11 frozen meals our staff turns to in a pinch

I’m a from-scratch type of cook, but homemade french fries? That happens once a year — at the most. In the meantime, every week or two, I preheat the oven for a bag of Alexia brand frozen fries, which have a blessedly short ingredient list and, at least when they’re hot, come surprisingly close to the taste and texture of homemade. That’s particularly the case with the waffle-cut variety, which have all those extra edges to crisp up in the oven. I don’t exactly follow the instructions on the bag, though; I use a higher heat, and I put the baking sheet in the oven while it preheats so the fries hit a hot surface from the get-go. If you have an air fryer, you know what to do. I don’t, so I sometimes take the extra step of cooking them on a rack that fits inside the sheet, and use my oven’s convection setting on the oven, speeding up the process and adding to that satisfying crunch. — Joe Yonan