Ben, are you team Salada or team VitaWeet?
Well, they both have their... Which one?Salada.
Okay, because I'm team VitaWeet.
But this is the Salada episode.
It is.Well, so I guess we're both on team Salada today.Yeah, I guess so. Hi, you're listening to Ingridipedia, Australia's most versatile food podcast.Meal size, bite size, snack size, however you want it, we're here for you.
I'm Ben Birchall and I'm joined by Emily Naismith.
Is this some kind of ad I don't know about?
Like maybe she isn't aware of the late 1980s Salada advertising, but maybe we can talk about it throughout this episode.
Okay, well maybe you should have sung that and it might have like rung a bell, but... Versatile Salada!No.Then when does Salada's feature in your daily life? Like what are you putting on them?When are you eating them?Tell me.
It's a between meal arrangement.Okay.Morning tea, afternoon tea, usually butter and Vegemite.
Yeah.Okay.Well, unfortunately for me, saladas are tainted.
Well, well, well, aren't it's, can we just say they are not tainted?
This is why, this is why.They remind me. of preparing for a colonoscopy.And when I had to do the white diet, which is like a week of only white food and saladas were on the list.And I was like crying into bowls of rice bubbles at midnight.
And so like, although saladas are good, I just have that association.So I need to do some work and I need to find the most delicious thing I can possibly make with saladas.And all signs point to crack.Have you heard of crack?
Yes, I have.And I'm very excited that potentially I'm going to get to eat some.
Yeah.Well, yes, it went viral quite a while ago, over six years ago, I think.It went so viral that it drove a bit of a Salada shortage.People went so wild for it.
And it went viral because it was mentioned on a podcast, not our podcast, but chat 10 looks three, which is that podcast hosted by the ABCs Lee sales and Annabelle crab and Annabelle.
shared a recipe for crack and she adapted her recipe from this matzo crack recipe on Smitten Kitchen, the American recipe site, which is also really good.But Annabelle's version is a tray of saladas.
You make caramel with some sugar and butter and you pour that over the top and then you bake it. for 15 minutes and then you bring it out and you spread like chocolate, like cooking chocolate over the top.
She did dark chocolate and it kind of melts over the top as you like push it around with a spatula and then you sprinkle it with nuts.So I think she did pistachios and freeze dried raspberries or something.
Then you leave it to cool and you snap bits off and it's this crunchy, salty, sweet, delicious treat.That's a lot to take in. And there's a million different versions of Crack since.There's Crack for every occasion.
There's Christmas Crack with white chocolate and red and green M&Ms.
Did you make the white chocolate version?
No.There's Easter crack with Easter eggs.There's fairy bread crack, also with white chocolate, with hundreds of thousands, obviously.There's marble crack.I'm sure there's caramel crack, if you're interested.There's bacon salted caramel crack.
That sounds like you.There's so much crack, not enough time, but I wanted to add my own spin on crack to the crack discourse.
So I've made breakfast crack with some of my favorite breakfast things, including peanut butter and granola, because I couldn't really put porridge on crack because it's too wet.That's the only reason I didn't do it.
Have you ever had crack for breakfast, Ben?
I haven't, but I'm willing to try.
Here's my breakfast crack.
Um, so it's saladas with salted caramel toffee on top.And then I've melted Reese's pieces chocolate and then put some homemade granola on top.And when I say homemade granola, I mean, not my normal granola recipe, which is actually good.
This is the play school granola recipe, which my five-year-old made.
It was still good.Oh my God.Oh, that is a, that is amazing.
I think that's the biggest reaction I've ever had.I mean, you've ever had to my podcast food.Well, I already love Saladas.Okay.It's the Salada element that you love.It could just be a plain Salada.Oh my God.
This is so good. And it is the salada element that's really doing it for me.It's so crunchy and it just sort of soaks, you know, in the little holes, it soaks all the caramel in so that you get like a little caramelised layer at the bottom as well.
And it is salted caramel.You add, I added like a big pinch of salt.
Wheatley has coconut, but yeah, oats and pepitas and sunflower seeds.
But the pepitas are really good.Yeah.
And then of course I added more salt on top, like flaked salt.
So it's a really healthy breakfast.Yeah.
Yeah.It's all the food groups.And like, is this better than toast?Is this better than scrambled eggs?It's not as good as porridge.Sorry.
Emily, I'm fascinated by something you mentioned a second ago, that Annabelle crab caused a Salada shortage six years ago. Have you ever noticed a Salada shortage?I know you're a VitaWeets person.
I've only bought Salada a handful of times in my life.So no, never noticed a Salada shortage.
Okay.Well, let me take you back.Cause I know what this podcast needs is a little bit more history.
To 2001.23 years ago, a biscuit crisis hit Australia.The great Salada shortage.Really?Yeah.This happened. And this is a story of corporate greed.I'll be honest with you.
