Booze and food wise, Lyme has several fine pubs, a micro brewery, a good independent offy, a superb baker, a crappy over-priced greengrocers, a well-stocked fishmonger and an excellent cheesemonger. Despite proclaiming their cheesy credentials, you couldn’t buy any of our test samples at this or any other cheesemonger, for that you’d need to find yourself a ‘Stretchablecheesefoodsnackstickmonger’.

For those of you unfamiliar with the appearance of this particular sub-section of kiddies value-added fun ‘food’, imagine if you can a greasy ball of fluorescent silicon sealant which has been rolled into a sausage by a bored plumber with particularly sweaty and slightly cheesy hands. Remarkably this is an analogy which works equally well when trying to describe the flavour.

Two teeth

Although still exclusively and enthusiastically dining on milk, a teething Yumblog Junior has just about reached the point where we can begin to introduce her to the magical world of solid food. It therefore goes without saying that as card carrying poncy middle-class, Guardian reading*, self-righteous novice parents, we are particularly interested in gimmicky food products cynically aimed at young children … especially when they lay claim to be ’100% natural’ and packed with a glassful of milky goodness.

* But not Liberal Democrat voting.

Peelable Cheese Twirler

Description: 100% Natural Cheese. Each string contains a glass of milk.
Ingredients: Pasteurised milk, salt, citric acid, beta carotene.
Calories: 74 per stick
Further reading: http://www.peelablecheese.co.uk/

First from the panneau de fromage is this Peelable Cheese Twirler with its unique and innovative two-tone spiral of 100% natural plastic cheese goodness. We were naively expecting there to be a difference in flavour between the two spirals, with perhaps the yellow being an oak matured farmhouse cheddar and the white something milder like a Caerphilly or Cornish Yarg. Alas not so – both components shared a distinctive flavour more akin to a by-product from the petro-chemical industry than anything which might have originated in a dairy.

It takes a special kind of jaundiced corporate contempt to make the four simple ingredients of milk, salt, citric acid and beta carotene taste so fucking awful.

Conclusion: Remarkably not the worst we tested.

Dairylea Strip Cheese

Description: Cheese food snack with added calcium and vitamin D.
Ingredients: Mild Cheddar cheese (76%), concentrated whey, butter, milk proteins, emulsifying salt, flavouring, calcium phosphate, lactic acid, sorbic acid, vitamin D.
Calories: 73 per stick
Further reading: http://www.krafthealthyliving.co.uk

A past Yuckblog tasting of Dairylea’s synthetic and loathsome Lunchables led us to be rightly suspicious of their foray into the ‘stretchable cheese food snack stick’ market. Fortunately (and unlike the Lunchables), these particular stretchable cheese food snack sticks seemed to be made of the same tasty stuff as Dairylea Triangles and were therefore perfectly edible and by far the most palatable of our test specimens. Though the awful pun name is lamentable.

Conclusion: If you like the Triangles you’ll like these.

Cheestrings

Description: Cheestrings are simply natural cheese, just gently heated & stretched like mozzarella. That’s what makes them great fun to eat.
Ingredients: 100% natural cheese.
Calories: 69 per stick
Further reading: www.cheestrings.co.uk

And so to the original and by far NOT the best. Even before opening the packet we were irked by the vague and simplistic use of ’100% natural cheese’ as the sole ingredient and a somewhat elevated comparison to Mozzarella. Mozzarella? Possibly the greasy snot which oozes from a Pizza Hut “Stuffed Crust” pizza, but not in a billion years the lush milky ambrosia we so zealously ate in Sperlonga. Upon tasting it became apparent that a more accurate comparison would have been with a wax crayon. But who cares, Cheestrings may be as appetizing as the coagulated chip fat which clogs up our cities’ sewers, but at least they are ‘great fun’ for kids to eat.

Conclusion: Food shouldn’t be ‘fun’ it should be tasty… give your precious little darling a lump of real cheese… and possibly a small glass of Beaujolais.

A brief snapshot of Lyme Regis:

The packets are opened and the contents cooked strictly as per instructions.

Gallina Blanca ‘Risotto a la Gorgonzola’

Number of ingredients: 15
Calories: 664

Let’s start with the ‘best’ and work our way down to the bottom of this particular yuckblog slop barrel. Of the four culinary delights tested, this one resembled closest the photograph and lofty description on the packet and for that reason alone could have been voted the winner.

Flecked with indeterminate bits of green, the rice was creamy with the correct outer softness/ inner bite combination and the stringent flavour was very much of blue cheese. Unique among our samples, this was the only dish to have a lingering aftertaste – not necessarily a good thing.

