small kitchen appliance wars

December 16, 2008 at 6:46 pm | Posted in Food | Leave a comment
Tags: chex mix, Crockpot, microwave

Another treat that I managed to make for our party was chex mix. I always thought you needed an oven to make chex mix, but I was pleasantly surprised when I found this recipe for crock pot chex mix.

I was especially psyched about this since I’ve been eyeing up the bag of homemade chex mix on a coworker’s desk for the last week and a half. It was a Christmas Miracle that I didn’t secretly eat any of it.

Anyways, here’s what went into the crock pot: 5 cups chex, 2 cups peanuts, 2 cups pretzels, 1/2 t onion powder, 1/2 t seasoned salt (my own made-up concoction since I forgot to buy this at the store), 3 T butter, 1.5 T Worcestershire sauce. Cook 2 hours on low, stirring every 30-40 min.

As I was pouring the chex into the crock pot, I noticed a recipe on the back for MICROWAVE chex mix. D’oh!

So I decided to make that, too, and treat everyone to a little taste test. I think the biggest difference was the time it took to make each – microwave chex mix takes about 10 min., only a small fraction of the 2-hour crockpot cook time. As far as taste, the only difference was a slight difference in buttery taste – the microwave version has a little more butter for your mix. Both were good. And most people at the party couldn’t tell the difference. So, I think that next time, I will make the microwave version. Because the 10 min cook time is very compatible with my ever-decreasing holiday attention span, and because it’s much easier to handwash a microwaveable bowl in our dinky kitchen sink than it is to wash the crockpot.