Looking to eat a frozen dinner from Stouffer's?
We've got the details on the good, the bad and the ugly.
Plastic-tasting veggies?
Metallic chicken?
No, thanks!
Keep watching for the best.
But first, the worst.
When you first dip your fork into the pot pie, the flakiness of the crust is impressive.
And in all fairness, Stouffer's absolutely nailed the crust.
But beyond that, the pot pie is just flat out gross.
The first jolt of flavor you get is a salty creaminess from the sauce inside.
But it quickly gives way to a gamey poultry flavor, followed by metal.
The white meat chicken pot pie bakes for an hour in the oven, so the metal has some time
to seep into the sauce.
If you're jonesing for pot pie, there's better stuff in your frozen foods aisle.
Presumably, this is supposed to remind people of a Sunday night dinner at grandma's house,
where you'd come in from the cold after a long day of playing freeze tag and warm up
with some good old fashioned comfort food.
"Hi, Grandma!"
And the effect is reached with this Stouffer's frozen entrée – if every recipe your grandma
made started with the instruction to "open a can of Campbell's soup."
There's a certain creamy hominess to grandma's chicken and vegetable bake, though, thanks
to the rich, fatty texture of comfort food.
But we can also question the validity of calling anything a "bake" that cooks in eighteen minutes.
For example, the breadcrumbs that Stouffer's throws on top of this have about as much crunch
as a tortilla chip at the end of a party.
The chicken is also chunked and formed.
It's white-meat chicken that's processed and made into cubes.
The result is that some pieces of chicken are pretty good and others taste like balls
of gristle.
The butter flavor in this entrée's sauce is so overpowering it makes you feel like
you're eating a melted butter stick.
There are some veggies and chunked-and-formed chicken in there too, though you don't really
taste them.
And the overwhelming, artificial richness makes this tough to finish.
If there's one saving grace of Stouffer's chicken à la king, it might be the rice.
It's actually got a perfect texture, and when eaten sans the à la king, it's pretty good.
It's a bit bland to stand on its own, even though it has flecks of what we assume are
tomatoes and scallions.
But when bland rice is the best thing about a dish, it's probably something you should
give a miss.
In case you were wondering, "escalloped" in this dish means the chicken is cut particularly
thin.
The buttery sauce in this entrée is commendable, and its talents are almost wasted on the chewy
meat and plastic-tasting vegetables.
Like most Stouffer's frozen dinners, this one has heavy sodium in every bite, but the
butter eases that a little bit and the thick noodles give this a nice texture.
The escalloped chicken pieces are a little chewy, and maybe not the best part of the
entrée.
Then again, for frozen, microwaved chicken, I guess we shouldn't expect too much.
And as cream-based frozen dinners go, you could do a lot worse.
The first thing that hits you when biting into Stouffer's green pepper steak is an overwhelming
sweetness but in its list of unpronounceable chemicals, there's nothing that implies the
dish has been sweetened.
If you like sweet beef or sweet Chinese dishes, you may actually enjoy the green pepper steak.
The tomatoes and peppers have actual vegetable flavor, though they, too, are a lot sweeter
than you'd expect.
The steak isn't bad, but it's cut so rectangular and flat that they look unnatural.
It's also hard to discern the quality, since the sauce is so overpowering it could cover
even the most rancid piece of meat.
All of these odd flavors are mixed with a big pile of mush pretending to be white rice.
This dish isn't much for texture, but it's not painfully rich either.
So while it's not all that enjoyable, at least it won't leave you feeling sick.
"Made with love, the way Mrs. Stouffer made it."
There's a certain delight that comes with cutting into a chicken parmesan at a nice
Italian restaurant.
For example, Olive Garden, where the hot, crispy parmesan crust gives way to your knife
and the following bite is a combination of hot, crispy breading and soft, tender meat
that makes it absolute heaven.
This is not the case, however, with Stouffer's chicken parm.
The bite tastes a little like a chicken breast covered in a piece of soggy white bread, with
tomato sauce and cheese drizzled on top.
And while it is, in its own way, satisfying, it's nowhere near the chicken parm experience
one usually expects.
The flavor isn't bad, and the tomato sauce on the noodles has a lot more tomato flavor
than you'll find in other Stouffer's dishes.
Along the same line, the chicken breast in this dish is far and away the best chicken
of any Stouffer's frozen dinner.
Low bar?
Sure.
But if you want to skip the noodles and have a low-carb dinner, this isn't a bad move.
Texture is not exactly the strong suit of Stouffer's spaghetti and meatballs.
Taking a forkful of the noodles, sauce, and balls is an altogether mushy experience, and
while this might be somewhat enjoyable for those who have trouble chewing, if you're
into mouthfeel you'll want to look elsewhere.
The sauce is thick, and as it melds with the processed noodles it creates an almost creamy
experience, which is odd for a red sauce-based entrée.
That said, the tomato flavor is pretty solid, though it tastes exactly like you probably
remember processed tomato entrées tasting: a lot of salt, a lot of thin tomato, but big
enough that you know what you're eating.
The meatballs are made up of a beef and pork blend, according to the ingredients.
But it might as well be soy paste, pea paste, or soylent green for all you can tell from
eating them.
They're not bad, necessarily.
And definitely not gross.
But if you're trying to sink your teeth into a big, juicy Italian meatball, well, opting
for a three-dollar frozen dinner was probably not the best option.
Alfredo sauce, believe it or not, isn't really a part of Italian cuisine.