Conclusion: The best of a bad lot.

Next Carrefour ‘Risotto 5 Quesos’

Number of ingredients: 14
Calories: 475

If you’re in the market for a savoury rice pudding floating in a milky briny puddle then this is the dish for you.

How anything can claim to contain FIVE cheeses and yet still contrive to have such an utterly cheeseless flavour is a mystery bordering on miraculous. The only positive thing to be said of this dish is that unlike the Risotto a la Gorgonzola it has no aftertaste.

Don’t tell Social Services.

Conclusion: Filth.

Next Carrefour ‘Volantinas a la Parmesana Com Parmesao

Number of ingredients: 11
Calories: about 600

Happily pushing the risotto to one side, let’s cleanse our palate and move optimistically on to the pasta course. First up we have another corker from Carrefour.

A cautious delve below the crusty Fusilli revealed the much anticipated vomit-flavoured liquid which this time managed to be both too salty and too sweet. Possessing less of an aroma and more of a miasma, I would caution against too long an exposure to its overpowering stench of powdered Parmesan.

Conclusion: Pure filth.

Lastly Gallina Blanca ‘Tallarines a la Parmesana’

Number of ingredients: an impressive 23
Calories: 552

Do you really need any words … just look at that photo!

Saggy Tagliatelle (Sagliatelle™) in a VERY sweet and thin milk sauce which if you dare to look closely you will see has separated. No discernible Parmesan flavour. Thankfully.

Conclusion: Pure unadulterated filth.

Overall Conclusion: Spain can be proud. These are without a doubt the most noxious and foetid concoctions we have tested so far.

The ‘Risotto a la Gorgonzola’ after it had congealed.

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All three scored an impressive 100% in the ‘Congeal Test‘

As before, preparation consists of tipping contents into a pan, pouring over boiling water and simmering for 5, 7 or 10 minutes.

First up the Dr Lange’s Riso Rapido

Number of ingredients: 29 including Geschmacksverstarker Mononattiumglutamal
Calories: 301
Description: Waldpilz-Reis mit Risoni-Nudeln

Despite looking like the sweepings from the bottom of a hamster cage, this had a very strong and not altogether unpleasant smell of dried mushrooms.

Visually this inhabits the uncomfortable middle ground between risotto and swill and so is not the prettiest dish once cooked. Despite this the pasta still had a slight bite to it and the over-riding flavour was of mushroom. It was quite salty but unlike most of the products from the dehydrated pasta/rice canon, not too sweet.

At the time of the tasting we were (on purposely) quite hungry and as a consequence we willingly tucked into our Riso Rapido with gusto, recording the following comments for prosperity: “Well I don’t think that was revolting” and “Not bad at all”

Conclusion: The best we have come across in these tastings.

Next the La Pasta di Maggi

Number of ingredients: 17 including Schmelzsalz Natriumphosphate
Calories: 249 per portion, they say
Description: Maccaroncini in Tomaten-Käse-Sauce.

Pre cooking this had a very strong smell of herby tomatoes with a slight hint of cheese.

Hmmm, this tastes like pasta struggling against the tide in a bowl of tomato cup-a-soup. The pasta has a reasonable bite to it but the sauce is overly sweet with not a hint of cheese. Once eaten it left a sour aftertaste which lingered most of the afternoon.

Conclusion: Not great.

Finally Knorr Spaghetteria

Number of ingredients: 19 including 4 types of cheese
Calories: 330
Description: Pasta in Käsesauce.

Now this may boast 4 types of cheese in its list of ingredients, but the only olfactory sensation we could pick up was the overpowering sick smell of powdered parmesan.

The sauce was actually not bad – it had a well-balanced flavour, wasn’t too sweet and tasted of ‘real’ cheese. Less promising was the unpleasant metallic coating it gave to our teeth – similar to the effect of eating rhubarb or spinach. The pasta was a little overcooked and the whole thing congealed before our eyes at some speed.

Conclusion: Prolonged exposure would strip the enamel off your teeth.

Winner: We prescribe Dr Lange’s Riso Rapido

Overall Conclusion: Obviously the Germans lag way behind the UK when it comes to car production, engineering, recycling, renewable energy, public transport (our train replacement bus service is the envy of the world) and baked goods (not a single Greggs in the whole of Berlin!). However, thanks to our research scientists here at yumblog, Germany can now boast superiority to the British in the niche field of instant pasta snack food manufacturing.

All three of the above were far better than anything we have tested so far.

