A Lake District hospitality venue is manufacturing its own home-made, flavoured crisps for guests to enjoy in its bar, restaurant and microbrewery.

Wild Boar Estate is producing the crisps which can be served hot or cold with different toppings and sauces as a tasty pre-dinner snack, as well as for bar nibbles and an ideal accompaniment to the craft ales it produces on site.

Head chef Dylan Evans has been developing his crisp making technique with the addition of a special crisp fryer in the Grill and Smokehouse restaurant kitchen at the hotel.

The idea behind the crisp making initiative came from a visit home to Ostrava in the eastern Czech Republic by English Lakes Hotels general manager Adam Bujok, when he happened upon a popular venue which produced its own potato based snacks.

Adam and Dylan discussed and developed the idea before purchasing the crisp making equipment and devising a number of flavours for the venue.  The crisp flavours include black truffle and smoked salt with a classic garlic ketchup, rosemary salt and cider vinegar with a lemon and confit garlic aioli, and smoked paprika and Mexican oregano with a chilli jam.

The restaurant team at Wild Boar Estate cooks up the freshly made crisps to order and is raising its stock levels of potatoes in anticipation of increasing customer demand and interest in the new snacks.  There is also the potential for the venue to produce other types of crisps using alternative root vegetables such as beetroot, carrots, parsnips and sweet potatoes.

Adam explains:

“When you open a really good bag of crisps, you often take for granted that wonderful crunch of the first mouthful – and of course we all have our favourite flavours."

“On my visit home to Ostrava, I visited a venue where they made their own crisps in a range of flavours and they were great with a beer before dinner.    I thought it’s not something you experience much in the UK and that we could easily do the same and come up with a tasty snack in-house to be paired with our craft ales and become a talking point for our guests.”

Dylan adds:

“There’s no special secret ingredients or mysterious techniques in making your own crisps, other than ensuring that that they get cut to the optimum shape and size.  Slicing them as thinly as possible gets the best results.  We leave the skins on and dry the sliced potatoes to get rid of excess starch, before seasoning the crisps using the fryer and associated equipment."

 “And there’s really no limit to the number of flavours you can try, so we’re already experimenting with other ingredients and tastes for guests to sample and savour.  No doubt everyone will have their own favourite.”

Photo: Dylan Evans and Adam Bujok from Wild Boar Estate with the venue's new home-made crisps.