Christmas Crisps Showdown: Finding the Best Festive Flavours

It took decades for crisps to become available in more than just ready salted or salt and vinegar flavours. Now, you can get a whole meal on a crisp and with Christmas rapidly approaching, we thought we’d guide you to pick the best Christmas Dinner in a packet.

Each of the five packets (pictured above surrounded by Twinkly lights) offers the basis of a turkey dinner, but it’s easy to make big promises. What really matters is whether the taste stands up to scrutiny.

The team at Average Joes did what needed to be done, and this is what we found…

5th: Tesco Finest Roast Turkey & Herb Butter
★☆☆☆☆

Anything but fine was the verdict of our testers, with all but Izzy giving these their lowest score. Oddly, it was the texture that turned most off, although the crisp also tasted unnaturally sweet, and the flavour missed the mark by some margin. These were a winner in some taste tests in previous years, so whatever ‘new and improved’ recipe Tesco is using hasn’t worked out well.

4th: Lidl Deluxe Roast Turkey with Sage & Onion Stuffing
★★☆☆☆

A universal ‘meh’ for this, with all five Christmas tasters awarding the crisps just two out of five. There was a lot of flavour, but that flavour seemed to be ‘stock cube’ rather than tasty turkey. The one redeeming feature was that the crisps were particularly crunchy.

3rd: Aldi Specially Selected Turkey & Stuffing
★★☆☆☆

Phil’s favourite, but Izzy’s most disliked; it’s fair to say that these split the crowd. Everyone agreed they were surprisingly salty, but opinions varied on the taste — some thought there was little in the way of meat, but we all agreed that the herby stuffing shone through. They looked great in the bowl, though, even if the crunch was missing.

2nd: M&S Collection Pembrokeshire Bronze Roast Turkey
★★★☆☆

A close second to the Morrisons option, M&S’s effort scored highly with Izzy, who liked the herby turkey flavour that came through, which seemed to be backed by a bit of onion. These aren’t groundbreaking but offer a solid and reliable experience — just what you’d expect from M&S.

1st: Morrisons The Best Turkey & Stuffing
★★★★☆

These Christmas crisps scored a maximum of five out of five from Alysia, but opinions were split across the board. The crisp texture was good, though, and the flavour was pleasingly meaty, even if the stuffing had seemingly disappeared somewhere. They don’t have quite the same visual appeal as the M&S option, but the flavour and texture make up for that, which means they’re good enough to take the win here, living up to the brand name.