Duck fritons and roasted crackling join premium snacks category
Berkshire-based start-up business The Artisan Food Co, owned by Dan Featherstone, has launched with two charcuterie-style snacks designed to pair with drinks and aimed at “top end pubs, bars and hotels”. It has already won listings with Fortnum & Mason in London. Rick Stein’s pub and deli in Padstow and Heston Blumenthal’s The Hinds Head and The Crown in Bray.
Duck Fritons (RRP £2.50, 30g), based on the Gascon speciality Fritons de Canard, are fried, scratching-style snacks made with free-range duck skin from Devon-based premium duck supplier Creedy Carver. They are flavoured with Spanish sea salt sourced for Featherstone by Cornish Sea Salt.
Feathestone said production process had taken almost a year to perfect. “It takes around nine hours, going through rendering, curing, a long process of confit, cooling and a hot fry,” he told FFD.
His other launch product is Chorizo Thins (RRP £2.50, 25g), made using a spicy chorizo from Galicia which is “slow cooked for in excess of 15 hours, to intensify the flavour and give it a little crunch”.
Featherstone is looking for wholesale distributors for both products, which he is currently selling at £1.30 per pack in cases of 15.
Also new this month is Snackling (RRP £2.50 for 30g), which maker Serious Pig – best known for its snacking salamis and Snackingham snack hams – claims is the first snack pack of pork crackling to be oven-roasted rather than fried.
“The texture and flavour we get from oven-roasting is amazing,” said founder George Rice said: “It bubbles and turns a beautiful golden colour and becomes incredibly crispy.” It also delivers about half the fat of fried scratchings, he said.
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