Steven's Weblog

Here’s a worthwhile post no I swear: in my quest to understand the state-of-the-art in ultraconvenient cooking, I tried two Hormel bacon products: their pre-cooked and their microwave-ready.

Both are damn expensive. The pre-cooked is too thin and doesn’t crisp well. The microwave-ready is a pretty good thickness and can be made crisp. However, it suffers the excessive-packaging syndrome (there’s a pad in there to suck up the grease, and a big bag to hold the spatters and steam in).

So, there ya go.

Hmmm, I thought this was a world where my every whim, frozen-food-wise, was to be fulfilled before I could imagine it, but apparently not… I want frozen, pre-grilled pork chops and steaks. Sure, they aren’t likely to be as-good-as-fresh, but they’d be good enough for a quick home meal, right? But so far, the best I can find is that Tyson used to have such things, but discontinued them.

Of course, I might be asking the wrong question. Maybe there is some other preservation process than freezing that would be equally convenient for the lazy, self-indulgent, single-serving-oriented, impatient consumer such as myself. Maybe _that’s_ how I need to search: “lazy impatient pre-grilled”…

I’m gonna get these things even if I have to create a new company to make them. Now that I’ve discovered the beauty of pre-cooked meats, I’m not only getting addicted to the convenience, but I’m also getting fascinated with the general idea of solving food processing problems. I’d bet there’s lots of interesting stuff going on behind the scenes to be able to deliver, say, a pretty good pre-grilled two-minute-microwave mushroom swiss burger in a highly convenient form, as our friends over at Advance Brands can.

(Side note: Hello, retail food industry? Can you get a web presence, please? The above page doesn’t even list the product that I have in my freezer. Other companies that I’ve looked at in my quest also fail to document their products to any great degree web-wise…)

Now that I think about this in a broader view, one of solving a food processing problem rather than of finding a frozen pre-grilled steak, I realize that there are other potential ways to solve the problem, and that some of the solutions would be applicable to a wider variety of problems. What if the process to get a grilled steak to a pampered fat American with an excessive sense of entitlement lead to a process to get a variety of foods from the places where they’re rotting in piles to the places where people are starving?

Of course, I know that that statement (besides triggering another hit from Cyveillance) conveniently ignores a host of problems not related to the chemistry of food products, but it’s nice to dream, anyway.