Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Burrito Science

The directions on my ten pack of El Monterey brand frozen bean and cheese burritos suggested that I might improve the taste of my meal (dinner, in this case) by taken the microwaved burrito and then frying it in butter until golden brown. Being a man of fundamentally curious disposition, I investigated this.

As a control for this experiment, I ensured that I had previously eaten a large number of El Monterey bean and cheese burritos in the past. (By the way, these are way worse than Tina's Beef and Bean or basically every other Tina's frozen burrito.)

I also discovered that frying my microwave warmed burrito to anything close to golden-brown was a very time intensive process, probably because of the large (let's say) weight and the relatively small surface area. Is that correct? A: it is correct enough.

I found, in the end, that pan-frying an El Monterey in butter will slightly improve the taste and will far moreso improve the somewhat gluey texture of the tortilla. However, the heating of the pan and subsequent frying process added quite a bit of prep time to the procedure, enough that it threw into sharp relief the thousands of other mealtime choices I could have and should have made leading up that lowly point. And I'm not just talking about decent meals, like some pork chops and some corn and some garlic bread, I'm including Pop Tart pan-fried in butter in there, which would have been even easier, incrementally less unhealthy, and wouldn't have even required the microwave. At least when you don't bother frying your burritos, you don't have so much time to contemplate the fact that I don't even like El Monterrey burritos.

In conclusion, God is punishing me for having only gotten two chicken chimichangas from Trader Joe's last time I went there.

Science accomplished!

3 Comments:

Blogger Jack said...

Having regained the power to comment, I will quickly note, Schoboats, I believe it is preparing acidic foods such as tomato sauce in aluminum that promotes Alzheimer's.

10:16 AM  
Blogger schoboats said...

Jack-
You're right, I was a little confused. I was thinking of aluminum pans and Alzheimer's. Teflon is cancer. Except, it turns out that maybe neither of these are true. The Teflon-cancer link is apparently still
unconfirmed
, while the aluminum-Alzheimer's thing is pretty much agreed to be
bunk.

1:20 PM  
Blogger Jack said...

I think some people are also scared to let the shiny side of aluminum foil touch their food?

1:27 PM  

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