‘A full flavoured tasty alternative to chips’

Ok, we have three varieties of Savoury Rice here. Two are from Sainsbury’s and cover the Basics and regular ranges and the third is from the brand leader Batchelors. The cooking instructions are pretty much the same – tip into a saucepan, pour over a specified amount of cold water, bring to the boil, cover and simmer for 20 minutes or until the water has been fully absorbed.

It was this last point which was most problematic as after the 20 minute simmer, the rice was cooked but there was still a large puddle of liquid in the pans. I concluded that if I continued cooking until all this liquid was gone, the rice would have turned into a glutinous mush, so instead I turned off the gas and opted for rice soup instead.

Let’s tuck in.

Mmmmm

First up the Sainsbury’s Basics Mixed Vegetable Savoury Rice

Number of ingredients: 27 including rice (83%)
Calories: 239
Price: 21p
Description: Fewer vegetables, still satisfying

I like that apologetic ‘Fewer vegetables, still satisfying‘ description chosen by Sainsbury’s which I think roughly translates as ‘Not as shit as you might think‘. This product makes no claims to being ‘golden’ and as a consequence the dried contents are grey and not the Hi-Vis yellow of the other Sainsbury’s offering. Clearly visible are peas, red shards of pepper and white bits which look like they might be (but hopefully aren’t) coconut, but probably are onion.

After 20 minutes of cooking we had soggy rice sitting in a salty puddle. The orange bits tasted of carrot, the green bits tasted of tinned peas, and the white bits went unnoticed. Overall this was very generic and slightly sweet.

Conclusion: Uninspired and bland.

Next the Sainsbury’s Golden Vegetable Savoury Rice

Number of ingredients: 14 including ‘flavouring’
Calories: 380
Price: 42p
Description: Long grain rice with a selection of peas, red peppers and carrots.

Struth, this is so yellow it should glow in the dark. The rice is firmer, but again there is far to much liquid. The vegetables taste more vegetably with the pepper even having a slight suggestion of heat, however the overriding flavour is of vegetable stock cubes.

Conclusion: Fluorescent salty slop.

Finally Batchelors ‘New Improved Recipe’ Golden Savoury Rice

Number of ingredients: 15 including Disodium 5′-ribonucleotides
Calories: 436
Price: 55p
Description: Long grain rice with a tasty mix of peas, carrot, red pepper, green beans and sweetcorn.

Now for the Batchelors – the benchmark by which all other contenders in the savoury rice arena have to be compared. Initially this looks better with its higher vegetable count and less synthetic ‘golden’ colour.

Despite sitting in a puddle of what looks like school custard, the rice is not over-cooked and has by far the best taste of the three. However, this ‘taste’ is there by virtue of the various flavour enhancers and has little to do with the quality of the ingredients.

Conclusion: An artificially enhanced performance which would have an athlete banned for life.

Winner: The Batchelors was a clear (although still barely edible) winner.

‘Do not purchase if open or torn‘

First up the Sainsbury’s Basics Pasta shells in a Tomato & Onion Sauce Mix

Number of ingredients: 15 including ‘flavourings’
Calories: 378
Price: 38p
Description: Simple recipe, same great snack

On the face of it this would seem to be an unfair comparison as we have chosen something from the economy Basics range. Like yellow and black stripes on wasps and other unpalatable insects, I have always viewed the bright orange band and handwritten font used on all Basics packaging as a handy visual warning of something best avoided. However, these snacks are just a pairing of cheap pasta and salty dust, so how sophisticated do they need to be? Perhaps here, less is more.

A quick scan of the back of the packet reveals that there are indeed only 15 ingredients none of which are particularly alarming, although the vague ‘flavourings’ could hide a multitude of sins. It is also a product which requires cooking in a pan (or microwave) for 12 minutes, so is not necessarily recommended for novice chefs or the impatient.

We followed these cooking instructions and ended up with pasta shells in a greyish wet sauce. The pasta was in fact the best we have tasted so far as it still had a slight bite to it, but the sauce was a huge insipid disappointment. The dominant flavour (apart from water) was dried basil and sugar with the tomato and onion noticeable by their absence.

This is not a pretty dish although with a little seasoning it could be made palatable.

Conclusion: Bland with a hint of herb.

Next the Batchelors Pasta’n'Sauce – Tomato, Onion & Herbs

Number of ingredients: 19 including E621 and E635
Calories: 470
Price: 72p
Description: Serves one as a snack or two as part of a main meal

Now this pasta’n'sauce sees itself as more than just a handy snack as it could (Batchelors suggest) be just one constituent in a larger, more lavish meal. Perhaps it would make a lovely accompaniment to your Ballotine of Foie Gras or maybe a playful companion for your Quenelles de Brochet. Or, if you follow their Top Tips, you could eat it with ham on toast.

