I need to learn to look carefully at the “cooking” instructions of frozen food items I buy. This is not the first time I buy something only to find out that it can’t be easily microwaved for serving. For me the whole point of buying frozen food is to be able to quickly heat it up – if I have to thaw it first, or oven-bake it or deep fry it, I might as well take the extra step and prepare the food myself.
Fortunately, most of the frozen taquitos out there just require that you microwave them for a minute or two. Unfortunately, El Monterey taquitos (and gorditas), which I got today at Grocery Outlet, demand that they be thawed before cooking. I can see, perhaps, thawing the whole box if you are going to be serving them at a party – but that doesn’t work if all you want is to fix a couple of taquitos as a snack here and there.
The box offers no instruction on how to cook the taquitos/gorditas from its frozen state. I decided to microwave two taquitos and two gorditas on high for 1 1/2 minutes. The result were taquitos that were very cold in places and boiling hot in others. Still, they were quite food for being frozen processed food – nicer than the taquitos I usually get at the supermarket or Costco. Still, the improved flavor does not make up for the inconvenience of having to thaw them first.
What I’d say is buy them if you want to serve them for a party, but skip them otherwise.
You should give them another try–got them recently and (perhaps they read your Food Blog) and made changes cause (at least here in Canada) they have microwave instructions, both thaw and/or frozen, and for the most part they come out excellent.
I actually came to your website because I Google-ed whether or not these are precooked because of the whole uncooked chicken health risks–while I followed instructions, I still have anxiety sometimes when I cook frozen pre-made chicken products. Anyway, so far, haven’t had any salmonella poisoning symptoms so (knock on wood) should be fine.
Ps. I have microwaved them and used a toaster oven–both were decent but of course the toaster oven made them more like 7-11 convenience store level good.