11/16/2012

Jagarico Clam Chowder / じゃがりこ クラムチャウダー

A little information of Jagarico. Jagarico is one of the popular snacks from Calbee inc. and its first rollout was back in 1995.
Main ingredient of this snack is potatoes and they steam and form the potatoes into skinny strips with about 7-8cm long and fry them.
And the fried potatoes are in a cup like cup noodles.

Jagarico generates 25 billion yen in annual sales (as of Oct. 2011) and is best face of Calbee.

When they developed this snack, they focused on high school girls hailing around the world with loose socks, which was super popular among young girls to wear with school uniform.
And they imagined a product they'd carry in their bags and created this Jagarico in a cup.

They thought of the product name and there're "Karitto Potato (crispy potato)" "Potekky (have no idea what they meant) " "Slim Potato" and etc.
When young developing team members were discussing, one of the male employees said, "A friend of mine, Rikako seemed to enjoy this snack." 
And they started making the name; "Jagaimo Rikako" --> "Jaga Rikako" --> "Jagarico"
*Jagaimo means potato in Japanese.

Now move on to its limited flavor "Clam Chowder."
Calbee launched limited version of Jagarico with clam chowder flavor.

Now Halloween is gone and majority of companies including snack industries is moving on to Christmas and winter themed products.

As regular clam chowder is made from clams, potatoes, onions, and other vegetables, so I thought it'd taste quite good.


This actually contains powered extract of clams, scallops, and oysters besides chicken extract, heavy cream, onions, carrots, parsley, and of course potatoes (non-GM).

Inside looks like this.
Looks like thick version of uncooked pasta.

You can see some carrots and parsley's dots in it.

Texture: Super crispy like regular Jagarico.
Taste and flavor: I could sense some clam chowder flavor when I put my nose close to the snack. 
When I ate it, first it had a slight creamy and seafood taste, and started mixing with potato flavor afterwards.
By the time it disappeared, it still had a little bit clam chowder flavor and the potato didn't kill the delicate fragrance.
I think I could have still recognized if they package hadn't said "clam chowder."

According to the package, the secret ingredient is cheddar cheese.
Jagarico always has pun.
This one says, 「隠しチーズで、おいしさふくらむチャウダー」 and the letters in pink the pun.
Here is the Romanized Japanese word, "Kakushi cheese de, oishisa fukuramu chowder." 
It means, "With the secretive cheese, clam chowder get deep flavor."
When we speak imported words, most of the time we don't care if it's L or R, so we pronounce it with R sound pretty much for everything.

Apparently, these giraffes are a couple (first photo of the package) and name of the male is Akihiko (あき彦) on the left, and his girlfriend is Huyumi(ふゆ美)on the right, however, these names are only for them, not other packages' giraffes.


All Jagarico has these giraffe and on Calbee's Jagarico site, there're a whole bunch of characters with their names, which all looks like the same because they're all giraffes with slightly different outfit...

When I was in high school, one of the boom was open the lid and pour hot water, wait for 3 minutes and mix it well. 
It becomes mashed potato of the flavor.
You'd probably think it's disgusting, but it's worth trying. 
It seriously tastes as good as real mashed potato!

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