The Taste of Sliders Without the Drive

Having lived in the Midwest more than once, I developed a taste for White Castle. The chain, which used to stretch out to the East Coast before contracting back into just the Midwestern states of Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, and Kentucky, has its own style of burgers. They make little mini burgers, sliders, that are steamed on a bed of onions on the griddle before getting served up with buns and cheese and they are, quite simply, amazing. This is especially true when it’s three in the morning and all you want are some little greasy burgers, some crinkle fries with cheesy sipping sauce, and little fried bits of chicken (shaped like rings, called “Chicken Rings” because why not). White Castle scratches an itch you might not realize you had.

Unfortunately now that I no longer live in the Midwest I can’t just drive over to the White Castle to scratch that itch. Instead, if I want that experience, the best I can do is run over to a local grocery that has frozen versions of the burgers, packed up and ready for microwaving at my convenience. The question then, though, is whether the frozen sliders match up to the proper White Castle experience. That was what we were here to test with a frozen slider Cheese Variety Pack:

Classic Cheese

The interesting thing about White Castle frozen sliders is really that they have the actual flavor of a proper White Castle burger. Normally when you get a grocery item that’s pitched as “just like the real thing” it’s hardly ever actually the case. Arby’s frozen fries lack that particular greasy crunch that defines them. Wendy’s canned chili is somehow both too tinny and yet more flavorful than actual Wendy’s chili. The flavor is never truly right. And yet, a White Castle frozen slider tastes almost exactly like how it would fresh from the restaurant, and I just don’t know why. I do like it, though.

The classic cheese is, of course, the classic flavor that anyone who’s eaten at a White Castle knows. It’s got that beefy goodness, a tinge of onion, and a little of that “can’t quite place it but it tastes like beefy run-off” flavor on the back end. That sounds gross, but it’s really not. It tastes fantastic. The American cheese adds a bit of salt, and some weird plastic aftertaste, just as you’d expect. Almost everything feels just like the restaurant, save one: the buns.

The one issue with the frozen sliders is that the pillowy soft buns don’t have the right texture when microwaved. They’re a little more chewy, slightly gummy, and not quite right. It’s not a terrible texture, it’s just the one thing you can really point to that makes you say, “yeah, this was microwaved.” I don’t know how you could fix that, since you need the cooking of the burger to flavor the bun (as they’re done in the restaurant), and there’s no way to get that vibe without having the buns on the sliders as they’re microwaved. You’d probably have to defrost them and gently air fry the sliders but, really, who has time for that, especially for grocery store burgers? These are good the way they are, and that’s fine by me.

Jalapeno and Cheese

There isn’t a lot of difference in flavor between the Classic Cheese and Jalapeno and Cheese. In theory the latter has spicy peppers in a jack cheese slice put on top of the burger, but in reality it does taste more or less like a white version of the Classic’s American cheese, just with some spice thrown on. The general flavor doesn’t deviate much from the Classic Cheese, so all the same things I said above for that slider apply here as well. It’s good, even before we get to the spice.

The jalapenos, though, are nice and spicy. The first couple of bites I took didn’t have any heat, but by the third bite the heat was actually building. I like spice a lot so I didn’t mind this, I will just note it because it’s actually enough heat for me to notice its existence, which means for most people it would be way too spicy for them. It was a level of heat that I didn’t expect. Not enough to make me need milk or go “damn, that’s hot,” but enough that I was shocked that White Castle, slider kingdom of white bread, midwest America, actually let it onto their burgers. It was tasty, though, and I’d get these again.

Bacon and Cheddar

These were the one type of sliders I hadn’t had before this taste test. Having actually been to proper White Castles before, I’d sampled their various sliders in the past, but I don’t remember seeing a Bacon and Cheddar version on the menu. Either I was blind (which, fair, since bacon is an obvious burger topping), or somehow they just didn’t have it at the restaurant when I went there. I really bank on the former, not the latter.

Whatever the case… I actually think the Bacon and Cheddar version sucks. It ruins what I didn’t realize was actually a delicate balance of flavors and textures that White Castle has perfected. For starters, the cheese didn’t melt properly. Whereas the American (and Jack, if we’re being gracious with that term for the white cheese) melted into the burger and the bun, creating a lovely unison, the cheddar remained an unmelted slice that wanted to come off the burger as I ate. This changed the texture of the burger-to-cheese combination, and not in a good way. It was noticeably toothsome, and not enjoyable.

Meanwhile the bacon flavor dominated the burger. It tasted more like bacon than a White Castle slider, and not very good bacon at that. It was cheap bacon, strong and overcooked, with an unsettling texture afterwards that displeased my palate. Everything about this slider was wrong in my brain, and it just didn’t taste like White Castle. The best thing that can be said about these burgers is that the bacon versions are the least common in the variety pack, so at least I don’t have too many I have to eat through before they’re gone.

Final Thoughts

I liked the sliders in general, and it was nice to try these again even if I had to microwave them (instead of getting them from a proper restaurant). Flavors are generally spot on, and even if the buns are quite right they weren’t repulsive, so I can live with that. I’ll just know now to stick to either the Classic Cheese or Jalapeno and Cheese and avoid the Bacon and Cheddar at all costs. The sliders are great; the bacon not so much.