Name: Kurkure Naughty Tomatoes
Origin: India
Found at: Saral Indian Grocery, Tustin
Cost: $1.49
Ingredients:
Rice Meal, Edible Vegetable Oil, Corn Meal, Gram Meal, Sugar, Salt, Tomato powder (1.4%), Spices & Condiments (Chilli powder, onion powder, Black pepper powder, Ginger powder, Clove powder, Cinnamon powder, Nutmeg powder, Citric acid, Beet Root Juice powder.
Why I Bought It:
Naughty tomatoes! With devil horns made of Cheetos and Angelina Jolie lips! These had to be the wackiest snack in a store shelf full of wacky snacks–all with more spices than your average American bowl of chili.
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Also, one of the ingredients made me laugh. “Edible vegetable oil”? Well, that's a relief.
Kurkure also distinguishes itself for having actual recipes in the back of the package. And I'm not just talking dip. There are instructions to make a dish called “mast tamatar sev” that requires you to boil things and cut some tomatoes “in the shape of flowers”. These make American Cheetos look even more lazy and boring.
It's a clean taste, with hints of gazpacho and a wallop from the complex union of spices. Unlike Flaming Hot Cheetos, I actually like these. Plus, the burn lasts considerably longer. I ate one about when I started writing this, which was about ten minutes ago, and my mouth still throbs.
Now excuse me while I cut this tomato into a flower shape.
Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.