We cooked our pasta as per the instructions, but in the interest of fairness, omitted the optional addition of 15g of butter or margarine despite the protestation that this would be ‘really tasty’. Mmmm, margarine.

Visually this is a better dish as the sauce is thicker and brighter and the pasta has retained it’s spiral shape. However a quick taste reveals this to be a much more processed product. The sauce is thick in an unpleasantly gelatinous way, it’s sweet, and has a flavour very reminiscent of tinned ravioli. Once swallowed you are left with the aftertaste of uncooked dried herbs.

Here we have to congratulate the flavour enhancers E621 and E635 because they have certainly fulfilled their job description – just not in a very pleasant way. Perhaps if we had stirred in the recommended tub of margarine this would have been transformed into a ‘really tasty’ delight … perhaps.

Conclusion: Buy tinned ravioli instead.

Winner: A very close fight although overall I would say the Basics wins on points, if only because it is so bland it could be made palatable with the addition of a good slug of Worcestershire sauce and a heap of melted cheddar. Any addition to the Batchelors would just make it more unpleasant.

Number of ingredients: 25 including yummy Xanthan Gum
Calories: 196
Price: Was: 80p Now: 48p
Description: Cheesecake flavour reduced fat soft cheese dip with raspberry coulis and wheatmeal biscuits.

The bizarre thing about these Philadelphia snacks is that they don’t actually contain Philadelphia… or at least not the Philadelphia cream cheese we know and love. Instead you get a rather unpleasant sludge which tastes like it has been made by combining flour, sugar, water and battery acid. If you were to slap this between a bagel with a piece of smoked salmon, you’d be cruelly disappointed.

The digestive is simply that, a digestive, albeit one on the slightly soft side and with a dusty aftertaste.

The coulis contains a commendable 51% raspberries which accounts for its strong raspberry flavour. This would be a high percentage for a jam, but is on the low side for a proper coulis.

Eaten as a combo you get the passing notion of the cheese, a brief visit by the coulis, but overall it is the dusty biscuit which dominates.

Conclusion: Buy a packet of McVitie’s and dip them in your tea.

‘Warning requires cooking – in a proper pan!’

First up the Asda Good For You

Number of ingredients: 15 including broccoli (1.6%)
Calories: 447
Price: 58p
Description: Spaghetti in a cheese flavoured sauce with broccoli floret pieces

The first thing you notice when you open the packet is that it contains real spaghetti. No that’s not true, the first thing you notice when you tear through the foil is the acrid, over-powering, eye-watering smell of vomit. Then you notice the spaghetti which actually isn’t ‘real’ but stunted with a strange rough texture.

The preparation consists of emptying the contents into a saucepan, adding the prescribed amount of boiling water and simmering for 8 minutes. That’s 8 minutes during which your kitchen will be filled with the heady aroma of bubbling vomit. To serve, slop into a dish and stand back in horror.

On the plus side, the pasta was not too soggy. On the negative side, the sauce had separated and tasted like salty custard with a hint of vomit. The much heralded broccoli floret pieces were minuscule, crunchy and strangely fishy.

Conclusion: Fake spaghetti in a runny puke sauce.

Next the Ainsley ‘Meal in 5!’

Number of ingredients: 26 including dried vegetables (4.5%)
Calories: 414
Price: 66p (reduced from 99p)
Description: A gorgeously Tasty Meal in minutes…

Now I actually found this in Waitrose (albeit on the clearance shelf) so we must be talking about a quality product here. Besides, Ainsley Harriott is a serious world-renowned chef who wouldn’t sully his reputation by putting his name to a range of glorified Pot Noodle, would he?

The contents are the now familiar combination of micro pasta and yellow dust.

As usual the pasta was soggy and overcooked and the sauce salty and runny. There was a background taste of reconstituted dried vegetables of a non-specific nature. Carrot was seen.

Conclusion: Neutral enough to be inoffensive and would probably be a welcome meal if you were stuck halfway up the side of a mountain.

Winner: Ainsley by a long way although to be fair the benchmark was a bowl of sick.

‘Delicious hot or cold’

First up the Attack a Snak

Number of ingredients: 29 including Diglycerides of Fatty Acids
Calories: 240
Price: £1.32
Description: Ham wrap with Cheestrings

Hmmm, what do we have here? Some sweaty pink stuff, a piece of vacuum-packed fluorescent plastic, cardboard and an incongruous sachet of Heinz tomato ketchup.

The pink stuff has to be one of the most unappetizing things I have ever seen. A sweating, flaccid, ragged slither of putrid-looking flesh… surely it’s in here by mistake. A reluctant tasting reveals it to be overly salty with a very slight taste of ‘meat’, possibly chicken.

