Bottom Line: Pringles Scorchin’ Hot Ones Los Calientes Verde deliver a good marriage of salsa verde and chip and they definitely have a kick
As I mentioned in a previous post, Pringles has a new line of Scorchin’ chips out there promising to kick up your snacking experience. They have partnered with the Hot Ones web series from First We Feast which features celebrities being interviewed while eating increasingly hotter wings. Hot Ones has its own proprietary sauces, and three of those have been added to the Pringles Scorchin’ line: Los Calientes Verde, Los Calientes Rojo, and their classic hot sauce.
I have not found any of these locally yet, and they are currently being released in stages and through specific sellers. But while I was in New York City last week, I saw a can of the Los Calientes Verde, and I grabbed that so that I can give them a try. Los Calientes Verde is a green sauce and the primary ingredient is serrano chilis. I have not tried the actual sauce, but I will keep an eye out for it because I am definitely curious.
The chips based on that sauce have a notable green pepper taste, as you would expect, along with a nice vinegar punch. There is also an earthiness from the cumin and other seasonings. Pringles are thin, so they don’t deliver a huge crunch, but if you stack a couple or more together it makes them more chomp-worthy and doubles up on the seasonings. These definitely taste like a good marriage of Salsa Verde and chip, and they set themselves apart from the many other Pringles flavors out there.
But what you really want to know is do they deliver on the Scorchin’ promise, right?
Well, I am here to tell you that this time they got it right. I have previously tried several of the selections from the Scorchin’ line and have been disappointed. But I guess this time the pressure was on to deliver the heat since the Hot Ones had their name attached.
The heat kicks in almost immediately and quickly builds to the Hot level. After you have had just a handful of these you will be looking for something to ease the fire in your mouth. But they won’t send you screaming from the room. These Pringles are basically a good, spicy snack that delivers on the heat for once. The average mortal will struggle with them, but chiliheads will gobble these chips down. (Actually, technically they are crisps and not chips because they are made from potato dough. That’s how they get the uniform shape.)
The Los Calientes Verdes and Rojo hot sauces are rated five out of ten on the heat scale on the bottle and the classic is two out of ten. So I am guessing that the chips based on the latter sauce will not be as hot and the Rojo will have similar heat to Verdes. I will continue to watch for the other two varieties and I have entered the sweepstakes to win a can of the chips using the Last Dad sauce (information is on the can), so stay tuned as I continue to report on this latest attempt by Pringles to bring the heat to their chips (er . . . crisps).
Tale of the Tape:
Ingredients: Dried potatoes, vegetable oil (corn, cottonseed, high oleic soybean, and/or sunflower oil), degerminated yellow corn flour, cornstarch, rice flour, maltodextrin, mono- and diglycerides.contains 2% or less of salt, sugar, malic acid, monosodium glutamate, citric acid, paprika for color, onion powder, sodium diacetate, dextrose, spices, natural and artificial flavor, corn syrup solids, disodium inosinate, disodium guanylate, apple cider vinegar, whey, yellow 5 lake, wheat starch, blue 1 lake.
Serving Size: 28g (About 14 Crisps)
Calories: 150
Fat: 9g (2.5g Sat/0g Trans)
Protein: 1g
Carbs: 16g
Sodium: 230mg