The only other experience I have with Snapps involves their absolutely terrible cream cheese poppers–I first tried those about ten years ago when I lived alone and picked them up because they were a dollar at Kroger. I’ve never forgotten the bland, worthless taste. I bought them again a couple of months ago to see if anything had changed, only to find they’re still the same disgusting pieces of trash that they were so long ago.
It goes without saying that Snapps does not have a good track record with me. Then I saw they were offering green bean fries (and they’re “New!” according to the unnecessarily excited packaging); while they aren’t my favorite appetizer (not even by a long shot), they are different enough that I felt it warranted giving the terrible company another try.
For those unfamiliar, they are essentially just as they sound: green beans deep fried in batter so as to eliminate any and all nutrients (welcome to America!), and served, usually with a side of ranch. I first had them at a chain restaurant several years back. The problem is, appetizers have gotten so ridiculously expensive over the years that, at this current rate, they will be more expensive than the entrée by the year 2030. Either that, or entrees will just keep increasing, meaning eating out at a chain restaurant will cost $100 for a family of two to gorge on microwaved food more befitting of a farm animal than an actual human being.
But anyway, I digress. My point is, if I can get green bean fries for a dollar, then that’s at least five bucks cheaper than most restaurants will offer them. So I jumped at the chance.
The first thing that heightened my anticipation of eating these were the green beans themselves: first of all, many of them were large and healthy-looking (I expected them to be obvious cast-offs that didn’t quite make the cut to be in a national brand can of green beans), and they weren’t covered in batter. It’s kind of disconcerting to see, but there are only clumps of batter on each green bean, aptly spaced out so that you can still see plenty of the vegetable. I was expecting them to be completely covered, with the batter taking over the flavor.
They cook up pretty quickly in the oven; the batter doesn’t get super crispy, but it gets crispy enough. Just as the visual inspection insinuated, there’s an impressive amount of green bean taste in each bite. This may turn off some, but I thought it was a welcome surprise. I won’t go so far as to say the beans taste fresh, but they taste fresher than you would expect, with the bean delivering a decent crunch. The batter is also pretty good, and does just enough to complement the green bean taste, without doing anything to overwhelm it. Dipping these in ranch are the way to go; you can have yourself a tasty little appetizer for a fraction of the price you would pay for it in a restaurant, and that’s more than a good enough reason for me to recommend this.
Overall: 8/10. For a dollar, you get a pretty good amount of green bean fries. The batter doesn’t envelope the entire bean, as I was expecting, which means there’s a decent amount of green bean flavor in each bite. This may turn off some, but I love vegetables, and was expecting the deep fried flavor to overtake everything, so it was a welcome surprise. I dipped them in ranch, which provided me with an appetizer that is pretty close to restaurant quality, for a fraction of the price. If you see these in your local Dollar Tree cooler, you should definitely give them a shot.
