Recently I asked, in a post about frozen potatoes:
> Is there a web site devoted to revealing which convenience foods are good and which are terrible?
Still haven’t found it, but I thought of a couple of other convenience foods I can highly recommend.
One is polenta in a tube, or as Iris and I call it, a chub. (“Dada, where’s that chub of polenta?”) I’ve been getting it at Trader Joe’s for $2. For breakfast yesterday, I sliced off about seven slices and cooked them in a skillet with butter. No matter how much of this I make, it’s never enough. Iris will eat polenta until she’s full even if there’s bacon on her plate. The thing I’ve noticed about chubbed polenta is that, presumably because of the high water content, it takes much longer to cook than I expect–it ends up being about ten minutes per side, which only heightens the anticipation. When I was a kid, my mom occasionally made fried cornmeal mush for breakfast, and this is basically the same thing.
Next, I guess this isn’t exactly a convenience food, but someone needs to speak up for Monterey jack cheese. For a long time, I had dismissed jack as a cheese for people who don’t really like the taste of cheese. Then I tried it while testing this enchilada recipe, and was surprised to find that jack worked much better than cheddar for this recipe. The cheddar browned too quickly and turned into sort of a parody of itself, tasting a bit like a Better Cheddar cracker. Again, it’s the water content.
Dismissing jack, I realized, is like tossing out your cream for being not enough like buttermilk. Jack stakes out a middle ground between undeniably cheesy cheese and process cheese. Or between cheese and butter–think of it as an unfermented dairy product and it will serve you well. Incidentally, I also tried a Mexican process cheese in the enchiladas and didn’t like it. Last time I went to [Tat’s Deli](http://www.tatsdeli.com/) I got the traditional Cheez Whiz on my cheesesteak. I prefer the provolone. So I can only take this man-of-the-people act so far, but count me as pro-jack.
Now that you’ve discovered jack can be a good thing, you should see if your local Trader Joe’s has their smoked jack. It looks terrible since it’s covered with dark brown smoke stuff, but really good.
Jack is our House Cheese. Nicole grew up eating whatever cheese was cheap (and MILD cheddar), but as soon as we had money, I started buying Tillamook. She didn’t understand why I would pay more money for a different cheese (since we almost always buy the cheapest of anything), but said “whatever”. Tillamook jack suddenly shot to $8/baby loaf at the discount grocery where we shop, and I reluctantly bought cheaper jack. When Nicole had her first cheapjack sandwich, I asked innocently how the cheese was. “Not very good,” she grumbled. Happily, the price has gone back to $6/baby loaf.
We ate some marvelous jack cheese in British Columbia–I think the brand was Island Farms–with herbs in it. Look for it the next time you’re there. We bought it in Tofino because they only sell hippie food there, but then sought out another brick in Victoria.
Hey, that was me. Obviously.
I am totally going to refer to things I don’t like as “cheapjack sandwich” from now on.
That’s interesting, Wendy. I’ve been buying Kroger jack and it didn’t seem any worse than Tillamook. I’ll compare.
Speaking of monterrey jack, I’d always figured that the marbled colby/jack was some weird novelty act of a cheese until I bought some to mix into grits. It’s delicious: The perfect mix of melty and tangy and mellow. Cuz that’s what I want when I want some cheesy grits.
I like ranchero or oaxaca cheese for melty applications when doing Mexican food… usually pretty cheap, and though I imagine the quality isn’t all that, it works for me. I always think putting Irish cheese (like cheddar) on Mexican food is just a little weird, but I never find jack jarring.
When I was still eating meat and living in the suburbs of Philadelphia, provolone was the standard cheese at our neighborhood Philly-style Italian joint when they served cheesesteaks. I didn’t know Cheez-whiz was part of the equation until I moved back to the west coast and heard this from others.
My understanding, although I’ve never been to Philadelphia, is that every place offers provolone (and probably other cheese like American) and won’t look at you sideways if you order it, but Whiz has the most street cred.
I suspect that depends on the ethnic bias of the shop in question… In our neighborhood place, an order for a cheesesteak “with provolone and onions?” was the response, and didn’t come across as a question… it was clearly meant as a firm suggestion.
there are definitely some convenience-food-rating-websites out there in internetland, but i’ve only found one that i like – HeatEatReview.com
They’re entire focus is on frozen meals, and its entertaining and their taste is pretty discriminating.
Unfortunately for those of us trying to lose/watch our weight who work in corporate offices, those meals are sometimes the best option.
the other convenience foods sites i’ve encountered tend to be written by people whose tastes don’t match up with mine…
I haven’t seen the convenience food sites Meg mentioned, but I’ve seen sites that will tell you which convenience foods are more economical than making the same thing from scratch.
I’m a big believer in convenience ingredients — shredded cheese, shredded carrots, bagged stir-fry vegetables, etc.