Rutherford & Meyer Cracker Bites - Chickpea product reviews

After trying the beetroot and three seeds, and the sweet potato version of these Rutherford and Meyer crackers, I had the chickpea ones last to try, and I deliberately did that as these were something I have had similar of before, so did have a preconceived notion of what they could be like.

I opened the box of cracker bites to find two sealed packets of them, but I had know to expect this from the other flavours. The two packets are good from a freshness point of view, and also somewhat a portion control, which with savoury things like this can sometimes be a challenge for me not to hoover the whole lot!

I really liked the look of these crackers, one side is a slightly mottled, almost like a pikelet texture and the other like a waffle cone, and they are a lovely golden yellow colour with specks of the seeds in them. I checked the ingredients and found that as in the beetroot and sweet potato ones, it was the poppy, chia and linseed. I also noted that these were the lowest in salt. The flavour of these is quite strong and, at least for me, quite distinctly chickpea like.

What I found great about these crackers was also their actual strength - although they are not big crackers, they were great to put things onto and also scooped well and I tried them out with dip, hummus, and avocado.

These crackers are not exactly unique but, what sets them apart is the strength of flavour and of the actual cracker strength too. I will definitely be buying these getting them again, particularly for something where I have to take a plate, as they add a different flavour, texture and interest to the plate!

After having tried the sweet potato cracker bites and loving those my partner and I wanted to try these ones and again Rutherford and Meyer have done well with these crackers. These crackers are very crunchy, crisp, and have a slight cheddar taste to them although they don't contain any cheese. I like how the crackers are divided into two separate packs so the other ones can stay fresher until you want them. The packaging is simplistic yet slick and gives off a very natural vibe which suits the item to a tee. The crackers are also pretty much the same size as what is pictured which makes me believe they are a good, honest, and down-to-earth company.

These crackers are nice but they lack the flavor that the sweet potato ones have which allows them to stand on their own merits but I feel the chickpea ones need that accompanying flavor to show where they shine whether it be from cheeses, dips, or jams. I tried these with camembert cheese and cranberry jam which suited the crackers so well giving them a sweet and savory taste that was so satisfying. I also had them with jalapeno hummus and the mix of sweet, spicy, soft, and crunchy was an experience in itself but it worked so well. So if you are wanting a plain snack that isn't overpowering in flavor these would be perfect but if your wanting flavor you really have to add something to these crackers to get it.

At $4.00 per 140g box, these crackers are great value for money and are very good to have. I personally will stick with the sweet potato ones just for that extra flavor they provide but these ones are still great and I highly recommend trying them. Everyone in my household loved them even the kitten managed to get the packet off the bench and sneak a few away and she looked very pleased with herself.

My partner loves to snack. Every time we go shopping, crisps, chocolates, and crackers invariably make their way into the shopping cart (often when I'm looking the other way). It should be said that she is really good at just having a nibble here and there. The fact that she can open a king-size bar of chocolate, eat a single square, put the rest back, and leave it there for a week (or more) without any interest in eating more, well it confounds me. I struggle with temptation and have always been a "don't leave food on your plate" and "once it's open we finish it before it goes stale" kind of guy. Having a veritable treasure trove of open temptations in the house has been a struggle. Because I'm trying to lose weight.

While I was eating whatever I want, the big complaint used to be that I'd finish everything straight after she opened it and that I didn't share enough. Now, I'm trying to eat more "fuel" food and reduce the "fun" foods, so the temptation of having all these things is tough to deal with (though they say exposure to triggers can help). So I've been subtly angling my partner towards "healthier" snacks. Getting her used to reduced carbs and calories, substituting whole grains and less processed foods. So the concept of a chickpea-based baked cracker certainly appeals.

It is perhaps important to note that as per the name of the food these are not crackers. These are cracker BITES. I was initially a little shocked when I opened the pack and found these bites which vary in size from about 3-4 cms in diameter. The cardboard packaging is bright and cheerful, and the contents are split into two bags (to presumedly keep the product fresh until you need it).

These small bites have a grainy toughness to them, and a nice seedy flavour with the chia, linseed, and poppyseed flavours coming through in most bites. The bites are solid enough for dipping in hummus without breaking, even carving through a Philadelphia Sweet Chilli cream cheese straight out of the fridge, without issue.

