Doritos Diablo Enchilado

Oh, Frito-Lay, you're so sneaky. You may remember a few years ago when Doritos launched a bunch of new flavors at once; after a short period of time, several were pared away and became unavailable. One of those, Ranchero, went away - but it's back, albeit in a Witness Protection Program bag.

Naming the chips "Diablo" and putting a devil's face on the bag is perhaps a little misleading; these chips aren't really that spicy, in spite of their dark red color. But there is a nice mixture of different flavors going on. The initial hits are primarily salty and sour, owing to the MSG and citric acid listed 7th and 5th on the ingredients list respectively. The tang is reminiscent of a lime flavor, and it does take over quite a lot of the flavor of the chip - but not all. As the sourness fades, a fairly mild but nevertheless quite noticeable heat arrives at the back of the mouth, probably due to the paprika, 6th in the ingredients list, which also lends the chips their deep redness. The overall effect is similar to dipping a tortilla chip into salsa ranchero, a smooth red salsa in which the lack of chunks of tomatoes or onions means the pepper's heat can take center stage. The salsa ranchero in this case has perhaps had a good deal of salt and lime juice added to it, but the key to the experience is really the way that taste melts away to reveal a light, pleasant burn.

There's something about these chips that somehow makes them extremely craveable; I'm thinking it's the MSG, but it's hard to say exactly. At any rate, how a chip as addictive as Ranchero ever went away in the first place I don't know, but any Doritos fan should be welcoming its return.

Flamin' Hot Funyuns

During my junior year of college I was, for a brief period, semi-addicted to Flamin' Hot Cheetos (until I made the mistake of eating two bags one after the other... I won't say any more than that). In high school, meanwhile, Funyuns were one of my favorite snack foods (although I really preferred Wise Onion Rings, but you can't get those out here). So naturally I had to try Flamin' Hot Funyuns.

They're pretty much exactly what you'd expect, but in a way that's actually better than I might have expected. Let me try and explain that. I was expecting the flamin' powder to taste more or less identical to what's on the Cheetos, and it does. I was also expecting some of the Funyun taste to come through, and it does. But what's nice about Flamin' Hot Funyuns as compared to the regular type is that normally, Funyuns are pretty starchy. This isn't a surprise, of course - all a Funyun is is a ring of puffed, fried starch with some onion powder on it. The nice thing about the Flamin' Hot variety is that while you still get enough of the onion flavor coming through, the fiery powder largely overwhelms the starch, giving the whole thing a much cleaner overall taste. (There's a slight starchy aftertaste, but we can't really complain about that when we're eating Funyuns, can we?)

I can't imagine I'll be developing any kind of addiction to these, but if you like your snacks spicy you can certainly do a lot worse in the taste department.