Hamburger Helper, 1994 by Roadsidepictures (CC BY-NC-ND)
We often reminisce about ‘90s boy bands, friendship bracelets, and movies, but the foods we ate while enjoying all of those things deserve some love too. It was a time of convenience foods and microwave meals, and we all loved it. So pull a TV tray up to the couch, pop on an episode of Friends, and dig into these nostalgic, often highly processed, and sometimes questionable foods every middle class family ate in the 1990s.
“Hamburger Helper makes a great meal!” If you sang that jingle in your head, you definitely ate it in the ‘90s. It seemed like there were endless varieties to choose from, but somehow Cheeseburger Macaroni always won out. If your family ate the stroganoff version, you were fancy.
Who doesn’t love breaded and fried pork chops? Shake ‘n Bake gave people a similar meal that was easier to make, less messy, and healthier than frying. Though it’s just a mixture of seasoned bread crumbs, the end product tasted better than you’d expect. Bonus points that it turned almost anything into something resembling a chicken nugget.
It must have been against the law in the ‘90s to have a party without an Asian-inspired salad because every potluck had one. Usually they were made with canned mandarin oranges and crunchy, uncooked ramen noodles that you bashed up into small pieces. Sometimes it was slaw-like, sometimes it was a main course salad with chicken. No matter what, it had tons of sesame dressing on it.
When people found Stouffer’s frozen lasagna, some of them never went back to homemade. (Whether that was good or bad depended entirely on the skills of the cook.) But it did mean that lots of families were eating lasagna a lot more often than they used to, and that’s never a bad thing. Many people still have a soft spot in their hearts for this meal, complete with iceberg salad from a bag.
There are two sloppy joe camps, and every family falls into one of them. You either make your joes with a can of Manwich, or you make them with a homemade sauce concoction that usually includes ketchup, bell peppers, and worcestershire. Either way, greasy ground beef and soft white bread buns were always a must. If you were really lucky, you’d get to eat them with tater tots.
Pizza Hut’s buffet was a feast worthy of a king. All the pizza, salad, pasta, and soda (in those red plastic cups!) you could want for a pretty inexpensive price — which was especially important if you had hungry teenagers to feed. If you happened to visit in 1995 or later, you might have had stuffed crust pizza, a huge ‘90s fad in its own right.
The quintessential American-style taco was at its peak in the 1990s. It was trendy, popular, and very few people disliked it, even kids. Families loved that it was interactive, so everyone made their own tacos with whatever they wanted in them. Hate lettuce? No problem, load up on cheese. Love heat? Pass the jalapenos, please. Taco night was always something special to look forward to.
Everyone had fish sticks in their freezer for a quick dinner. While parents usually loved them because they were easy and cheap, many kids hated them, or at least until they covered them in ketchup. Fish sticks are a very polarizing convenience meal, but chances are that if you were around in the ‘90s, you ate some by choice or by force.
What goes best with Shake ‘n Bake or fish sticks? Rice-A-Roni, of course. The flavored rice and vermicelli dishes came in a box and were flavored in all different ways, like “chicken” and cheddar broccoli. Most of the time it served as a side dish, but some enterprising cooks would turn a box or two into a full meal by adding meat and veggies.
If you were a kid in the 1990s, opening your lunch box to see a package of Lunchables meant you were the envy of all your friends. The plastic containers held what is basically child-friendly charcuterie, complete with weird little packets of mustard sauce and even a chocolate mint way back in the day. Sure, they’re still around today, but those little cold pizza Lunchables seem like such a stray from their roots.
Chicken pot pies got smaller in the 1990s, shrinking down to individual meal size, and everyone loved them. They were best if you baked them, of course, but no one wanted to wait the millennia it took to cook them, so instead we popped them in the microwave and turned them into a delicious, soggy mess of a meal.
If you take individual pot pies one step further, you get Hot Pockets, which are essentially hand held savory pies. Unlike pot pies, these were hot and ready to burn the roof of your mouth within two minutes, and they got surprisingly crispy on the outside, too. All the pizza varieties were the best, of course, but the ham and cheese ones felt downright sophisticated.
Somewhere beneath Stouffer’s lasagna in the scale of horrifying Italian food is canned pasta. Chef Boyardee was amazing if you were a kid in the ‘90s, especially if you got it in those little microwavable cups, which meant you could heat it up yourself. None of the pasta had any texture at all, but no one cared. Spaghetti-Os were a similar, but simpler, product, with a flavor that somehow stuck with you for life.
Frozen, processed chicken entrees were a big hit in the ‘90s, especially the cordon blue variety. They all had a spongy layer of chicken wrapped around a filling, and if you cut into them when they were still hot, everything oozed out, leaving behind an empty cave of breaded chicken. That was especially true with the posh chicken Kiev version and its river of melted butter.
Companies love to market their products directly at children, and that’s clearly how Kid Cuisine must have come about. They’re frozen microwave meals designed for kids with items like dino nuggies, mac and cheese, and brownies. They were honestly just as bad as every other TV dinner, but somehow kids loved them for the colorful packaging and steamed finger food anyway.
Sure, we all love Pop Tarts, but Toaster Strudel was the next logical step on the path of breakfast greatness. These were a real treat because they’d pop crispy and flaky out of the toaster, ready for you to paint that icing drizzle on. The only problem was that the jelly-like filling turned into lava and burned your face when it squished out the sides.
In the ‘90s, EVERYTHING became pizza. Pizza bagels were probably the best, whether they were homemade with a spoon of marinara sauce and some pre-shredded cheese, or frozen Bagel Bites (“When pizza’s on a bagel, you can eat pizza anytime!”). Making pizzas on that dry pita bread from the grocery store was pretty awesome, too. And who can forget Totino’s Pizza Rolls? Truly, the ‘90s were a pizza lover’s dream.
Love it or hate it, everyone cooked tuna casserole. The best ones were homemade and topped with breadcrumbs or crushed crackers for some texture, but the worst ones were made with Tuna Helper, Hamburger Helper’s evil twin sister. Very few kids looked forward to this meal in the ‘90s.
It’s 5 p.m. and you’re still not sure what’s for dinner? Sounds like a job for boiled hot dogs, a middle class go-to. Just throw that pack of dogs into a pot with some water and bring to a boil. No need for getting any kind of color or extra flavor on them from searing or grilling! Bonus points if you boil them with the noodles from a box of macaroni and cheese and then chop them up and mix them into the finished product.
French toast sticks started popping up on fast food restaurant and school lunch menus in the ‘90s. Considering they were a frozen pre-made product, they were probably a lot better than some of the junk schools passed off as food back in the day. Plus, you got to dip them in little cups of maple-flavored corn syrup for an excellent sugar high during recess.