The small size is a little bit of a pain as you have to put in a little bit of extra work to cut your cheeses down or cucumber pieces, but in reality, once you've done that prep work, these are a much better choice compared to conventional crackers, based on size alone. What I have learned is that perhaps a full sandwich is high on calories, but if you cut the sandwich into quarters, you can then share it without feeling bad, and eat smaller portions happily. The same applies to crackers. You can actually reduce your portion sizes by slowly nibbling on small pieces. It takes you longer to eat, and once you are full, at most you have a single bite remaining (not an entire Cruskit that you are feeling guilty about not finishing).

Give me a platter and I can enjoy a tiny piece of everything. I don't have to pick and choose in order to stay within my calorie budget. It works with cheddar and smoked cheeses, it works with mango or tamarind chutneys, it works with hummus, salsa, and cream cheese dips. The flavour is there but isn't so overbearing that it overwhelms or contradicts anything else. It is a great "base" for flavours.

I honestly had no idea what to expect from a chickpea cracker and was really fascinated. We have upped our chickpea consumption over the last couple of years while trying to reduce our meat consumption so these were an interesting find. I personally don't find chickpea to be a strong taste (so it was good that the rosemary and seeds were there). I found these a great cracker for adding quite strong dips to (chilli dip was perfect!). I found these appealed widely to others and no one found them unable to eat. I loved that I could safely state they were gluten-free which is becoming far more important.

I mixed up the beetroot/chickpea/sweet potato varieties for an experiment with friends and the visual was great - I will be doing this again on a big platter as they added great colour and people seemed to love them. They were easy to tell apart and added a really good conversation around crackers/snack items as there seems to be so much more available in these spaces now.

Rutherford and Meyer have produced a high-quality range of crackers here and I will be definitely indulging over Christmas and introducing others to them. I think they sit nicely together on a shelf so I may even look at gifting a combination to treat others as they felt really high quality. I would love to see a larger variety which was for putting toppings on as these were a bit fiddly for that and probably needed to be a bit thicker to support cheese and relishes etc.

We love eating crackers in the evenings, especially with a bit of cheese. The whole family was interested to see what these crackers looked and tasted like. They come in an attractive box with an illustration of chickpeas and a chickpea growing in a pod on vines. Not that I'd given it much thought, but I actually learned something about chickpeas! The crackers are gluten-free which is an added bonus as I have a number of friends that are gluten-free. They are also baked not fried, 100% natural free, and are made using Chia seeds, linseed, and poppyseeds.

The crackers come in two separate plastic bags which are great if you don't want to eat them all at once and risk them going stale. They were smaller than I expected and had a textured triangle pattern to them. I tried them on their own first of all and they were nice and crunchy and not overly chickpea flavoured. I also tried them with some Tasty cheese - delicious! I thought I'd get the kids to try them and omitted to tell them what flavour they were. They both happily munched on them and said they were nice. When I put some Tasty cheese out, the crackers promptly disappeared.

I think these would be a great cracker for entertaining, especially as they're good quality and a little bit different from standard crackers. They are also great to add to the kid's lunchboxes as you know they're getting a healthy treat.

The family and I often enjoy crackers with dips, cheeses etc, sometimes as a snack but sometimes as a full meal with a variety of crackers, dips and cheeses available to use, so the whole family was happy to get some new crackers to try. The box is nice and bright, caught my interest immediately and piqued the interest of the kids. It was nice and easy to open, with no tape holding it shut which I like, just because it's a little less rubbish going on. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the crackers were divided into two bags, which is perfect if you want it to stay fresher for longer, you don't need to rush to finish it.

These are nice and small, so easy to have a quick try and see if they were any good and whilst I'm not a big fan of chickpeas, this didn't taste too bad, though nothing delicious to me. My mum enjoyed it enough to snack on a bunch but I far preferred them with stuff on them as otherwise, I found there wasn't any real taste to them. That being said, they paired really well with everything we had available, they're dairy-free so everyone could enjoy them and being bite-sized you don't feel like you're having too much. I feel these could be perfect on a crackers and bits tray, perfect for a quick bite.

These are very tasty and I love the packaging very simple but effective. These are just perfect in size and texture and were well thought out when making them. These Cracker Bites are fabulous in that they are gluten-free so my niece was able to share these since she can't have gluten. She enjoyed these with us when we were camping. She really loved the flavour the texture and just the perfect little bite-size crackers. She also enjoyed sitting with the adults enjoying a platter while looking at the ocean. Perfect location for a platter with these yummy crackers.

