September 4, 2024: Chex Mix Is Easy, Actually

I remember growing up thinking that Chex Mix was a real pain in the keister – like, a once-a-year kind of treat. Turns out, life's moved pretty fast, and my preconceived notions from last millennium are outdated. It's actually really easy.

You can check out (see what I did there?) the recipe from their website. But, basically, the two big differences from my earlier days of snack-making are:

1) Microwave. Seriously, it seems to turn out as good as the oven-baked stuff, and it's a boatload easier. Provided you have a microwave-safe bowl that's big enough to hold about 12 cups of stuff, and a microwave able to hold said bowl, you should be in good shape. Personally, I use two such bowls to make it easier to mix while heating. (Every two minutes or so, I just kind of toss around the cooking snack mix between the two bowls, to "stir" it easily.)

2) Don't care about ingredients. Honestly, no small part of me thinks this snack is just a Worcestershire-sauce delivery system. But, in my earlier years, I'd get hung up on making sure I had just the right ratio of the proper ingredients, no matter how difficult it was to find (say) bagel chips or appropriately sized pretzels. Nah. It works fine with just cereal. If you can get close to the 12 cups of "stuff" the recipe calls for, it turns out great. We default to the super-easy (and lazy) "eight cups of wheat cereal to four cups of rice or corn cereal." That's it . . . just two types of Chex. It's so tasty that we have to pace ourselves to keep from stuffing our tummies like overzealous boardwalk seagulls.

Sure, you can get a lot fancier with all of this. But, with those two tips, I found that about 10% of the effort gets me to 90% of the snack experience I'm looking for – which is a huge win in my book.

No, this isn't any kind of paid endorsement or anything; I know that it'll work fine with any close-enough cereal. But our household likes Chex Mix (especially on game days!), and we liked it even more once we realized how easy we could make it!

-- Steven Marsh