A Thanksgiving meal in one bite, false hope for the gluten intolerant,
and a block of cheese disguised as a pot pie. We’re taking a trip through
the frozen food aisle and breaking down chicken pot pies from worst to best.
The frozen dinner aisle hasn't historically been a goldmine for those on gluten-free diets. Chicken
pot pies have been particularly guilty of the gluten offense, fully surrounded as they are
in a gluten-filled pie crust and covered in gravy often thickened with wheat flour. Those
spying Marie Callender's chicken pot pie with cauliflower crust may be excited by the idea of
a gluten-free pot pie from a major frozen food brand, but they should proceed with caution.
This is not actually a gluten-free product, and it doesn't claim to be, either. Flip the box,
and you'll see there's still wheat flour in the ingredients, likely within the gravy,
and a small statement on the front also advertises there's still wheat in the crust.
Already, we don't understand why Marie Callender's would take the step of offering a cauliflower
crust without producing a totally gluten-free product, but that's hardly the only reason we're
not fans of this pie. Straight from the oven, this one was a mess, having separated from its
edges on one side with gravy oozing out onto the top of the pie. But it's the taste that left us
truly unimpressed. The contents were fine, but the crust was dense. And without the flavor of either
a traditional pie crust or even cauliflower, it tasted more of stale bread than anything else.
A seemingly snazzier budget offering from Banquet, the chicken and broccoli pot pie sounds like an
interesting way to switch up pot pie night, but you might want to think twice. While the addition
of broccoli sounds delicious, and even healthier, you won't find much broccoli within a single pie,
and the pieces you do find are relatively flavorless. There's certainly no additional
broccoli flavor swimming about in the gravy, and Banquet actually eliminates peas and potato in
order to sub in the broccoli, so you're left with fewer veggies and less flavor overall.
It's also worth noting that the budget options do ring up for less than half the price of
the more upscale pot pies in supermarket freezers, but you should pay attention to
what you're getting for that bargain before you make your choice. In Banquet pot pies,
for example, the meat comes from chicken roll and mechanically separated meat,
which is reformed chicken shaped from a slurry. As with any other product in any market,
you get what you pay for with cheap, fast and frozen meals, so if ingredient quality
and nutrition matter, read the boxes carefully. The real reason Banquet frozen foods are so cheap
is because they're not always the foods you thought you thought you were eating.
"We start with our own savory gravy,
then we add carefully selected vegetables and government inspected chicken… or beef."
The Banquet chicken pot pie is exactly the pot pie you picture when you think about scoring
a quick bite from the freezer aisle. It's cheaper than most, it's smaller than most,
and you're not going to encounter any bells or whistles with this choice. It gets the job done,
and it does so in less time than the larger pies, requiring just about 30 minutes in the oven.
Banquet suggests you cut a slit on the upper crust before baking so it doesn't explode,
but there isn't much risk of that. The rippled rim of this pot pie is rarely
intact by the time you get it home, so most Banquet pot pies already have areas for steam
to escape. In other words, this isn't one you should be presenting to anyone
you're trying to impress. It's a quick meal for time-crunched days and that's
about it. One benefit it did have over its competition in the budget category:
We found the chicken chunks larger in the Banquet pies than in the low-price competitors.
It's not often that the photo on the front of a food product undersells its most advertised
ingredient, but Marie Callender's cheesy chicken & bacon pot pie is an exception. Yes, there's
broccoli inside, and yes, there's bacon inside, but there's TONS of cheese inside that oozes out
at every opportunity. That could be a good or bad thing, depending on your current craving.
"I need something with cheese!"
If you're desperate for a brick of melted cheese and want to make yourself feel better
by pretending you're eating some meat and vegetables with it, pop this in the oven.
If you're actually hoping to taste some chicken or veggies, this is not the pot pie for you.
The chicken and veggies are there somewhere, but all you're going to taste is the cheddar,
and you're not going to see much of anything else either unless you're
really on the lookout. On top of that, it's difficult for the crust to stand up
to all this hot cheese. It's not really a legitimate chicken pot pie, but if you're
looking to win points with a cheese-lover in your life, it's sure to win them over.
Swanson is another budget brand in the frozen food space, and we rate it slightly higher than
Banquet, at least for frozen chicken pot pies. Many markets will only carry one or the other, but
if you have both at hand, we recommend reaching for Swanson for one specific reason alone: the
chicken. Even if there appears to be more chicken in a Banquet pie, Swanson's are slightly better.
Truth be told, there are very few differences between Banquet and Swanson chicken pot pies,
and that's likely because they're both owned by Conagra Brands and share similar production,
packaging, and distribution. They look the same and cook the same,
but there is a tiny difference that makes a big impact to us, and that's that Swanson
uses ground chicken rather than mechanically separated chicken. That means it comes less
from bone and tissue and more from meat and muscle. This slight difference in ingredients
may also account for why Swanson's otherwise identical chicken pot pie also packs lower
counts of sodium, cholesterol, and carbohydrates than Banquet, though it's higher in fat.
