It's time to stop playing it safe with flavour and make all home meals memorable. Cheddar brand Pilgrims Choice has teamed up with culinary maveric, George Egg to create the antidote to dull home cooking: The Flavour First Aid Kit. This is a flavour saviour tin packed with bold Pilgrims Choice and George’s secret flavour weapons, designed to fix any culinary emergency and turn things up a notch in the kitchen. 

Read on to learn more about the collaboration with George Egg. For your chance to win one of thirty Flavour First Aid Kits, head to our competition page now. 

What first got you into snack hacking?

George Egg: In a word, lockdown. I was about to go on tour with my new comedy cooking show in March 2020 when Covid hit and all the theatres closed. After enjoying the gloriously hot spring and summer, by the autumn I was beginning to feel a bit twitchy and wanted to do something entertaining and creative in the food arena. I still couldn’t tour, so instead I began making videos and putting them on Instagram. My hacks seemed to capture people’s interest and it sort of snowballed from there.

Can you tell us about the Flavour First Aid Kit and why you are collaborating with Pilgrims Choice?

GE: I love experimenting, mixing, and trying out new things. That’s what my snack hacking is all about – taking things that already exist, be they time-honoured recipes or even fast-food staples, and tweaking them with a few small and easily achievable adaptations. That might be adding a different sauce, some toasted seeds, oils, dusts, or other foods like crisps or nuts – or, well, anything that might work.

I like doing it when I’m cooking, but I also like doing it when I’m out and about. The Flavour First Aid Kit is your assistant in all this. It’s a little tin that contains a somewhat random (though actually painstakingly curated) selection of pots, bottles, and sachets, along with some Pilgrims Choice cheddar, that you can add to snacks, meals, pasties, sandwiches, or any number of items that might want a bit of a flavour boost – or even just a nudge in a less expected direction. Pilgrims Choice is one of the foundation blocks of the culinary world, it has a bold flavour, so they’re the ideal brand to be having fun with.

What’s one of your go-to meal hacks that you always come back to?

GE: I love adding toasted spices to things that you might not necessarily expect to have spices in, and I’m a big fan of caraway seeds. Caraway works amazingly with Pilgrims Choice, so a cheese toastie with added caraway is a delight.

Which ingredient in the Flavour First Aid Kit could you never be without, and what makes it such a hero?

GE: I’m going to choose two. I’m properly into lowbrow stuff and not being ashamed to say you enjoy something that might otherwise be looked down upon. But if you’ve got something unpretentious, you need to balance it with something highbrow and super-gourmet too. With that in mind, the two I’m choosing are salad cream and truffle oil.

To find out more about Pilgrims Choice visit @pilgrimschoice on Instagram or pilgrimschoice.com