Potato croquettes

There are occasional moments when I step back and wonder if perhaps, I am not entirely the mature, balanced, adult I tell myself I have grown up to become. 

This is one of those moments.

My first paid writing was technical articles written about items of outdoor leisure equipment. Comparing different kinds of waterproof jacket or hiking boot is very much a staple of outdoor magazines and websites since the dawn of time and my pieces were pretty damn similar to lots of others because there really isn’t a lot to be said about a sheet of polyurethane coated nylon that hasn’t already been said multiple times in multiple languages.

These posts allowed me to indulge my inner gear freak and geek out about tiny differences in material or fit that, frankly, were of minor importance to those among us who could get a date on a Saturday night. The extent of my geekery and how sad it has all become was laid bare this week thanks to the culinary indelicacy known as the frozen potato croquette.

I am a fairly flaky grocery shopper. I regularly make it home with nice olives or a nonsensical new flavour of Pot Noodle but without the bread and milk that I went into the store for in the first place. Despite this I am still allowed out to the shops on my own and it was in the freezer section of a local supermarket that my attention was caught by their selection of frozen, tubular, breadcrumbed, mash potatoes.

Dunnes stores had three different versions of potato croquettes ranging in price from 79 cent to a fairly hefty €5.00.

This stopped me in my tracks. How could there be such a large disparity in price for such a basic foodstuff? What was the difference?

The ingredients were identical or nearly so for all of them: potato, butter, flour, breadcrumb, egg, salt and pepper. Ignoring any that had cheese (because cheese is rank) and the sweet Potato version (clearly just some upstart, hipster croquette) I read all the packaging and then decided to buy all three and taste the difference. Made perfect sense at the time.

As I filled the freezer with my purchases it belatedly occurred to me that I am the only person in my family who would eat croquettes and even I would hesitate to call them a favourite but in the interest of science I got down to it.

My next few meals all included one or more varieties and the results were very clear indeed. 

Dunnes Stores own brand potato croquettes are bloody awful.

They taste exactly how I imagine a combination of sawdust; budgie poo and wallpaper paste would taste once it was deep fried in a crispy coating of stale cornflake. 

The branded option from Green Isle was much better and tasted like there had been a potato involved somewhere in its creation and the third option which was also from Dunnes Stores but with a price tag of a fiver per pack was also perfectly acceptable. Covering them with beans, spaghetti sauce, various ketchups or sweet chilli didn’t affect the basic findings one jot. The cheapo version was crap, and the pricey ones were OK.

So, what have I learned from this ground-breaking piece of culinary research?

Mainly that I’m not a huge fan of potato croquettes. They weren’t high on my list of desirables a week ago and now; they would struggle to make my top million foodstuffs. The other thing I have learned is that despite working in retail for a large chunk of my life; I really can’t be trusted in shops without adult supervision.

From here on in I will probably stick to reviewing raincoats and leave the food writing to the likes of Delia Smith and Jay Rayner. I’m also going to keep away from supermarkets for a while. Those are dangerous places.