British brand Corkers launches range of gourmet olive oil crisps

British snack brand Corkers has launched a new range of gourmet olive oil crisps.

Described as a first for the UK’s hand-cooked vegetable crisp category, the new range sources olive oil from the Mueloliva estate in Spain – obtained from olives cold-pressed within 15 hours of harvesting – for use as a cooking oil in the production of the crisps.

The range’s gourmet credentials are heightened further with flavours including black truffle, plus rosemary and garlic. As well as a five-strong range of potato chips cooked using Mueloliva olive oil, there are two vegetable crisp variants: sweet potato with sea salt; and sweet potato with parsnip, beetroot and sea salt.

A spokesperson for the Corkers brand explained: “Like Corkers, the Muela family take their ingredients seriously, using only the best green olives from the family’s 3,000 olive groves in Andalucia. Cold-pressed within fifteen hours of harvesting, the oil is decanted for fifteen days, while the extracted pips are put to good use in heating the factory.

“With such attention to detail, the Muela family and their oil are the perfect pairing for Corkers’ distinctive Naturalo potatoes, devised specifically for the peat-rich fenland soil of the Corkers’ Cambridgeshire family farm.”

Corkers said that the resulting crisp is ‘light, crunchy’ and each with a distinctive flavour.

It is aiming to drive value into the often-discounted hand-cooked crisp category while still maintaining the texture of previous Corkers lines.

The launch of the new range follows £1.5 million investment in production and packaging equipment at Willow Farm in Ely, Cambridgeshire – the home of the Corkers brand – which is expected to create an additional 20 jobs.