Eating cereal with water sounds kind of sad and wrong. No shame in the struggle game—if you have a box of cereal and you don’t have a carton of milk, you gotta do what you gotta do—but Kellogg’s has leaned into the concept hard with the release of Insta-Bowls, a line of cereals meant to be eaten with water.
It’s much less weird than it sounds. Basically, these Kraft Easy Mac-like cups come filled with both cereal and dehydrated milk powder that comes to life when you add water to the fill line and stir for 30 seconds or so. So, you’re not really eating cereal with water—you’re just turning water into milk like Jesus or something (I’ve clearly never read the Bible). Is it worth keeping a few of these in the ol’ pantry? My colleague Jordan Myrick and I tasted them to find out.
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I don’t think we expected to like these quite as much as we did. “I was dunking on this pretty hard, but I think I’m wrong,” Jordan said after a few bites of the Froot Loops Insta-Bowls. If you’re worried that the rehydrated milk powder will taste weird, you can set that concern aside with this one. The milk mixture almost immediately takes on the flavor of Froot Loops and little else. Sure, if you’re used to whole milk, the rehydrated milk might lack a little creaminess, but if you were raised on skim like me, I don’t think you’ll notice a difference between this and a bowl of cereal you made with milk from the fridge. You can send your kid to school with these, take them camping, or (if you live on the West Coast) stock your earthquake kit with a few. Genius and delicious.
In Jordan’s opinion, the milk mixture in the Raisin Bran Crunch Insta-Bowls actually made the cereal taste better than it normally does. We absolutely love an improvement on a classic—especially an unexpected one. Jordan detected a sweet, almost coconutty flavor; I tasted something like tapioca powder. Either way, it’s an extremely good application of mystery milk. Kellogg’s also makes Frosted Flakes Insta-Bowls and Apple Jacks Insta-Bowls, and I can’t imagine you can go wrong with any of those.
Howdy! I’m Gwynedd, Sporked’s managing editor. I live in Los Angeles and have access to the best tacos the U.S. has to offer—but I’m a sucker for a crunchy Old El Paso taco night every now and then. I’ve been at Sporked since 2022 and I’m still searching frozen mozzarella sticks that can hold a candle to restaurant sticks.
Why you should trust me: I’ve been a journalist for 20 years (yikes), a consumer of food for 40-plus years, and I’m truly hard pressed to think of foods I don’t like (or that I can’t tolerate at the very least). Oh and one time I cooked my way through Guy Fieri’s cookbook and wrote about the journey through Flavortown.
What I buy every week: Trader Joe’s Original Savory Thins. Fat free plain yogurt (usually Fage or Nancy’s). Honeycrisp apples. Sweet cream coffee creamer for my at-home Americanos. A frozen cauliflower crust pizza and some jarred mushrooms to top it with. Old El Paso Stand ‘N Stuff taco shells and Gardein Ground Be’f, even though I think “be’f” is a nightmarish contraction.
Favorite ranking: Stouffer’s frozen dinners. I don’t own a microwave (I get my cancers the old fashioned way!), so I love taste testing things that I don’t really buy to eat at home.
Least favorite ranking: Soy sauce. Don’t get me wrong, I love soy sauce—but consuming that much sodium in one sitting is probably illegal in some countries. Our frozen enchilada taste test was a close second; the smell of microwaved corn tortillas still haunts me.
Thoughts? Questions? Complete disagreement? Leave a comment!
Gwynedd Stuart
Tyler Bowers
Jessica Block
Matt Crowley
Thoughts? Questions? Complete disagreement? Leave a comment!