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It's always a magical feeling to open the freezer to find a box of potato waffles when hunger strikes.

Stick on the oven, shove them in for 15 minutes and then enjoy the crispy golden goodness.

But Birds Eye have now revealed an ingenious time-saving hack to put potato waffles on your plate so much faster - and it's been so successful that it will now be included on the packaging's cooking instructions.

After customers demanded to know if it was safe to cook the waffles in a toaster, Birds Eye spent more than 103 hours testing 3,000 waffles to decide if the super-fast cooking hack was up to their lofty standards.

Once the highly scientific testing was complete, Birds Eye have revealed that the tasty treats can be perfected in just two pops of the toaster.

The tests were no laughing matter, as different toasters and settings were tried out over 20 days to ensure the method is safe and delivers on taste and texture.

The potato waffle supplier recommends putting them in on a medium to high setting, and then putting them back in to toast for a second time after the initial 'pop'.

Before you launch into a tirade of abuse to tell us 'I've always cooked them this way', Birds Eye asked that very question on social media, resulting in more than 65 per cent of people admitting they had no idea you could cook them using a toaster.

So maybe you are just a culinary trailblazer. Congratulations.

Steve Challouma, Marketing Director at Birds Eye, said: “We know there has been a lot of confusion and debate on this way of cooking our Original Potato Waffles so we decided to put it to the test.

"After days of rigorous ‘toasting’, we’re happy to confirm it is safe to cook our waffles this way and it doesn’t compromise on taste either – you can still expect the same delicious taste that is crispy on the outside and fluffy in the middle!"