Hot Pockets: Limited Edition BBQ Recipe Bacon Burger Buns

I was at the Target store yesterday and stumbled upon these new "Limited Edition" hot pockets buns, and since there was "BBQ" printed on the box, I knew that I had to give this product a try. The price was $2.29 on sale, and I figured that 1 box would be sufficient for the taste-testing of it; a year or so ago there was another Limited Edition Hot Pockets that had macaroni, garlic and something like Parmesan cheese stuffing inside, and I bought several boxes of it and hated it, so now I just buy 1 box so not to make that mistake again. Front side main ingredients listed as: "hamburger, cheese and bacon with sauce in a bun", so it sounded like a promising stuffing to me. While technically these Hot Pockets buns are classified as Hot Pokets sub-brand/lineup of SideShots, the name "SideShots" is nowhere to be found on the packaging, but there is a text of "4 buns" in a couple of places. To tell the truth, I actually prefer the SideShots soft buns over traditional Hot Pocket crispy pastries. The only negative thing that I tell right away is that the SideShots, especially the ones at hand, have experienced the shrink ray: 8 ounces now compared to 9 ounces before: thats 29 grams less of a product, and it makes me disappointed already.

Back of the box.

Box-O'-Vision.

What's inside the box.

Cold buns.

Warm buns.

These SideShots taste heavenly when cooled down: the tangy BBQ sauce, mixed with cheese and yummy bits of meat [burger]. I did not tasted much much of bacon, but I did not care much for it, but it is there; in small amount. These SideShot buns are totally awesome and I ate all 4 of them one after another, and I can definitely see myself eating a pile of 12-16 of them in 1 sitting, they are so good. The BBQ sauce was the most outstanding ingredient in these buns, and it is the same "Hot Pockets BBQ Sauce" that the other Hot Pockets [regular and lean ones] feature: tangy, with a pleasantly sour kick to it, but nothing like your regular store-bough BBQ sauce tastes like. I rate these BBQ Bacon Burger SideShots at 4.8/5.0 with a value rating of 4.4/5.0 [just because they are so small and the price per bun is around $0.57 or more]. Give these Hot Pockets SideShots a shot, because they taste great and will not be available for long.

Fast Bites BBQ Rib Sandwich

Here is another great product from the freezer section: BBQ rib sandwich by Fast Bites. This is pretty much over-the-counter McRib sandwich that is available throughout the year and it is regularly available at the Deals (Deal$) stores for only...$1.00!!! Yeah, thats right: only $1.00, although I also seen it a couple of times at the Associated food market for $1.99. So this sandwich is pretty much 2 burger burns   [with top one (lid) being coated with sesame seeds] with a rib-shaped pork meat patty that is glazed in the BBQ sauce, that form together the 5.5 ounces of food. I personally like all kinds of these BBQ rib sandwiches like McRibs, stuff that they sell in the 7-Eleven for $1.99 is a translucent plastic wrap and $2.99 in a fancy paper wrap, and this Fast Bites sandwich. Encore also makes the BBQ rib patties in a 6-pack family-size box, which you can use to create your own sandwiched with whatever bread or bun you like, its pretty good patties. Fast Bites has a whole lineup of burgers and sandwiches within its brand, and there are pretty much around 10 different varieties to choose from. Company by the name of [Advance] Pierre Foods makes all these sandwiches and from their website I could see that they make whole myriad of all kinds of products for all kinds of markets: dumplings, breadsticks, nuggets, pastries, sandwiches, burgers, sandwiches, fruit cups, frozen desserts and whatnot that is available for foodservice, retail and vending industries. I am also pretty much sure [at around 99.8%] that Pierre Foods also make cheeseburgers and chicken sandwiches for the Walgreens' Cafe W (Cafe Dubya) private brand, that is pretty much re-branded to their new private brand by the name of Nice! [which is an inferior store brand to the complimentary Good and DeLish store brand by Walgreens and Duane Reade]. I compared Fast Bites and Cafe W cheeseburger and their boxes side-by-sides and there were about 99% similarities with both products, with only 1% being minor differences within the ingredients.

Back of the box.

Box-O'-Vision.

Inside the wrap.

Cold.

Hot.

Close-up.

After cooking this sandwich in the microwave for 90 seconds, and letting it cool down, I began to chomp own on it. The buns are pretty good in taste but the pork patty was kinda average: from what I picked-up in it's taste was that there was way much soy filling rather than the pork/rib meat. The patty resulted in a bit of a bland taste. The BBQ sauce was not the best one in its category, but still it was pleasant on the tongue and helped the pork patty in diffusing the blandness. Overall, this is a good-tasting BBQ rib sandwich that definitely worth it's $1.00 price and presents a great value within the frozen food market, that has the costs rising up and the weight of the portions falling down. I rate this sandwich at 4.3/5.0 with a value rating of 4.7/5.0. Be sure to grab one if you stumble upon it: the BBQ rib are the most popular Fast Bites sandwiches and are the 1st ones to run out of stock from what I observed.  