Sure, you can find it on the menu in almost any Italian-American restaurant, but according
to HuffPost, the sauce only dates back about 100 years to a restaurant in Rome.
There, restaurateur Alfredo di Lelio developed a pretty simple dish of pasta and butter for
his pregnant wife and later put it on the menu.
Douglas Fairbanks tried some when he was in Rome on his honeymoon, it became a hit among
Hollywood jetsetters.
Stouffer's offering is, well, not even remotely like the stuff Douglas Fairbanks and Mary
Pickford fell in love with on their honeymoon in Rome.
First of all, it has broccoli, which tastes surprisingly like broccoli for a vegetable
found in a frozen dinner.
It's also creamy as opposed to buttery, though we can't fault Stouffer's here since that's
more or less become the American adaptation.
The chicken and noodles both have excellent texture, and though the dish isn't gourmet,
it hits all the notes you expect in an alfredo.
You'll leave satisfied, and at the end of the day, that's all that really matters.
Salisbury steak is a close cousin to that great American classic, the hamburger, though
it differs in that it's got a lot more stuff in the patty, like breadcrumbs, eggs, onions,
and sauces, according to The Recipe Critic.
But as Stouffer's frozen dinners go, it might be the easiest one to make your own version
of at home, if you're not opposed to handling raw meat.
Though Stouffer's Salisbury steak isn't bad, there's nothing all that special about it.
And as it's basically a ramped up meat patty, you're not getting much in this frozen version
that you wouldn't in a fresh one.
If you insist on going frozen for your Salisbury steak, however, Stouffer's is a winner.
Unlike the meatballs in some other meaty frozen entrées, the steak here has a lot of flavor,
and could stand on its own even without the rich brown sauce.
The sauce might be the best thing on the tray, though, and if you finish your steak early
we might suggest sopping some up with bread.
The mac and cheese on the other side of the tray is about on par with any boxed mac and
cheese you'll find at the supermarket.
If you're a vegetarian and have been perusing this list and thinking Stouffer's doesn't
have anything for you, think again!
Stouffer's has not forgotten about you, our vegetarian friends.
The Veggie Lovers Lasagna is full of carrots, spinach, and broccoli, and if you try really
hard, you can actually find them inside.
While we applaud Stouffer's efforts at having something other than mac and cheese for vegetarians,
calling this quote "veggie lovers" is a bit of a stretch.
If you love veggies, it probably means you love the crisp, cool taste of a carrot and
the crunch that comes with eating it.
In this lasagna, you will not taste veggies.
Which means it might be a smart way to get kids to eat them.
Pro tip: Bake this instead of microwaving for better noodles and delicious burnt cheese
on the outside of the tray.
If you're spending your Sunday assembling an entire living room of Ikea furniture and
want to try and recreate that Ikea store magic at home, Stouffer's Swedish Meatballs are
a good place to start.
You'll have to heat them for three-and-a-half minutes, take the tray out, stir it up again,
and heat it for another five.
The meatballs taste considerably meatier than their spaghetti . And the onion and mushroom
sauce over the noodles is also rich with flavor.
Stouffer's has captured the essence of the Swedish meatball here, while not the best,
it's definitely a top tier frozen dinner.
Wine sauce in a frozen dinner is an ambitious trick, and while we wouldn't compare this
to anything you'd find in an Italian restaurant, Stouffer's does a pretty commendable job.
Mushrooms are really the key in any good marsala, and the ones here are surprisingly flavorful.
They enrich the flavor of the sauce, which definitely gives off marsala notes in a rich,
buttery base.
The chicken in Stouffer's chicken and mushroom marsala might be the unsung hero of the dish,
though, and definitely the biggest pleasant surprise.
The whole-breast slices have a texture that's not at all chewy like in some other dishes.
And while we'd hesitate to say it could stand on its own, at the very least it's not dragging
the dish down.
Though we never expect a whole lot from a frozen entrée, this one still exceeds expectations.
And if you're a fan of this dish in restaurants, you won't hate this frozen interpretation.
"Just a delicious meal, the way you'd make it.
Stouffer's."
It takes a staggering 16 minutes to make these stuffed peppers in the microwave.
You'll also be doing some actual "cooking" too, as the directions tell you to baste the
peppers in sauce about seven minutes into this frozen food journey.
Though it might not be the overall winner in flavor, the two generous peppers are filled
with a considerable amount of rice and beef.
The peppers actually taste like peppers, the beef and rice are seasoned just enough to
know they're there.
And the red sauce gives a nice tomato overlay to the whole thing.
The only drawback is that the sauce is a little thin.
But the rest of the meal is so hearty, you'll barely even notice.
Before we get into the superlatives for our top-ranked Stouffer's frozen dinner, a word
to the wise: If you bake this one, open up the oven about 20 minutes into the 56-minute
bake time and make sure the sauce is covering the noodles.
If you do that, you're in for a treat with Stouffer's lasagna with meat and sauce.
Assuming you have time, baking it is the way to go.
You'll be greeted with a lovely ring of crispy, burnt cheese along the outside of the tray.
Take a forkful of that and dive into a sea of rich, red sauce below.
The meat cooks with the sauce to give it a far more robust flavor than you'll find in
any other tomato-based Stouffer's frozen dinner.
The meat isn't all that noticeable, which may be a negative to some, but it's the odd
Stouffer's frozen dinner with some legitimate texture and a lot of taste, and for that,
it gets the top spot.
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