attached to the corn, and I experienced almost no shell chaos in my mouth. In fact roughly an hour after I had the popcorn, I actually examined my mouth and didn’t find a single shell. This pleased me.
The most bizarre thing of this entire flavor and my tasting experience was the smell factor. I initially whiffed into the bag and caught a scent of something familiar. I knew that smell. I tried to place it, but just couldn’t, and then I proceeded to taste it. After I was done, I made another go at trying to identify the smell, but I am still clueless. It does not have that fresh buttery popcorn smell, but that’s normal of kettle corn. It didn’t give off this sweet, caramel smell either. It smells so, so familiar to me, but I really cannot place it. Maybe Pringles, maybe corn pops cereal, I just can’t place it. If any of you can identify what the stuff smells like and maybe run some of your suggestions by me, I would greatly appreciate it.
So that said here’s my verdict:
{1-10, 1 being poor and 10 being wow!}
Verdict:
Crunch Factor – 3
Sweet to Spice contrast factor – 4
Taste true to its name – 2
Kernel shell sticking to my palate element – 9
Aroma – 7 (for still causing me to ponder its smell)
Overall: C-