Hopefully, you noticed the quirky spelling of chick'n in this product's name. If you're a
vegetarian, we're sure you did because you're used to seeing the names of meats manipulated
every which way to indicate that they're not really meat. And such is the case with this,
the only truly vegetarian chicken pot pie on our list. Marie Callender's chick'n pot pie
uses Gardein plant-based meat in place of genuine chicken, and fills the rest
of the pie with the traditional carrots and peas, adding celery and onion pieces, too.
A word of caution for the casual vegetarians and meat reductionists. If you're not accustomed to
meat substitutes, you aren't likely to love chick'n at first bite. Unlike seemingly
every other random meat on the planet, chick'n does not taste like chicken.
"Everything tastes like chicken!"
The texture is also substantially different from any bite of real chicken you've ever
had. You are likely to be somewhat put off by this meat alternative if this pot pie is your
first introduction to it. Conversely, there's not much of it within the pie,
so you could easily avoid it. But then, why would you buy this individual portion? Still,
we applaud this inclusion in Marie Callender's frozen pot pie lineup, and do think it deserves
some points for making a meat alternative dish like chick'n accessible to a wider audience.
Marie Callender's has a pretty solid stronghold on the frozen pot pie market,
so you're likely to find more innovations from this brand than others at your local
supermarket. Among the pot pies on our list that are still firmly in the chicken category,
this creamy mushroom chicken pot pie offers the most creative adaptation of the classic chicken
pot pie without leaving behind any important elements. You really have to love mushrooms
to love this pie, though, and mushrooms aren't universal favorites, so we've placed it toward
the middle of our ranking since its primary flavor profile is likely to be somewhat divisive.
The gravy here is creamier than most frozen pot pie gravies, and while you'll still find
carrot chunks in this one, it swaps peas in favor of green beans, which complement the
mushrooms better by ditching the subtle sweetness of the pea for the earthiness of the bean. Solid
mushrooms are enhanced by mushroom powder in the gravy, all adding up to a chicken pot pie that
may help you feel like more of an adult while enjoying this instead of a classic pot pie,
even if you did just grab this from the freezer and toss it in the microwave.
Depending where you live, you may not be able to find these chicken pot pie bites because
they are from the store brand of northeast grocery chain ShopRite. But successful store
brands are not all that different from each other, so chances are good you'll
be able to come across something similar if you pop into a large supermarket near you.
Rather than a single pie, the Bowl & Basket chicken pot pie bites offer all the flavors of a
chicken pot pie on a small puff pastry. While some appetizers of this size aren't often that good,
these are surprisingly pleasing. They truly offer the full flavor spectrum of chicken, veggies,
and gravy, and the puff pastry adds a flaky crust that you just won't get from traditional frozen
pot pies. Inside the box, they're arranged in an oven-safe plastic tray that goes right onto
a baking sheet without requiring any individual handling. While they're definitely not stuffed
with additional breading, popping an entire bite in your mouth does give the sensation
of a Thanksgiving meal on a pastry, and it's hard to get much more soul-warming than that.
Why this pot pie does not have bacon in its name is a serious missed opportunity
because it's a great addition to the pie and definitely the prominent flavor of every bite.
"Mmmmm… bacon."
We think adding a corn chowder profile to a chicken pot pie is already a genius move, but
the addition of bacon crumbles takes this one over the top, if pork is part of your diet. Admittedly,
you won't see quite as many bacon pieces in the pie as you do on the photo on the front of the
box, but you'll definitely taste them, with an almost smoky pork quality permeating the gravy.
If you're worried about digging into this pie to find a soupy, soggy mess inside, fear not. The
contents of Marie Callender's chicken corn chowder pot pie still resemble more of a traditional pot
pie gravy than a runnier chowder consistency, and that's great news for the durability of the crust,
too. In fact, we found this one to be packed with more solids than most of the other pies, making it
one of the least liquid pies in the freezer, so this is yet another win for this pot pie.
As far as the classic chicken pot pie goes, the Boston Market chicken pot pie is the best you'll
find in supermarket freezers. With big chunks of all-white meat chicken and the corn, carrots,
and peas you're probably looking for, Boston Market includes celery and onions, too. The gravy
is creamier than most, likely due to the welcome addition of half and half to the chicken stock.
Even if you somehow failed to detect all of these little upgrades, it's impossible not to
notice this pot pie's superior crust, and not just because it's the only one that comes with
a fun design around the rim. This pie crust is noticeably more flavorful. Despite being frozen,
this crust manages to deliver an element of freshness and is simultaneously more savory and
slightly sweeter than other brands' crusts, which nearly all come across as flavorless when compared
to Boston Market's. This one takes longer to bake than all the others, but it's well worth the wait.