While at Giant today I noticed that they'd slightly rearranged some of the frozen stuff, and noticed a few things that I hadn't seen before. I looked at a few of them and ended up with a package of El Monterey Bean & Cheese Burritos.
They come eight to a package, a serving is one, and the cooking directions are for one. Finally, a company with some sense. In addition, they have microwave, oven, and deep fryer directions, so however you want to heat it short of a campfire or a Coleman grill, well, there you go. I can tell you now that for a campfire you'd just wrap it in aluminum foil and toss it on there for 10 minutes or so.
I heated the first one up in the oven, figuring it would be the best of my available choices (we don't have a deep fryer). The cooking time is a little long (due to a 375° cooking temperature) but it gets the job done and thankfully the directions don't tell you to flip it over partway through. I sprayed some cooking spray on my baking sheet just to make sure it wouldn't stick, it didn't say to do this but I figured it wouldn't hurt.
The second one I had a few minutes ago, I heated it in the microwave to test that out. They don't specify a wattage for the microwave directions (possibly the only blemish on an otherwise perfect set of directions), but the "frozen" heating time of a minute and 15 seconds worked well. It burst open a little and was soggy, but that's to be expected from a microwave. And of course, obeying the law of microwave burritos, it had a cold spot.
As for the taste, well, there's definitely beans. I don't taste very much cheese. The tortillas they use could stand to be whole grain as well, as non-whole grain tortillas have such a plain, bland taste.
Overall, they're pretty decent and come in a variety of flavors, most of which Giant doesn't carry (as usual). They had the Chimichangas, the Beef and Bean, and the Bean and Cheese varieties. Beef and Bean may have been a better choice, being that I can't detect any cheese in the Bean and Cheese ones. Best of all, they claim 0g trans fat. I haven't inspected the ingredients list to see if they're using the FDA "less than half a gram per serving can be marked as zero" loophole or not, but in a burrito I wouldn't expect there to be any partially hydrogenated oil anyway.
