This Kosher Pork Rind Lets You Eat the Whole Bag without Feeling Guilty

Feb 3, 2021 by Chef David

By Chef David

New, exciting, and healthy-ish are not typically the words associated with parve snack foods. However, when I recently sampled Snacklins, an airy, crisp, crunchy nosh made of yuca, mushrooms, and onions, I was impressed.

Snacklins is advertised as being healthier than traditional potato chips, with fewer calories and less fat. All of which made me reluctant to open the bag. I feared the taste would be disappointing, but I was wrong.  It was a great eating experience.

Created by Samy Kobrosly in 2015 as a meatless equivalent for cracklins (pork rind chips), Snacklins has an interesting texture and pleasant flavor. Many people think pork rinds and cracklins are synonymous—not exactly the cuisine issue a kosher family (or a Muslim like Mr. Kobrosly who, like me, has never eaten pork) would worry about. In fact, they are different. Basic pork rind has no fat on the skin. Cracklins has some fat, giving it a richer, meatier crunch.

While I can’t compare the flavor of Snacklins to traditional cracklins, if appearance matters, they look like bags of pork rind. Most important is taste, and they were good. Even more important, they are kosher, and there is no mention of pork rind anywhere on the packaging.

Discovered by Shark Tank

Mr. Kobrosly, known in the Washington, D.C. community as “Samy K,” host of The Kane Show, developed Snacklins in the Union Kitchen, a food accelerator, and a shared kitchen in D.C. The idea came in response to a challenge to create vegan pork rinds.

The product took off when Mr. Kobrosly appeared on ABC’s reality television series, Shark Tank, in October 2019 and made a deal with billionaire Mark Cuban, one of the show’s primary “shark” investors, who offered him $250,000 in return for a five percent stake plus five percent in advisory shares.

The product was not immediately received favorably.

“I must say, the first bite tasted like paper, and now I’ve had my fourth, I’m starting to dig it,” said Kevin O’Leary, the Canadian Conservative Party leader and businessman who also appears on the show.

Shark Tank’s endorsement and exposure combined with the healthful factor to improve the product’s positioning.

Healthier Choice

Snacklins advertises that with its clean ingredients—yuca, mushroom, and onion—it has almost half the calories of traditional potato chips, 90 calories for almost a one-ounce bag as compared to the 160 calories in a portion of traditional potato chips. In fact, the texture of the air-popped Snacklins chip is reminiscent of Wise Onion Rings, which has 130 calories in a similar portion.

Snacklins use yuca (cassava root), a staple carbohydrate in tropical regions that are rich in fiber and complex carbs and has a lower glycemic index than potatoes.

Snacklins comes in four flavors; Barbeque, which is flavored with cumin and paprika; Chesapeake Bay which tastes like Old Bay spice (without the celery salt); Teriyaki, which is, to my taste, the least exciting, with a subtle flavor from baker’s yeast, molasses, and white distilled vinegar; and my personal favorite, Vegan Nacho, which gets its cheese flavor from nutritional yeast, garlic, and tomato powder. 

Worth a Try

All in all, Snacklins, with its distinctive shape that makes it good for snacking, is a very good alternative to traditional chips. It’s advertised as having a “deliciously hard-to-describe” taste with a shape and texture that elude categorization, impossibly crunchy and remarkably airy (which is not entirely true).

Nevertheless, at 90 calories per serving, you really can eat the whole bag without feeling guilty. The snack’s texture is not too hard and not too soft, but just right to melt in the mouth rather than the hands.

Snacklins fun packaging would make the treat an exciting addition to your Purim Mishloach Manot package.