Kraft Fresh Take : Cheddar, Jack, & Bacon

For dinner tonight, I was looking for something easy.  I picked up some chicken from Wal-Mart and wanted an easy way to prepare it.  I happened to be buying some cheese, because cheese is awesome, when I spotted Kraft Fresh Take.  There were a variety of flavors, but I chose the cheddar, jack, and bacon combination.

Fresh Takes come in a plastic pack, one half has a cheese blend, while the other has herbs and breadcrumbs.  When you're ready to make it, you open up the bag, destroying the center divider seal, and mix up the contents.  You can then coat your choice of meat in the mixture.  I used chicken breast tenderloins.

As far as ease goes, it was incredibly simple to prepare.  You wet the meat and put it in the bag.  Toss it on a cookie sheet and dump the excess mix on top of the meat.  Cook twenty minutes, and you're golden.

The first annoyance arises when you realize that they don't give you a cook time or temperature.  They provide you with a chart that denotes the minimum internal temperature.  While this is helpful, it would be nice to have concrete instructions.  I winged it, baking my chicken for about twenty minutes.  To make sure it was done, I cut into the plumpest piece to make sure it was white all the way through.

The chicken did stay incredibly moist, which was nice.  However, the flavor wasn't that great.  There was supposed to be some bacon flavor, which I was unable to detect.  Also, because the coating doesn't cover the meat well, the instructions have you dump the excess mix on the meat.  That would be great, but as mine cooked, it started sliding off of the chicken.  The melted cheese is good on the chicken, but not when it all ends up on the cookie sheet.

This dinner aid gets an A for ease but a C for taste.  As such, I won't be using it again.  If I want to cover and bake chicken, I'll bust out the Shake and Bake.  I'll dip my chicken in a barbecue sauce, followed by a bath in Shake and Bake.  It cooks just as quick, keeps the chicken just as moist, and brings a lot more flavor to the table.  You also get more for your money with Shake and Bake.