I thought Uncrustables were quite the novel idea when I was first exposed to them. By “exposed to them”, I refer to the time that I was taken hostage by terrorists, gagged and tied up naked, and fed only Uncrustables Peanut Butter and Jelly UFOs in a dank, stone-walled cell for three weeks, until Marvo ended up building his Iron Man suit in his workshop in Hawaii. Busted the whole place up, killed the terrorists, and flew me a thousand miles to safety. Such a nice fella. But that’s another story for another time.

So the PB and Js are great, everyone knows that. But when you move into cheese territory with a frozen item, let alone the revered Grilled Cheese, it usually becomes a bit harder to pull off correctly. For a variety of reasons.

When one first unwraps an Uncrustables Grilled Cheese “sandwich”, the first thing one notices is that it actually looks grilled; it looks like they took a torch and just lit it up for a few seconds on each side. Each item comes with a Hot Pockets-esque device to slip the item into, which apparently makes it not soggy and fall-apart-y. Once you’ve safely inserted the item into the crisper, you put that thing in the microwave. But for how long? Here’s where it gets sticky (just kidding, it gets sticky when you take it out). The folks at Uncrustables were kind enough to include microwaving directions on each individual item. But we all know that half the time, the directions on the box aren’t even valid, unless you want some sort of deformed, burnt, dripping-out-the-sides edible. In this particular case, the box says 35 – 60 seconds on HIGH. Now, I tried a different heating variation for each one of the eight items that came in the box. I tried it for 60 seconds on high, and this is what came out. I tried it on 30 seconds on high, and it wasn’t enough, but further, it made some parts too hot, while the middle stayed relatively cold. 45 seconds on high is adequate, but you’ll end up with a superheated snack that will take a good amount of time to cool off. I’ve found that a minute on power 6, or 45 seconds on power 8 both produce pretty desirable results; the cheese is thoroughly cooked, the bread gets crisped, yet no cheese spills out, and it’s practically ready to eat right when it comes out.

Now, it doesn’t matter how long or short it takes to cook if it tastes bad. And frozen cheese has a history of tasting fake, rubbery, strange, bland, and so on. The cheese in these Uncrustables, however, is utterly fantastic. It tastes like a melted fresh deli slice of American cheese, but a bit more buttery and, depending on how long you heat it up, interestingly textured. If you heat it up just enough to get the whole thing melted, the cheese feels like what you’d get on a McDonald’s burger or something; a bit thick feeling, yet vaguely melty. The opposite end of this spectrum is what you’ll get if you heat it up for a minute on high – runny, melty, burningly delicious. The cheese is much tangier than I expected, very much the opposite of the bland taste I was sure these would contain.

The only real problem I have with these, and it’s not really even a problem, given that you get 7 more in the pack after eating the first, is that they’re not very filling. But then again, I guess you wouldn’t really expect them to be. Aside from that, these things are fantastic. They do make a perfect snack that takes almost no time to make, they’re delicious, they’re super portable, and they’ll give ya some nostalgia if you loved grilled cheese sandwiches as a kid like I did. I really can’t think of any way someone could produce a better frozen grilled cheese.