Sam Heughan Reveals His Polarizing Favorite Snacks — Including One That 'Tastes Like Heaven'
Sam Heughan
Sam Heughan's favorite snacks run the gamut from sweet to salty to, well, Scottie.
Sitting down with First We Feast's "Snacked" series, the Outlander star offered up his most beloved Scottish treats to make him feel like he's back home, even if he's halfway across the world. Some of his picks are polarizing (patriots may be mad at his commentary on American popcorn!), while others may make you want to book a trip to his homeland — or at least fill your Amazon cart with snacks from across the pond.
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Sam Heughan's Favorite Snacks
Popcorn and M&Ms
First up? Popcorn mixed with M&Ms, a perfect snack for a date to the movies (or, as he and fellow Europeans say, "the cinema"). But the popcorn has to be good.
"I get really upset when I come to America, because you guys only have really bad popcorn," he said, biting into our inferior kernels. "These are really salty!"
Heughan prefers the sweet and salty popcorn offered in the U.K., which he combines with the colorful chocolate treats: Half sweet popcorn, half salty popcorn and then M&Ms. In the U.K., however, he's able to get more options, with a "pick and mix" bag of mixed candy options.
"This is about as close as I get, in America, to a pick and mix," he explained.
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Tunnock's Tea Cakes
Next up? Tunnock's Tea Cakes in milk chocolate.
"These are a classic," he said. Heughan demonstrated several ways to eat the marshmallow-filled Scottish snack, including biting into it directly, picking off the top layer of chocolate first, or crushing it into a flatter, more cookie-style treat and eating it that way. "Tastes like heaven," he gushed. "Like you're on a really fluffy bed. Soft marshmallow, sweet milk chocolate — everything from Scotland's basically sweet. We like sweet stuff."
Yogurt and Protein Powder
When Heughan is trying to eat a bit healthier, especially to help with workouts, he opts for Greek yogurt with whey protein powder. "If you get chocolate protein powder, it changes your yogurt into this chocolate smoothie kind of texture," he said. The two caveats? The mess protein powder makes (which he demonstrates like only Heughan can) and the fact that it doesn't do well in a sporran, which is essentially a small, purse-like pouch worn with a kilt.
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Whisky and Dark Chocolate
Next up (and frankly, surprisingly not first) was whisky and dark chocolate.
"I love a little treat in the evening. I don't have a particularly sweet tooth, but a little spot of dark chocolate always goes down really well with some delicious, award-winning whisky — Sassenach," he said, adding in a stage whisper, "that I happen to make myself, and it's delicious."
"Whisky is synonymous with Scotland, you have some incredible whisky producers," he noted. "It's a passion of mine, and I have an emotional response when I drink it. When I smell it, it takes me back to the Highlands of Scotland. It takes me home."
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Irn-Bru
Irn-Bru, a Scottish soda that, in Heughan's homeland, is actually bigger than Coca-Cola, came next.
The No. 1 soda drink in Scotland is this ... no one knows what's in it," Heughan said of the fizzy orange beverage. He added that Irn-Bru, often just called "ginger" in Scotland for its color, has a flavor profile that no one can really describe beyond sweet.
"Once when they tried to change the recipe and reduce the sugar, there was a national outcry because we love our sugar," he said. "It's also a hangover cure in Scotland, and of course, it's great to mix it with alcohol as well."
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Walker's Shortbread Scottie Dogs
Rounding out his top five are Walker's Shortbread Scottie Dogs, though he has another idea for a Scottish-specific shape for the cookies: "They should make a Loch Ness monster with shortbread. That'd be pretty cool." A bonus? They're apparently also delicious when dipped in — you guessed it — Heughan's Sassenach whisky.
