Thursday, May 11, 2006

Pop Rocks Limon

Pop Rocks are a Spanish product, so it’s only natural they would angle some of their product towards the large Hispanic market in North America. I this at the Walgreen’s in Echo Park, which is (or was) a rather traditional Hispanic neighborhood in LA. Half of the package is in Spanish, just as half the packaging in Canada is in French.

image

The top half tells us that it’s Salt and Lemon Pop Rocks ... Popping Candy. The bottom half says Sal y Limon ... Dulce con Chasquido.

I didn’t know what the word chasquido meant (though by context it means popping) so I looked it up on babelfish. No luck there ... so I googled the word and found a page in Spanish that had a definition, which I then ran though the translator. So, the bad internet translator says:

chasquido

  1. n. Sound that takes control of the whip or the sling when they are shaken in the air.
  2. Noise that takes place when breaking itself some thing.
  3. Noise that takes place with the language when separating it of blow of paladar or when rubbing the yolks of the fingers heart and thumb of a hand:

But you want to know about this strange savory, sweet and tangy version of Pop Rocks, right?

First, you have to shake it well because the salt and rocks tend to separate. Then I poured it on my tongue and I admit it was a riot of tastes - they’re all there. The salt is, well, intensely salty. It’s the first ingredient on the list, so there’s a lot of it in there. Next, it was bitter, like some sort of mineral taste. Then the rocks started popping and releasing a bit sugar and there were other little snaps of sour released as well.

It was hard to keep it in my mouth. It’s really salty. I’m used to salt as a condiment, not as the main dish. There are 984

grams

milligrams of salt in this little package - that’s about 50% of your daily allowance or about as much as you’d find in a serving of canned soup. Of course the recommended “portion” for these Pop Rocks Limon is 1/8 of the package.

I had one mouthful of the stuff and then tried dumping some out on a piece of paper and just eating the rocks but it’s just too salty for me. I’d also like it to taste more like lemon. How hard would it be to put a little zesty lemon flavor in there too? I’m thinking someone might be able to come up with something interesting to do with this savory version of Pop Rocks. Maybe use it as the final garnish for a salad or something. Could be the next trend in haute cuisine.

The one thing that I did really like about this version of Pop Rocks is the packaging. The long, narrow tube is much easier to handle than the flat packs that Pop Rocks usually come in. It’s easy to fold over and reseal and easy to dispense onto the tongue.

Name: Pop Rocks Limon
    RATING:
  • 10 SUPERB
  • 9 YUMMY
  • 8 TASTY
  • 7 WORTH IT
  • 6 TEMPTING
  • 5 PLEASANT
  • 4 BENIGN
  • 3 UNAPPEALING
  • 2 APPALLING
  • 1 INEDIBLE
Brand: Pop Rocks
Place Purchased: Walgreen's (Echo Park)
Price: $.49
Size: .24 ounces
Calories per ounce: 110 (you can't eat a whole ounce of this)
Categories: Hard Candy, Pop Rocks, Spain

POSTED BY Cybele AT 6:11 am Tracker Pixel for Entry    

Comments
  1. Sounds like it would be perfect on the rim of a margarita!

    Brian

    Comment by Brian on 5/11/06 at 8:12 am #
  2. Chasquido=snapping.  Wow, this sounds very weird.  Why not just pour salt into your mouth?  Not that I haven’t done that…but I didn’t call it candy.  Heh.

    Comment by Julilla on 5/11/06 at 8:38 am #
  3. That sounds really odd, yet somehow intriguing. Maybe the candy and salt could be separated when it’s all settled in the bag.

    Comment by g on 5/11/06 at 8:58 am #
  4. Maybe the extreme saltiness is a cultural thing?  When I was in Argentina, I made friends with some of the locals and a Chilean.  Some of the food there was incredibly salty, saltier than what we have in the U.S., and yet my friends would add extra salt to those foods…

    Comment by susan on 5/11/06 at 10:07 am #
  5. I second the margarita idea!

    Comment by April on 5/11/06 at 10:23 am #
  6. This reminds me of a trick some kids played on me when I was in college in San Antonio, Texas and working in a barrio after-school program:

    Have any of you had one of those Chinese salted dried plums? I thought the dried plum was sugared with sugar and never guessed it was salted with salt! Woooooof.

    The look on the faces of the kids as they offered me a lick and I did and they anticipated what my reaction would be!

    Ha ha! It’s been thirty years now and I’ll never forget it.

    Comment by desertwind on 5/11/06 at 10:33 am #
  7. Cybele's avatar

    Brian - I do believe you’re a genius! I wonder if they would all pop before you drank it ... hmm, sounds like something to try this weekend with my adult beverages.

    Julilla - thanks for the real translation!

    g - I did try separating it by shaking it a bit and then pouring it out on a piece of paper ... still too salty!

    susan - I often see salt and limon dip things for the kids in the candy aisle at the grocers that stock stuff for Hispanics. I actually don’t mind it on grilled chicken breasts and stuff, but not as a candy.

    desertwind - I made the mistake of trying some free samples in Chinatown NYC without paying attention - it was salted dried ginger - with the emphasis on salt ... whew!

    Comment by Cybele on 5/11/06 at 11:03 am #
  8. almost a kilogram of salt in a .24 ounce package? I don’t think so

    Comment by huh on 5/11/06 at 12:45 pm #
  9. Cybele's avatar

    Oopsie! Thanks for pointing that out, huh.

    I fixed it ... I forgot to put in the mg part! (In my defense the label is confusing, using decimals of grams in someplaces and mg in others.)

    Comment by Cybele on 5/11/06 at 12:55 pm #
  10. Interesting…I don’t even *get* that thrid translation! Huh.

    Comment by Sera on 5/11/06 at 4:29 pm #
  11. Doesn’t sound good.  Regular strawberry Pop Rocks is still the best.

    Comment by Dave on 5/11/06 at 5:26 pm #
  12. Ei, great blog, I love it !

    It’s really sweet, funny and exotic, thanks !!!

    Comment by PRU on 6/21/06 at 9:07 am #
  13. So we played a really mean prank on a guy I work with for his birthday, in return, he gave me some of this along with some other candy. I thought they were just lemon poprocks (didn’t really read the package first) and i shot the whole tube straight down my throat, It was horrible and I’m sitting here just wishing i could throw it all back up…but no luck.

    Not a candy to be taken lightly…

    Comment by Dez on 4/16/07 at 11:07 am #
  14. these are great to replace the salt and lemon for tequila shots!

    Comment by Patty on 11/02/07 at 6:51 am #
  15. I picked these up at Powell’s in Long Beach, I hadn’t seen them before so naturally they went into my basket.  It would have helped if I had read the whole label before trying them, boy was I in for a surprise!  I rarely spit my candy out but this one was fo’ shiz going in the trash!  TOO SALTY!

    Comment by Kimberly W. on 5/22/08 at 1:42 pm #
  16. I love his candy. Yes it is very salty but for me the more the better. I buy boxes of these online. I can eat ten packs at once. I also like putting them on fruit like lemons,limes,and mango. Another good way I like eating this is pouring about 2 packs in tomato juice and squeezing some fresh lemon in it mmmmm mmmmm mmmmm.

    Comment by Gwen on 4/11/11 at 10:27 pm #
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