Guilty Pleasures No 4 - JA Pork Crunch, pork scratchings review

Design agencies stand up and take note of this packaging design

With an impending trip to Las Iguanas for some Mexican food for my birthday, I was reminded of a guilty pleasure that I’ve been intending to write about for ages…. JA Pork Crunch; the King of pork scratchings. 

As a frequent food blog trawler I’ve discovered a ton of blogs hyping up the pork scratchings at Thomasina Miers’ Wahaca mini-chain of Mexican restaurants. According to Foodycat "they are the best pork scratchings that you will find in a wide area".  and according to Adventures of a Foodie "If you haven't tasted Wahaca's homemade pork scratchings, you haven't lived"

Having sampled the Wahaca scratchings and also JA’s pork crunch I can confirm that Wahaca's offering are only the best in a wide area because there is no Homebargains in Covent Garden. You have also lived if you have eaten JA's pork crunch. And the best thing, JA’s pork crunch are available for 25p from your local Homebargains store. Each mouthful has the puffy, crunchy, light texture of quavers and a delicious flavour combination which melds pork, salt and MSG (Umami if I’m feeling pretentious). They are truly cliche worthy......oh go on then......they are pork scratchings like no other. It is worth a trip to Homebargains just to purchase a couple of bags but no doubt you’ll come out with a basketful of other things you don’t really needed (10 biscuit and raisin milkybars going out of date in a few weeks for 19p each anyone?). 

No they're not quavers, they're pork crunch; also, a Cat Kidston themed backdrop and unnecessarily crumbed tablecloth.

As a branding geek, the other thing I love about JA Pork crunch is their packaging design. There aren’t many other products available on the supermarket shelf that look like they've been designed on powerpoint. I can just picture Farmer JA designing the packaging on his PC having decided to launch his own range of scratching in order to sell off his excess pork fat (perhaps having been inspired by the Tyrell’s story or perhaps not). 

What else is there to say that I haven’t already said? Oh yes there’s miraculously only 0.98g of saturated fat in a packet and paradoxically you occasionally get a reassuringly soft bit of un-rendered fat in a mouthful.

The details: JA Pork Crunch, Location: Homebargains, Price: 25p