Great for having with friends and family and amazing how it comes with two separate bags of crackers so you can open one bag use all those in a couple of days later you can open the next bag so they're not going off waiting to be eaten. I noticed the bags had heaps and heaps of crackers within the bags. And having two bags within each box one bag was used between four adults and two teenage kids and everybody really enjoyed them plenty enough to go around.

Perfect for dips perfect with a little slice of cheese on them or a little olive, just very tasty goes well with hummus. The chickpea flavour isn't overly noticeable but it's there and it's Yum it's tasty it's simple it's a bite of great value for money would definitely be buying this again and recommending to family and friends. For $4 they are worth it for both bags, you would be paying $2 per bag within the box which is good when you break it down. Having the three flavours to choose from is also fantastic.

I had some left over dip just screaming my name out and I was dying to have it. I considered just using my fingers but thought I would be more healthier and opened the box. First off I was surprised to find two bags of the Cracker Bites inside. Secondly I was a little shocked at the small size of the crackers. I was expecting them to be a tad bigger than what they were but after eating them I take it back they are the perfect size.

The crackers themselves are yellow with black specks and honestly I was not expecting much from them taste wise. I covered the cracker in the dip and took a bite and loved it. Assuming it was just because of the dip I took one alone and was surprised that there was more flavour than I was expecting. It was very pleasant and had a couple of more and then continued with the dip. It was then my husband walked in the room and tried some and he was also raving about them saying the flavour was spot on.

We tried with camembert cheese and that is where the love affair ended. The two different tastes did not work together at all. This is not a cracker to be enjoyed with cheese - well camembert at least - have not tried with any other varieties.

The following night I brought home some Smokey Hummus with Garlic and Tahini and wow awesome this is a winning combination and I could not get enough of it. I can see why this combination is recommended. We were watching the finale of Australia Lego Masters so I had made a platter with Salted Chips, Hummus, Carrots. Onion Dip and these. I was not expecting for the girls to go for these first but they both did and both were saying how good they were which was a little surprising.

Going forward we have decided that we are no longer buying chips as a family but instead these. Even for school lunches. I am really surprised as to how, as a family they have embraced these crackers and would prefer them over the alternatives. You do not need many to feel satisfied. The snack size of them is perfect. They taste great alone or with dip and hummus and best of all they are healthier then chips. Can not recommend high enough - love them.

I was interested to see the family's reactions to these cracker bites. There seemed to be a division between those who thought the chickpea flavour came out strongly and those who said the bites had no taste at all. I thought this might be due to the ages of the different people, with younger children more likely to discern nuances in flavour, but the oldest and youngest family member both reported that they knew it was chickpea because it is unmistakeable. So much for that theory!

Whatever the flavour, however, the crackers were nice and crisp with a slightly chewy after-effect. We ate a couple each without any toppings or dips, and all thought they would be good served in place of potato crisps as a party snack. They are about the same thickness as kettle fries, but a great deal healthier as they are baked rather than deep fried.

Once we had all tasted the plain crackers, we tried them with an assortment of dips. The chickpea flavour was much less in evidence when they were combined with another ingredient. We matched them to a lemon and garlic hummus, which everyone thought was a good choice. The lemon flavour was quite strong so despite the double up of chickpeas we all found that the citrus was the dominant taste. We also spread mashed hardboiled eggs and finely chopped chives on the top of a few; this turned out to be everyone's favourite. Home-made egg sandwich spread is a special treat as I mash the egg and chives with mayonnaise, a large pinch of curry powder, butter, and garlic; the combination is then mixed until it is quite smooth and tasty. This topping stuck to the crackers so would be ideal as finger food.

Miss Nine took charge of the second packet and made a plateful of crudites for sharing. She put some spreadable cream cheese into a small bowl in the middle and then decorated the rest of the plate with sliced raw carrot, small pieces of cauliflower, sliced gherkins, halved cherry tomatoes, apple quarters, and plain crackers. We often make a platter like this to share when it is between meals and there are pop-up children to feed (because they cannot possibly wait until dinnertime to eat). That way, the hunger pangs are addressed but they are not filling up on junk food. The crackers were a welcome addition to the usual spread, and we had no qualms about including them since they were made from natural ingredients.