My buddy Rob is serving jury duty today, Junk Food Nation, and it reminded me of my own jury service experience. In DC, the jury pool room is nice – wireless internet, comfy chairs, and best of all, flatscreen TVs!  They always show movies in the jury pool room, and the day I served was no exception: No Reservations starring Catherine Zeta Jones and Aaron Eckhart.

I have to admit, I tried to pretend I was not interested in the rom-com.  I tried reading a book. Didn’t work – I was enticed by images of spaghetti and French dishes. I tried checking my email on my phone, but was distracted by how hot CZJ was. I tried to pretend like I wasn’t watching the movie, then realized I was.  An hour in, I was invested.

And then, 30 mins from the end of the movie – I WAS CALLED TO REPORT TO A COURTROOM!  Noooo DC. You teased me and roped me in, and now you take me away!  No justice. Can someone tell me what happened at the end of the movie??  Gaaaaah.

I decided to review a classic junk food today that I’ve loved a long time: Nabisco Chicken in a Biskit Original Baked Snack Crackers!

The Money Shot

I can’t remember the last time I had C in a B crackers.  I do remember the box being more teal as a kid, like this. I feel like Chicken in a Biskit crackers came from an era where visible flavor powdering didn’t exist – the manufacturers were like “they can’t SEE what makes these crackers taste so good, or else we’ll scare consumers off!  Beige, gentleman, beige is what we need to maintain all the way!”

Also, I usually raise a hairy eyebrow whenever any product intentionally misspells a word in order to make the snack “wacky.” According to Wiki, “Biskit” is is an open source software package written in Python, that facilitates research in Structural bioinformatics and molecular modelling.  Yeah…that’s not what we have here.

Familiar buttery crackers

The reason I have such fond memories of Chicken in a Biskit crackers, I think, was because my parents really didn’t allow us kiddies to have much junk food growing up, save for some Ritz crackers here and there. However, Chicken in a Biskit crackers WOULD show up every once in a while in the cupboard, and when they did, it was ON. Crackers that had FLAVORING??? I need to take this box and go somewhere for a while. Don’t look for me.

MSG and DCC

Enriched flour? Check. MSG? Of course. Dehydrated cooked chicken? BINGO. Don’t forget the flavor enhancers!

Well, that’s…random

The back of the box promotes a marriage of flavors between Kraft and Nabisco. God help me if I’m ever spraypainting shapes using Easy Cheese on Ritz crackers.

Also, is this a balanced meal they’re pushing here? Make sure to have Ritz and Easy Cheese with grapes, apples, and large glasses of milk?

Your basic flaky cracker pile

Golden Brown Chicken Punch!

Chicken in a Biskit crackers are pretty basic – buttery crackers that are rectangular and glistening with flavor. No visible flavor powder, except for some beige colored furriness around the edges.

Crusted with flavor 🙂

So how do these crackers taste? On first bite, you get the cracker’s signature flakiness – crunchy, light, and turning quickly into mush in your mouth. The first flavor you experience is butter and salt, but then as you chew, the chicken flavor starts to really come out. The chicken flavor, however, is not QUITE reminiscent of meat – rather, the crackers taste a lot like what chicken STOCK tastes like by itself. Which I think is still tasty, but definitely different than chicken meat.  All these flavors blend together – butter, salt, chicken stock – to form a nice savory blend in your mouth.

I’ve always liked these crackers, and years later, I think they still hold up. They are nothing like many of today’s junk foods – and maybe that’s a good thing.

Sincerely, Junk Food Guy