Cafe W (Walgreens) Chicken & Cheese Crispy Quesadilla

I am a big fan of tasty house label frozen foods, and Walgreens with their Cafe W (Cafe Dubya) house brand is one of these things that I pay attention too. Under their Cafe W brand they have cheeseburgers, chicken sandwiches, Philly cheese steak sandwiches, some kind of Stromboli rolls, waffles and these quesadillas. Most of the times I just get their cheeseburgers that cost either $1.29 per box or 2 boxes for $2.00. The cheeseburgers are pretty much rebadged/rebranded Fast Bites cheeseburgers that are made by the Advanced Pierre Foods company. So when I recently stopped by the Union Square Walgreens, I noticed these quesadillas (3 in box) for $2.79 and decided to take a pack and try it out. I gotta let you know that whenever I am at a Walgreens store (whatever I happen to be), these quesadillas happen to be a rarity, and I only seen them 4 times, so it made sense to me to grab a box since it was on the shelf; the local Walgreens by my place never seems to have them in stock.

Back of the box.

Box-O-Vision.

Inside the bag quesadillas.

Cold.

Hot.

So this is how the cheesy crispy quesadillas came out to the plate. The outer crust reminded me of KFC potato wedges. The crust is fairlly crispy, but not too much: there is a crisp to it but it is kinda diffused by the cheese and chicken stuffing. On the front of the box you can see fairly squarely diced chicken pieces, but the actual product happened to be completely different story: the chicken came out to be very mushy and it mixed with the cheese, so I had hard time to picking-up the chicken flavor out of the quesadillas. But the cheesy and crispy crust made up for the weak chicken, so I was pretty satisfied and would not mind snacking again of these quesadillas. At $0.93 per each qusadilla it sure beats the $1.29+tax crunchy tacos from Taco Bell. I rate these quesadillas at 4.0/5.0 and the value rating is 4.0/5.0.

Close-up.

Inside the quesadilla.

Perdue General Tso's Chicken

This is a new product that I have recently spotted at the local Associated food mart in my area. Since I am familiar with Perdue's frozen wings selection from the Costco, it was a sound decision for me to try out this promising new addition to the Associated freezer isle. The frozen bag meals are steadily gaining popularity within food marts and supermarkets, and there is a handul number of manufacturer's that are fighting over the shelf space to put their products on for consumer consumption/purchases. The first thing that I have noted on the packaging is the glazed chicken bits over rice, but further packaging inspection assured me that this is just a mere serving suggestion and that the inner hold of the packaging contains only the glazed chicken.

This marquee graphic on the front side of the packagaing was very promising, with the Asian-styled text and bold red background.

As you can see, the bag contains only 26 ounces of glazed chicken: just under 2 pounds of the product. And the price for this is $9.99; a whopping $6.17 or so per pound. This is pretty much a $4.00 increase over frozen meal-in-bags from other manufacturer that serve 2 people.

Back of the packaging. Note the serving suggestions.

Bag-O'-Vision of Genereal Tso's Glazed Chicken by Perdue.

Frozen bits/pieces of Genereal Tso's Glazed Chicken by Perdue.

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Cooked/microwaved bits/pieces of Genereal Tso's Glazed Chicken by Perdue.

Close-up of the glazed chicken pieces. Note how some of them are darker due to glaze and being better cooked/done than the lighter pieces with less glaze.

I dont know if I mentioned this or not but I really hate white rice, the kind that you get free most of the time at the Chinese joint, the same kind that is popular all-over the world. I am just not into steamy rice; I like it nicely fried until it reached the rich yellow color.

I figured that the frozen General Tso's Glazed Chicken would be an excellent dish if it would go over a bed of Roasted Pork Fried Rice from the local Chinese joint, and I was right. The serving suggestion from the back of the packaging suggested a similar serving approach, but the Roasted Pork seemed liked a better solution per personal preference.
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Close-up shot of the tasty rice and glazed chicken goodness.

Here is the section shot of the glazed chicken piece. As you can see it has real chicken (breast meat) inside, but I think that it would be better if Perdue would go with thigh meat instead of lean breast meat. Another improvement to this product would be if Perdue would add like a pack or even several packs of sauce to put on the meat once it has been heated, because the sauce/glaze that the meat is glazed with, gets evaporated when you heat the stuff up and gets kind of dry externally. After trying out the 1st portion of this glazed chicken, I was a bit not sure what to write about it, but later on after I finished the whole bag, I found out that you just gotta heat it up for a right amount of time. In my case this was 4 minutes and 30 seconds for about 12-14 pieces of glazed chicken. When it cooks right it pretty much tastes right: well thermally treated, not dry and well-balanced in terms of meat-breading-glaze taste. I rate this General Tso's Glazed Chicken at 4.0/5.0 and the value rating is 2.5/5.0; the price of $9.99 for just over 1 and 1/2 pounds of product is just not a good value, in fact there is no value here. But if you live far away from a Chinese restaurant joint or just have a crave of Gen Tso's chicken at 3 or 4AM then having a bag of this stuff in the freezer is a nice solution for this kind of problem. It certainly worth giving it a try, but they don't sell this stuff in most food marts in Brooklyn area.