Guilty Pleasures - Food Confessions

[dem in texas]

I am pretty much a purist when it comes to cooking; not using prepared foods, making dishes from scratch. That said, I love Rice-a-Roni. My three children and 4 grandchildren are all serious cooks and the make fun of me for serving Rice-a-Roni.

What is your guilty food pleasure?

[Xipe Totec]

1. Wick Fowler's 2 Alarm Chili

With ground beef and Goya black beans.

[Liberal Jesus Freak]

2. Fish sticks.

I, too, cook nearly everything from scratch. But...once or twice a year... I buy a box of fish sticks and eat them. All. By. Myself. With ketchup, not my husband's scrumptious homemade tartar sauce

[Little Star]

3. Please don't tell anyone........

I know it's very bad for me but I can't help myself I just love it. But I don't buy the party size shown.

[Kali]

5. oh yes!

I even buy the cheap michelinas! (NOT homestyle though, if I want box mac and cheese I will make that from the box)

[Saviolo]

4. Crappy single-serving cheese slices

On my homemade breakfast sandwiches. My Texan hubby makes biscuits every Sunday and we make fresh breakfast sandwiches on them, and we gotta use that crappy processed cheese food, 'cause it's got just the right texture when melted.

This is kind of a subset of our guilty pleasure of fast-food breakfast sandwiches. Because we're in Canada, it's the Tim Horton's breakfast sandwich that is our guilty pleasure. It's a highly industrialized process, of course, but it does satisfy!


But here's our homemade version:

&t=7s

[Major Nikon]

7. All cheese is processed

So the so-called "fake cheese" campaign is really just a marketing gimmick by the cheese industry.

Some processed cheeses have basically the same ingredients as so-called "real" cheese with the benefit of stabilizers that keep it from separating when you melt it.

[Saviolo]

10. Right, but...

Those Kraft Singles whichever individually-wrapped cheese food product singles you prefer are a collection of milk solids suspended in a vegetable oil emulsification that does not really resemble actual cheese. It's a far cry from any kind of actual cheese.

[Major Nikon]

11. Kraft singles are very similar to "real" cheese

So-called "real" cheese is made from milk, enzymes, and cultures, the latter two are used to add flavor and separate the milk solids from whey. So what cheese essentially is are milk solids suspended in milk fats and coagulated.

In fact, the first ingredient of Kraft singles is cheddar cheese and most of the other ingredients are either milk or various ingredients that are derived from milk like milk fat. It also contains enzymes which are the exact same enzymes used in "real" cheese production and perform the same function.

There's a few extra ingredients like emulsifiers and color additives and the process is different than the thousands of years old process that's used to make "real" cheese, which is really nothing more than a term that's defined under the US (and other countries') food code.

Those extra ingredients and different processes insure the product performs much better when melted which is why Kraft singles melt much better. The reason why "real" cheese almost always separates when melted is because it lacks those emulsifiers. You can modify "real" cheese by adding starch and preventing this problem, but then you've simply duplicated what Kraft is already doing for you.

So the cheese industry has created a large advertising campaign for "real" cheese and imply that processed cheese products are somehow inferior, when the reverse is closer to reality, at least in applications where you want cheese to melt.

[Warpy]

6. Oh, we've all got them, crap food from our childhood

that we turn to when we're ill or stressed or just because we need a little comfort.

I have never been able to choke Rice-a-roni down. I'll say that right now. My guilty pleasure is Kraft dinner, allergy to wheat and all. There is something supremely comforting about day-glo orange macaroni eaten right out of the pot, standing at the sink. I'm also not alone, friends have taken to calling it "crack" dinner.

Beat me, flog me, force me to pronounce French cooking terms correctly. Just don't take away that Kraft dinner when I need it.

[PennyK]

8. Canned corn beef hash

I know. You slide it out of the can in one glimmering cylinder, silce it, and place on foil in the oven to get nice and crisp. I try to persuade myself that adding a fried egg would make it more healthy, but then I'd be too full to finish the whole mess. I haven't had this in over ten years, but I know it's there, waiting for me...
And I just said yes to a kraft mac and cheese BOGO at my Publix.

[Little Star]

9. Oh stop it! I'd always choose this when I shop....

For real, I actually love this stuff with a little ketchup!

[japple]

12. Spam, spam, spam, spam, baked beans and spam.

Although I haven't eaten any for a couple of years, I still find myself craving fried spam with cheese melted on top. Most army brats from the 1960s have it on their list!

[irisblue]

13. Sliders & crinkle cut french fries

Extra onions.

[northoftheborder]

14. Canned biscuits....

....especially "Grands". I used to make good biscuits, but my luck is gone.