simplyrice - Organic Brown Rice Crisps

Me: We have nothing to eat!

Person X: What do you feel like?

Me: I don’t know. Something... crunchy?

Person X: ...

I’ve got an unnatural addiction to crunchy foods.  When I crave something, it’s rare that it’s a specific food. I crave sweet or spicy or other seasonings, but there’s always a soft spot for crunchy. I always order my fries and bacon extra crunchy, and have been known to ask servers what the crunchiest item on the menu is. I cannot express this enough: I. Love. Crunch.

My latest crunchy treasure is actually a healthy one! I came across simplyrice’s Organic Brown Rice Crisps while hunting through the chip aisle during my most recent crunch expedition.  Offered in three flavours – Spicy Chili, Sea Salt and Tangy Tamari – these cracker-chip hybrids are surprisingly good for you in the grand scheme of snack foods.  Only 90 calories/2 g fat/50 mg sodium for approximately 18 crackers, these organic and wheat-free/gluten-free beauties may as well be considered health food! Armed with ambitious visions of becoming a supermodel (I’m buying rice crisps! Of course my modelling career is well on its way!), I grabbed a bag of the Spicy Chili crisps and daydreamed about which hot movie star was going to propose to me once I became famous. These crisps were powerful and I hadn’t even cracked open the bag yet! The anticipation was killing me.

The crisps come in a small 70-gram bag and can be found at most grocery stores. When you first open the bag, you’ll notice that the crisps come in different shapes – maybe to add a whimsical factor to detract from the fact that you’re about to eat rice chips?  What I liked most about them was the short-and-sweet ingredient list: brown rice flour, sunflower oil, chili powder, sea salt. That’s it. Nothing weird or hard to pronounce in these bad boys.

Each crisp is about the size of a small cracker and looks like a mixture of a potato chip and a Wheat Thin. There were flecks of red on them, so I was hopeful that there would be some spice to them as the name suggested. First bite and I was pretty impressed. The crunch was significant and airy, which is always a good thing. Unfortunately, the flavour was a bit of a letdown. I could taste the rice – a very toned down version of a fluffy rice cake – but that was about it. The salt and chili were too subtle for my palette and the whole thing tasted like a bland, ultra-crunchy rice cake.   

Ultimately, they were kind of disappointing. I would buy them again because I like rice cakes and the crunch these crisps generated, but I would need to pair them with something with more flavour. A really good hummus would make these rice crisps sing. Also, if I was on a diet and really needed a snack fix on the go, these would probably do the trick. Unfortunately, I won’t be giving up my potato chips for them any time soon... guess this means I won’t be a supermodel just yet.

simplyrice
Organic Brown Rice Crisps
http://simplyrice.ca/