“Sea salt is different from both of those, in my experience,” says Wilkerson. “The granulation on sea salt isn’t as straightforward.” Consequently, it adheres differently to the snack substrate, requiring extra attention in topical applications. “The larger the particle, the harder it is to make it stick,” he says. “It’s just going to roll off. If you use, for example, flour salt, which is a very fine, granulated salt, it really sticks to a chip. The sea salt may not stick to it quite as well.” Sweet, salty, spicy One place where sea salt has stuck—metaphorically speaking—is on snacks that pair it with an evident sweet note for a sweet-and-salty finish. “From a view of 30,000 ft.,” Bruns says, this sweet-salty idea “is the trend that’s really getting a lot of attention.” Brands from Pringles and Sun Chips to Cape Cod and Clif Bar have added explicitly sweet-salty or sweet-savory snacks to their lineups. “There used to be a distinct difference between savory and sweet in snacks,” Arcieri says, “but now we’re seeing more of a cross-fertilization between those, and more culinary-inspired concepts, as well.” Adds Banes: “Sea salt and caramel is a current trend pairing. I think that, with the increased awareness of sea salt by the consumer these days, you can use it in a snack seasoning blend and make it feel more gourmet, whether it be a savory or a salty-sweet blend.” He cites sweet heat as another major theme, and as the inspiration for a snack cluster he designed that plays up the idea with chipotle, orange, almonds, mangos and apricots. In the case of Stern’s beer-flavored, spicy bloody Mary, and salted margarita chips, the concept of sweet-salty-spicy “came from a combination of being in Japan a few times, where the combination is big, and from the kettle corn at county fairs,” he says. But the clear inspiration is the bar. That’s a source that Wilkerson has seen, as well. “We’re seeing more tequila-lime flavors in snacks out there,” he says. “The salt-and-citrus thing just goes together. And all of those are salt-balanced. I’ve always said that if you can get just a little bit of initial salt taste in a savory product on the outside, you can use a whole lot less on the inside.” Pick a pepper, any pepper Yet, while sweet-salty-spicy is a recent arrival to the American snack scene, it’s nothing new worldwide. “Certain cultures and countries have always had a combination of sweet-savory flavors,” says Leda Strand, technology application and industrial ingredients lab director, Wixon, Inc., St. Francis, WI. It’s just that we’re only now putting them to use in snacks. “This continues to grow in the general snack market,” she says, “where the new focus has been on combining chiles, fruit and chocolate—as in a cherry, chipotle and chocolate profile—or adding spicy heat notes to classic profiles, such as apples and cinnamon, to create new profiles like spicy apple and blue cheese, or smoked apple and honey.” The fact is, spice is still big. As Bruns says, hot profiles “are hotter than ever.” But today’s spicy snacks have evolved. While just a few years ago the theme was to dare the palate with “Xtreme” heat, today’s spicy flavors are decidedly more subdued—and sophisticated, too. But they’re still chile-obsessed. “Chiles are popular and moving to all aisles of the grocery store,” Strand says. “As consumers gain exposure, they search for new flavors, and are not looking only for jalapeño or chipotle. Now it has expanded to ancho, guajillo and pasilla. Consumers understand the term ‘hot,’ but are now searching for variable heat intensities combined with complex flavors to bring the new chiles to the snack category.” The rise of chipotle may be the textbook case study in how an edgy flavor insinuates itself into the mainstream. “In 1993, the flavor of chipotle was seen more in fine dining and within ethnic communities’ cuisines,” recalls Arcieri. “But, as the years progressed, it moved from a novel flavor to an up-and-coming flavor to the mainstream of everyday by 2003.” Not only are consumers ready to move beyond a single chile, but they’re ready to experience heat in new ways. “People want various types of heats,” Bruns says. “They want heat that’s either built into the functionality so that you get a burst and then it fades, or so that you might get it at the end to give you this wonderful balance of heat. Or maybe they want the warm-spice heat from cinnamon and cardamom and the more Mediterranean and North African kinds of spices that you’ll get, or the wasabi and Asian heat. All those things are intertwining to deliver that sensation built into the other components, because it’s all about balance.”
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