It’s crunch time for British asparagus as vegetable is made into latest gourmet crisp

The latest vegetable to be sliced up, cooked in oil and served as a snack at middle-class dinner parties is asparagus

We’ve had crisps made from beetroot, parsnip, sweet potato and even carrot but the latest vegetable to be sliced up, cooked in oil and served as a snack at middle-class dinner parties is asparagus.

Stalkers Crisps are the creation of chef Daren Bale at the Hop Pole Inn in Worcestershire. He says that while the British asparagus season is nearly over, he can capture the fresh flavour all-year-round in bag form. His green stems come from the nearby Vale of Evesham – which holds the British Asparagus Festival every April – and he hopes they will be hitting farm shops next year.

You don’t have to wait until then to find out if they’ll make your wee smell funny though. “Our crisps don’t have the same concentrate of mercaptan – the sulphurous compound that releases the strange smell – as eating actual spears of asparagus. So no, they are one way of enjoying odour-free wee asparagus,” says Bale. Good to know.