#55 - Batchelor's Southern Fried Chicken Flavour Super Noodles

• Brand: Batchelor’s Super Noodles
• Flavour: Southern Fried Chicken
• Cost: £0.50 (reduced from £0.68)
• From: Tesco
• Description: Super Noodles in a tasty southern fried chicken flavour sauce
• Weight: 100g (400g when prepared)
• Allergies: Contains Celery, Gluten, Milk and Wheat
  
  
     Garbage!

This is the last packet of Super Noodles I have in my cupboard (thankfully) so I'm going to go a little deeper into this product on this review. First of all, here's a complete ingredients list:

Noodles (Water, Wheat, Flour, Palm Oil, Antioxidants (Butylated Hydroxyanisole, Citric Acid, Propyl Gallate)), Flavouring, Dried Glucose Syrup, Salt, Flavour Enhancers (MSG, Disodium 5'-ribonucleotides), Yeast Extract, Maltodextrin, Smoke Flavouring, Mushroom Powder, Garlic Powder, Anti-caking Agents (Silicon Dioxide, Tricalcium Phosphate), Colour (Paprika), Vegetable Oil, Citric Acid, Malic Acid, Celery, Milk Powder, Wheat Flour

The ingredients I've listed in bold are the ones that I recognise as actual food (any you don't recognise you can see explanations of on our glossary page), following is a list from a recipe for Southern Fried Chicken from the BBC website, you can see it for yourself here:

Buttermilk, Coriander, Garlic, Shallots, Chilli Flakes, Salt, Chicken, Flour, Celery Salt, Cayenne Pepper, Ground Black Pepper, Paprika, Vegetable Oil

Just from looking at those two sets of ingredients which one would you prefer? Now a look at the nutritional information, which for some bizarre reason is shown per half packet. I can only guess that's because if they emblazon the front of a packet with the full truth it would look horrendous. For the purposes of this blog I'm going to list the nutritional information per full packet:

Calories - 530 (26%); Sugars - 2.8g (4%); Fat - 23.8g (34%); Saturates - 12.0g (60%); Salt - 1.5g (26%)

60% of the RDA of saturated fats (again why just the term saturates - it's almost like they're hiding in plain sight) and the consumption of saturated fats has been associated with poor health since the 1950's - I'm starting to think that Batchelor's are actually EVIL!

To support that assertion it's also worth pointing out that none of their packaging is recyclable so who, might I ask, are they bothered about? If you read the rest of my reviews of these products you'll see that they haven't achieved a score over 4.5 and to be fair that was a bit of a one off with the rest of them averaging under 2.5 out of 10. This tells me that, as a rule, they don't taste very nice, that they don't taste like what they say they taste like and that you're not left with a great feeling when you've finished them - I am soooooo glad this is the last packet for a while!

Shall we get on with it:

How do they taste? The answer is bland. The prevalent taste seems to be smoke but even that's week. They're both sweet and salty but not in the right proportions. Let's face it, these aren't very tasty - 0.5 out of 4.

Do they remind me in any way of Souther Fried Chicken? The answer is not in the slightest. The only thing that's anywhere near is the fact that they're sweet and salty but as I said above it's in the wrong proportions. Take a look at the difference in the ingredients lists I put up, how are they supposed to taste anything like Souther Fried Chicken??? 0 out of 2.

How do I feel now I’ve finished? I don’t feel terrible but I've got a very salty mouth and it's not very pleasant. 0.5 out of 2.

Conclusion: Garbage!

Need 4 Noodle Rating: 1.5 /10