Memorial Day Eats with Kroger Private Selection

I hope everyone had a good Memorial Day Weekend. It's one of my favorite holidays because instead of being consumed by greed and gifts, it's about focusing on those who sacrificed for our country and spending time with those you love.

Courtesy of the BzzAgent program, I received a few coupons for various products from the Kroger Private Selection brand. Their Private Selection brand features premium products ranging from thick cut kettle chips, ice cream, Angus beef, and fresh bakery items. I don't think I've tried anything from this particular Kroger brand before so I was hoping for the best.

I received a bag of kettle chips, a coupon for a pound of Angus beef, a coupon for a 6-inch pie, and a coupon for $1.50 off their pint of ice cream.

I don't shop at Kroger often enough to know when their shelves are restocked, but I'm thinking it's not Thursday. Their bakery items were picked over and I was lucky enough to snag the last small pie available. Most likely they make a limited amount of Private Selection bakery products for quick turnover, so keep that in mind. As for the Angus beef, I picked up the last one, as well. Good timing. However, the ice cream was fully stocked. The Sweet Honey Baklava ("sweet" is a bit redundant here...) caught my eye so I picked up a pint of that (they come in pints!). Swirled into the honey vanilla ice cream is a walnut honey sauce and pieces of baklava. More on that later.

Honestly, I don't really know what Angus beef tastes like, therefore I won't be able to give you a good comparison between this and standard ground beef. To keep things simple, I seasoned the beef with a tablespoon of premixed steak seasoning. The burgers were being grilled the charcoals would give them more flavor, too.

Now, please bear with me as I attempt to explain how good my burger was. First off, it wasn't overcooked (and by overcooked, I mean well done), and it was very juicy. The taste of the beef was prominently beefy, for lack of a better way to describe it. Some meat tastes flavorless to me. It helped that the burgers stayed thin, too. All I know is that this was the first at-home burger I've enjoyed in a long time.

Moving on to the kettle chips, which I love. Kettle chips are sturdy, crispy, oily pieces of potato that stand up well to dips. These chips seemed thicker than other kettle-style chips I've tried and were crinkle-cut. The salt and pepper flavor usually is a winner, though these were light on the pepper taste despite looking covered in black specks. They were good, though they just needed MORE PEPPER!

For dessert, we have the aforementioned pie and ice cream. Dividing a six-inch pie among five people is very laughable, but it actually ended up being the perfect portion after a big meal.

At first I though the "private selection" label meant that the products were more natural and made with premium ingredients. Not the case, as far as naturalness goes. Both ingredient lists for the pie and ice cream are long and include additives. Keeping that in mind, they both tasted good. The apples in the pie seemed thick and a little crisp, so I'm hoping it was made with more of a "homemade" pie filling instead of a gloopy can filling. (Don't hold me to that.) The ice cream was my favorite part. The honey flavor was prominent and there was a decent amount of baklava pieces throughout the pint.

So to sum up, I enjoyed everything I tried, though I'm more likely to continue buying the ice cream over the rest.

BzzAgent gave me coupons to give away worth 20% off one Private Selection chips, pie, or ice cream. If you live near a Kroger, send me an email with your address and I'll send you a coupon.