How Much Of Cracker Barrel's Food Is Microwaved?
"Made-to-order." "Made in-house." "From scratch."
You've probably seen these phrases before. How often have you read a menu that boasted about an item that was "freshly made" or something that was prepared "from scratch?" While some may take it as a sign that this is a place where you could get good quality food, a more cynical person would say that's all fancy marketing talk and cynically surmise that many items in the restaurant are either frozen or pre-made and tossed in some janky microwave to make it look freshly prepared.
Of course, there are countless restaurants that are committed to the quality of their food and go the extra mile to prepare their meals the old-fashioned way. But there are also restaurants that have been rumored to "cut corners" on preparing their foods. Olive Garden is the subject of a long-standing rumor that insists that its Italian fare is simply reheated in a microwave the same way as a frozen dinner (via Redbook). Others claim that Applebee's is another restaurant infamous for simply microwaving meals (via PopSugar).
What about places such as Cracker Barrel, for instance, that claim to serve only home-cooked meals? From biscuits to fried chicken to meatloaf, the old country store/restaurant does seem to hold true to its promise that they serve nothing but good comfort food made in their own kitchens.
But how much of it is actually "made from scratch" rather than "made in the microwave?"
The microwave seems to be scarcely used at Cracker Barrel
While Cracker Barrel bills itself as an old-fashioned country store, modern amenities are still in use. Does this mean that your Country Boy Breakfast came piping hot out of a microwave?
According to a former employee on Reddit, Cracker Barrel doesn't seem to use the microwave all that much. The only thing it is really used for, they maintain, is to quickly heat up potatoes in the event they run low on baked potatoes.
This doesn't mean that all of Cracker Barrel's food is cooked fresh, however. The employee further explains that certain items are delivered pre-cooked or frozen, such as the hard-boiled eggs used in salads coming from a "big bucket of precooked boiled eggs." Cans of condensed soup are used in the pot pies, although "raw ingredients" are used as well in the recipe. Salads are prepared fresh, with the lettuce being chopped and washed in-store. In the end, the employee explains that most things are cooked by line cooks, often using an actual oven.
Some customers have gone on to assert that Cracker Barrel, at least in some locations, does use the microwave to reheat food. On TripAdvisor, a user by the name of "MRGordon" claimed that his meal came "right from the microwave to his table."
While it seems the restaurant chain doesn't use the microwave too often, you can rest assured that the biscuits Cracker Barrel serves are still made in-store each day.