The fluorescent plastic turns out to be something called a ‘Cheestring’ and apparently is safe to eat. Safe but not pleasant, especially with its oily soapy aftertaste.

The cardboard was in fact just that, cardboard.

It is difficult to assemble into anything resembling a wrap as the cardboard is brittle and tends to snap rather than roll. Tasted as a combo it starts with salty wet meat, goes through uncooked pastry and ends with tomato ketchup. There is no cheese flavour at all.

If you want to read some cartoon wrapped bullshit about how healthy and nutritious Cheestrings are, click here.

Conclusion: Rancid. I shudder to think what this would have tasted like if we had taken up their suggestion, bunged it in a microwave and served it hot. This is not food.

Next the Cathedral City Lunch Pack

Number of ingredients: 27 including Sulphur Dioxide
Calories: 399
Price: £1.72
Description: 4 Mature yet mellow Cheddar slices, 4 crisp baked JACOB’S Cream Crackers with delicious BRANSTON Pickle Dip.

What can I say. It’s a cream cracker with a piece of cheddar and a blob of pickle on top. Very tasty. We’d eat it. In fact we did

So confident are Cathedral City about their Lunch Pack, they don’t even mention the exciting inclusion of a plastic spreader.

Conclusion: A convenient albeit over-priced and over-packaged way of buying 4 cream crackers with cheese and a blob of pickle on top.

Winner: Lunch Pack by a mile. By a hundred miles. By 10,567,876 miles.

‘Lunchables can make a fun change to a sandwich’

First up: Dairylea Lunchable

Number of ingredients: 41 including Calcium Stearoyl-2-lactylate
Calories: 295
Price: £1.33
Description: Contains 2 white and wholegrain subs, formed ham slices and Dairylea slices, with no artificial colours or flavours.

The packaging is obviously aimed at kids. The grinning cow proudly declares the content to contain a third of a child’s RDA of calcium and an unspecified amount of vitamin D. The salt and saturated fats figures are less encouraging and when combined with the inevitable packet of crisps, creme egg and sugary drink, this fun alternative to a sandwich will ensure your child gets off to fat and malnourished start in life.

Enough to make even a gynaecologist blush

The first thing you notice when you peel back the hermetic plastic seal is the welcoming smell of stale porky air given off by the ‘formed ham slices’. The sub is dry, both sweet and salty and has the texture of stale cake. The (s)ham slices are ‘surgical appliance’ pink and flecked with what I suspect has been mechanically-reclaimed from the more obscure parts of a pig. Taste? Cheap ham to start, nothing to finish.

Unfortunately the ‘cheese food’ is not the much-loved Dairylea used in the triangles, but a rather average plastic cheese compound which coats the mouth with a greasy residue.

Once assembled it does actually look like the photograph on the packaging, although in truth this is due to the ingredients being so pre-formed and plastic. Like Lego.

Eaten together the only thing you can taste is the bread – that sweet, dry, dry, dry bread. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have realised there was any filling.

In a word: Synthetic.

Incidently, Kraft have a website called ‘Kraft Health Living’ which offers health and nutritional advice. A cynic might call this cynical.

If Ryanair served food, it would probably be like this.

Next the Brunchettas

Number of ingredients: 23 including Potassium Sorbate
Calories: 178
Price: 75p
Description: Delicious medium mature Cheddar cheese on crunchy Italian bruschetta with red pepper, onion and tomato relish. Each pack contains 5 wedges of medium mature Cheddar cheese, 5 slices of toasted bruschetta and a portion of relish with a handy spreader fork to help you make your perfect Brunchetta anytime snack.’

Although considerably cheaper, this is marketed as a much more sophisticated product and is primarily aimed at women. Firstly I have to confess that before peeling back the foil I was giddy with excitement about the prospect of the included free plastic handy spreader fork.

There isn’t anything particularly suprising about this ‘anytime’ snack. The ‘delicious medium mature Cheddar cheese‘ is average supermarket fodder, the heavily salted ‘crunchy Italian bruschetta‘ is indeed crunchy but neither Italian nor anything resembling bruschetta, and the ‘red pepper, onion and tomato relish‘ is an unsophisticated schlem of red pepper, onion, tomato and Potassium Sorbate.

On the plus side there is the ‘handy spreader fork‘ with its sensual moulded curves, brushed steel effect finish and embossed Brunchettas branding. I’m sure it will have many more uses than the prescribed spreading and forking and would make a handsome addition to any chef’s cutlery drawer.

In summary: Salty and average.

The winner: Brunchettas – but only because Dairylea Lunchables are so offensive.