Hot Pockets – Oh This Should Be Interesting

Let’s start by saying I did not purchase the Hot Pockets.  And were it not for Jim Gaffigan and his comedy routine, I doubt Jim would have purchased Hot Pockets.  But there they were.  And here I was.  Friday night, no offer of take away pizza from the husband, and facing a cupboard with the same old boring pasta.  The Hot Pockets I have successfully avoided since Jim threw them in my shopping cart three weeks ago are on the menu.  This should be interesting.

Oh come on, who does a food review on Hot Pockets?  Well, damn it, I’m someone’s mom, and it’s my obligation to warn other moms who will spend their hard earned money on these things.  Other moms want to know before they let their husbands throw them into the cart, echoing Jim Gaffigan, what they are getting themselves into.

But this will not be your typical food review.  Because in a typical food review, you can find SOMETHING to say that isn’t all bad.  Not so with the Hot Pockets.

To begin with, to microwave them so you can eat even faster than boiling water, you have to put them in these sleeves meant to keep them from getting soggy or chewy or something.  I think the purpose is to have them come out of the microwave in a minute with a crispy exterior.  Umm hmm.  Once you have finished the 60 seconds or so it takes to prepare this gourmet delight, you have to shove the steaming hot Hot Pocket half way up into the sleeve so you can close the bottom of the sleeve, thus turning the sleeve into a handy dandy Hot Pocket serving tray.  Oh yes.  A set of these much sought after bad boys will set ya back a chewed piece of gum and some pocket lint, I’m sure.

Okay, but literally, I had dinner on the table for the family in under 7 minutes.  Damn.  That’s fast.

Have you ever heard that fast is not necessarily good?  I am reminded of the phrase “There’s never time to do it right, but there’s always time to do it over.”  And over is what I will probably have to do with dinner in just a while. 

So, they come out of the microwave, and you shove them into the sleeves, and you fold in the bottom flap to make the handy dandy serving tray.  Be careful how you now lay them, because I laid at least one of them so that it hung off the edge of the plate, and it suffered a debilitating deformity as a result. 

I have to say, they didn’t smell too bad.  I expected a plasticy type of smell, but I actually smelled something pizza-like.  We had the sausage and meatball varieties, and after just a few minutes in the microwave, there was a familiar sort of pizza odor in the kitchen.  Not good pizza, mind you, but the kind of pizza I remember growing up in the 70s that my mom would buy frozen in rectangular slices, and heat up for Bean and I if the grown ups were eating something like liver or bean soup.

So, once I waited the required two minutes before serving, I served them to the girls.  They honestly didn’t seem to mind them, so I figured they couldn’t be all bad, and helped myself to the last remaining Hot Pocket.

I may go to my grave with only this one regret.  I should never have touched the Hot Pocket.

It did firm up on the outside, although crispy is still a far cry away.  I gingerly took my first bite, expecting it to be steaming hot inside.  It wasn’t.  It was hot, but not so hot you couldn’t bite it.

It’s doughy.  Like you can taste flour and it should have cooked longer.  Or something.  And the tomato sauce is barely there, just a little tease of something that may have at one point stood next to a tomato.  Then you get the cheese, which is, for lack of a better and more eloquent term, YUCKY.  It’s not normal cheese tasting cheese, it’s sort of plasticy, artificial tasting. 

But wait, there’s more.  Every now and again, I get a bite of sausage.  Or something who may have an ancestor in the sausage family. 

This is way too much time to dedicate to this dinner, but I felt an obligation to warn the corner cutting, short cut taking, get out of cooking real dinner moms in the world. 

Call Dominos.  Yes, even Dominos beats a Hot Pocket.

Oh – and the inspiration behind our feast can be seen here – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xlN_ltZ3Ug&NR=1