And not putting enough stock in to tradition, which you wouldn't expect from a company such as Arnott's.So 2001, Arnott's made the decision to shift production of the iconic Salada biscuits from its Burwood factory in Melbourne.
Yes.I read that it was Burwood, like represent.
Before they were even Arnott's product, they were Brockhoff's Saladas, and they were made in Burwood.Arnott's acquired Brockhoff's in the 1960s, and so they were made from the 1940s, I believe, to 2001 in Burwood.
In 2001, Arnott's made the decision to move the production to its huge facility in Sydney, but things did not go as planned. And the ovens in the Sydney factory weren't calibrated the same way as the ones in Melbourne.
And this subtle difference caused an unexpected problem.The biscuits came out tasting and feeling different.The texture was off.The crispness wasn't right. It turned out the culprit was the humidity settings in the ovens.
So a very, very small difference.Everything was the same recipe, the same temperatures, the same time, the same, but they had to bring in like a guy out of retirement to measure it all.And he figured out the humidity was all off.
Right.Well, people in Melbourne would know, because I feel like Melbourne is like the home ground of Saladas.
That's right.That's exactly right.So, as Arnott's work to fix the issue, supermarket shelves ran low on Saladas, left customers without Saladas.Really?Eventually, the bakers got it right.
The biscuits returned to their original quality and the shortage was over, but the disruption had left a mark.And it reminded everyone of how much the simple Salada had woven itself into Australian households.
And also how small changes in what seems like a, you know, a supply chain issue or, you know, let's streamline our processes.Biscuits are more than that.
Food is more than that.Aren't it?
Sydney think they're so good with beaches and their fairies, but they can't even cook a biscuit.They can't cook a salada.
They cannot, and they will not.They do.They're made in Sydney to today, but I want to bring you to 2024.Okay.
That is this year.There's some rumblings. Oh, there are some rumblings.So fast forward to today.
Has global warming made the humidity increase too much or something?
Well, we don't know exactly what's going on, but Saladas have made headlines once again, this time for different reasons.Customers have begun noticing that their favorite crackers seem smaller.And the whole size has apparently increased.
So there's less biscuit and more air.
That's interesting because I can't remember whether it's Vitaweets or Saladas that used to have the ad with the worms.Like you press them down and the worms come through with the butter worms.
Yeah.Well, actually what happened with Vitaweets is the whole shrunk.And so the worm effect.
You couldn't do it anymore.
What people are complaining about, and this is from a story in Delicious, they're saying that, yeah, the biscuits become thinner, holier, and gave the product a one-star review.Biscuits are so very thin now.
When buttering cream cheese, et cetera, they break.A lot more holes in them.50 to 50 holes to biscuit ratio, causing weight down dramatically per box, she wrote in May this year.Paying for air.
Other brands are cost-wise cheaper and weigh more in product. Her criticism echoed Barrage's similar comments, with dissenters arguing the crackers were now a poor imitation of the original.
But can you do worms?Cause that could be like a better interactive element.
Yeah, I think you can.Cause there are, there are a few more holes in them now.Um, Arnott's were asked, um, by, by Delicious and they dismissed the claims that crackers were smaller or had changed formulation.
Arnott's Salada original crackers, perfectly versatile for meal size, snack size, and bite size.They're still using the same, same line from 1987.But you're not singing it.Okay.
Let me, let me, look, look, just, okay, look, just, just give me 30 seconds, okay?
What's the most versatile way to enjoy all the foods we love today?
Only Arnott Salada Cracker Biscuits are this versatile.For all the foods we love today.
Yeah.Well, that's the other thing.And I was going to talk about that because they were man size until, so I think that jingle ran from 1983 or so.
Yeah.They were man sized until men were canceled.
Well, 1989, it was late 80s.So Arnott's were probably a little bit ahead of the curve, changing man size to meal size.So, um, yeah, that happened as well.That had nothing to do with the shortage and nobody seems to be complaining about, about that.
But, uh, I don't know, looking at that ad now. There's plenty of holes there, I don't know.
Well, you would know, I mean, as a Salada connoisseur.
I'm a Salada guy.I think, I think Saladas are fine.I'm sorry to all the people, sorry to the dissenters out there.
And we're not, I'm not in the pocket of big Arnots, even though we mentioned them about once a week on this podcast and have, uh, yeah, already did last week.Um, but apart from that, um, yeah, I still think they're delicious.
And, uh, my five-year-old absolutely hoovers them up like crazy.Yeah.So I think Saladas are still okay.
Okay.Well, I think that you love them, Ben.I think that they're more than okay.And they're holier.
God bless them.So you can vote for whose Salata fact you found the most interesting on our Instagram.It's in Greaterpedia.You'll note I was the one that made something this week.We'll see you next time.
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