I know you’ve been there before.  Hell, chances are you’ve probably still got the burn marks on the roof of your mouth to prove it!  How can something so delicious cause so much pain?

Ok, well maybe delicious isn’t exactly the right word … more like convenient, if anything, but nonetheless, I think we can all agree that it takes a bit of a masochist to enjoy (read: consume) one of these single-serving, microwavable infernos.  Frankly, I’m not sure I’d know what to do if I didn’t scald the inside of my mouth on molten cheese product shortly after biting into a Hot Pocket, and yet clearly I’m not the only guy who keeps buying these torturous treats.  This tells me that over the years we as a people have basically more or less just come to terms with the idea that with great convenience comes a great sacrifice of one’s taste buds for at least a week and a half … possibly more depending on the output level of the microwave involved. I don’t know about you, but that sounds like an awfully sad, flavorless world if you ask me…

Well, ladies and gentlemen … oh, who am I kidding?  Women don’t eat Hot Pockets!  At least not without some sort of fancy, French dipping broth or maybe a dollop of sour cream, they wouldn’t.  Hot Pockets are a bachelor’s food through and through … possibly because women value their taste buds more than your average guy, not to mention there aren’t nearly as many women in search of rapid sustenance so that they can rush back to their World of Warcraft guild before the group leaves to lay siege to the Great Wall of Balkazur without them!

Regardless, gentlemen – what if I told you that it actually is entirely possible to consume your favorite cheesy variety of Hot Pockets without committing hari kari on one’s own tongue and other assorted oral tissues?!  I know, I know – from the sophisticated Chicken, Broccoli & Cheddar to the sizzlingly simple Ham and Cheese, the concept of savoring these gooey treats without severing all ties with every other flavor in the known universe just seems far too good to be true, but much like a grocery trip when you manage to get through the Wal-Mart checkout in less than an hour, today is your lucky day, my friends, and over the next few minutes, I’m about to give you something that you’ve no doubt all but forgotten about since embracing these pockets of microwavable malice.

That’s right, folks – I’m about to give you your sense of taste back, and all it’s going to take is these three easy-to-follow steps…

1. Know Thy Microwave
Now before you even begin to nuke up a bit of eatin’, it’s vitally important – to your taste buds, anyways – that you fully understand the power of what you’re cooking with.  You know that guy who cooks his popcorn in the office microwave too long and leaves the place reeking of burnt kernels for the rest of the afternoon?  Well, those same incendiary forces are the very same that will push your pocket sandwich’s contents into kill mode if you’re not careful!  It may take some experimentation, but if you find that the beast runs hot, try backing your cook time off to 1:30 instead of the full two minutes – if you cook the thing so long cheese starts oozing out the side and eating away at that spinning, glass plate, you’ve gone too far…

2. Give Her Room to Breathe!
Of course, once you’ve got the old girl cooked, whether she’s smoking from both ends or if you’re lucky, just steaming a bit, you’re still going to want to take additional measures to reduce that internal temperature from scalding down to not scalding, and the best way I’ve found to do exactly that is by creating what I like to call an exhaust vent. You see, right now in addition to all of that molten, tongue-scorching cheese inside, your Hot Pocket also has a considerable amount of steam circulating that’s going to keep that cheese painful just as long as possible … which is bad. But what we can do to counteract that is to simply and carefully bite off one of the corners – just enough to give all of that gaseous heat a place to escape.

Now a word of caution here: if you’re not careful, as previously mentioned, it’s quite possible here to get your first initial tongue burn if you bite off more than you can chew, so to speak!  What you’re shooting for is an opening big enough to allow the heat to vent, but small enough that you won’t also get a mouthful of scalding cheese.

It’s really more of a trial and error thing, unfortunately…

3. Come Back Later…
Granted, I’m not saying that you’ve got to go write The Great American Novel or teach the dog how to play checkers, but seriously, a few minutes at this juncture can make all the difference between happy mouth and out of commission mouth, believe you me!  And I know that you’re a busy man, with monsters to kill and chicks on Facebook to stalk, but give it just five minutes – allow that amazing vent that we just created some time to work its magic – and before you know it, you’ll be biting into a warm and cheesy snack that doesn’t bite you back, for a change.

Of course, as you would expect, there are other things you can do as well – a whole lot of other things, if you really want to get into the nuts and berries of it – but all in the same, I think this is a fair representation for a three-item list to help you get started down that road towards flavor enlightenment, and besides, if I were to list out every single one of my brilliant, Hot Pocket-related secrets here today, then where would your incentive be to go out and buy my new book – Larry Rotter and the Pocket of Pain – that’s due to hit shelves later on this fall?!  It’s going to be a smash hit, for sure, and I think by the end you’ll be pleasantly surprised when you read about what our young friend learns of on-the-go lunch solutions during this, his third year at Logwarts School of Interior Decorating, Restroom Maintenance, and TV/VCR Repair!  Oh, but the shenanigans that young Larry and his good friends, Don and Shermione, get into along the way – it’s a good thing that headmaster Bumblebore is always looking out for them when hijinks ensue…

But until that fateful November Blorgteenth launch date, I leave you with these three points as a perfectly great way to begin the reclaiming of your taste buds while still enjoying (read: consuming) these quick morsels of cheese, bread, and occasionally even meats and vegetable-like products.  May all of your meals be extra cheesy, fast and fulfilling, and most importantly of all, free of first-degree burns!