Around $3.50
420 calories
180 calories from fat
340 grams
About 8 minutes cooking time

Stouffer’s has apparently caught wind of what other frozen meals have been doing lately regarding marketing. You can see on the front of the box they’re selling this frozen ‘delight’ as a healthy choice (note their billing of: 1.‘No Preservatives.’ 2. Olive Oil and Sea Salt. 3. A fresh Carrot on the box! My response: 1. It’s frozen. 2. Rachel Ray bandwagon. 3. That carrot looks nothing like what I got in my frozen meal.). While I laud making a healthier frozen meal, I think they’re going a little overboard with the “Farmers’ Harvest” tag. If you make something that’s good you don’t need hyperbolic packaging.

The chicken is pretty good despite not resembling what’s advertised on the box. No cartilage thus far (none of the chicken wound up with that Chicken McNugget “suprise” where you take a bite of what looks like normal chicken and you get a fist-sized chunk of gristle or cartilage. Definitely one of the most unappetizing aspects of reconstituted chicken, you know, aside from the whole process of reconstituting chicken parts into the proverbial ‘chicken boot’ [of course I couldn't find a picture of the proverbial McNugget boot shape, but suffice it to say that McNuggets are shaped like little boots. Next time you have one, look for it.]), and it’s kind of moist. Their blend of herbs and spices, primarily parsley and sea salt, are satisfactory. You won’t be calling your mother telling her about your amazingly flavored frozen meal, but I have had far worse. The bowtie pasta is alright, nothing stands out positively or negatively. The vegetables (green beans, carrots, and red pepper) are actually some of the best I’ve had from a frozen meal. The veggies taste fairly fresh (considering their circumstances), retaining a bit of crispness and they’re a little bit buttery (I’d hazard to guess that’s the vegetable oil that the box lauds).

I tasted each component seperately for the purposes of this review, but as you can see above I like to get all of the pieces together in a war of textures and flavors. You can certainly eat this meal without adding anything to it, but I’m a fiend for hotsauce so after my initial impressions I added a little bit of Louisiana Hot Sauce on top. Considering this is a frozen meal, and not freshly prepared I would recommend this for anyone that needs an easy meal they can heat up in the microwave.

Stouffer’s you get a Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars for this one (based on quality of components, flavors, and cost). Neither great nor bad, but totally edible.

-Matt in Tampa

IMPORTANT UPDATE! Here are the boot nuggets:http://www.flickr.com/photos/kingpowercinema/89053032/

Components of Today’s meal:
Grilled Chicken chunks
Linguini noodles
Broccoli
Red Bell Peppers
Alfredo Sauce

The nicest thing about the Healthy Choice Café Steamers (referred to as “Steamers” from here on out) is that they deliver on their packaging. The picture on the box features larger bell peppers than you actually receive and the color of the ‘alfredo’ sauce is quite muted from the almost neon-“MacNCheez” color it actually has, but other than that, the picture is fairly accurate.

The above mixture is prior to mixing. It lets you see the components of the meal a little more clearly, and frankly it looks a little more appetizing prior to it being mixed. As you can see the Broccoli sports a vibrant color and the chicken actually appears to be ‘chunks’ of tenderloin instead of reprocessed left-overs crammed into a ‘nugget’.

Post-mix doesn’t look as appetizing to me, but nor is it disgusting. The one thing that I’m not a fan of is how overly bright orange the sauce is. I really feel like I’m about to tear into a classy version of Kraft “MacNCheez”.

As the product line’s name states, the food is a fairly healthy choice. The nutritional facts don’t try any shyster non-sense by stating that there are 2 or 3 servers to the package. (Honestly, who opens a can of Coke, drinks half, and then decides that’s enough for the day and tosses it back in the fridge?) This particular meal weighs in at 250 calories and represents a moderate spread of the daily nutrients you should consume. The only negative to these meals are the actual ingredient list; there are about 70 items listed under ingredients and appear as if the makers are attempting to construct a bomb out of your food.

With the first bite I get noodles, broccoli and chicken. The ‘alfredo’ is fairly starchy without much of a flavor kick, the most apparent attribute is that it’s creamy. The broccoli holds up very well in the meal, it’s got some crispy bite to it and yet is still tender. The chicken is mediocre and there is a bit of fat in 2 of my bites. The noodles are fairly sweet but aren’t gummy or over/under-done. I don’t feel like I’m attacking Cthulu while eating, so it’s a decent experience.

After finishing the bowl, I’m fairly satisfied. The meal came in at about $2.30 and is an excellent price for a frozen meal. For what this is, the meal delivered. Steamers have held a soft-spot in my heart as they’ve been one of the few frozen meals that I can eat on a consistent basis. The best I can say about this meal is that I neither look forward to it, nor do I dread it.

On the whole the meal rates Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars stars as a frozen meal.

-Matt in the Cube.

Ahh, spicy noodles. There is something to be said for making mediocre things spicy, because when you spice it up you won’t notice much else. When making ramen (or ramyun) I like to include fresh vegetables like carrots, celery, leaks, green onions, and pretty much anything else that’s green. For this to turn out well, you really need to cook the noodles on a stove and get the vegetables in the pot prior to the water boiling. If I’m looking to have some protein with the meal I will usually toss an egg in when the water is boiling and let it cook for a minute and a half to two minutes. Unfortunately at work, we don’t have a stove.

Looking at the packaging it looks like I’m going to get to eat a bunch of fucked up vegetables. What is that pink shit, some kind of pickled non-sense? Likewise, there is something in there that looks like a buckeye (it’s a type of nut), which I’m pretty sure is inedible. On the down side, all you receive is a package of dehydrated vegetables (in this case, seaweed and carrots). On the plus side, you don’t have to find out what “Pink” tastes like in a soup.

Checking out the back of the noodles, you see that Nong Shim is trying to pull a fast one on you. There are 2 servings per package of noodles! Of course there are! I believe this guerrilla-tactic in Nutritional Facts is perpetrated to make it appear that you’re not eating about 100% of your daily sodium intake in one meal. Apparently the noodles are made of salt, and then fried in salt, and then the noodles are pulled out of the fryer and then… they’re salted. There might be one too many “and then”’s in that sentence but I’m sticking to it.

The end-product actually looks and smells fairly delicious. An aroma of the sea drifts out of the bowl along with the spicy scent of whatever is in the “flavor pack”. Unlike some other ramens, the Sea Food Flavor primarily sports seaweed that did a nice job of expanding and rehydrating in the water. On the first bite, you get a hint of the spicy flavor. After a sip of the broth and a couple shovel loads of the noodles, the heat really starts to build up. If you can’t handle heat in your food I would advise steering clear of these. For any seasoned spicy-food veteran this will be a flavorful walk in the park.

One word of advice, don’t let the noodles sit too long in the broth otherwise they will begin to resemble (and taste like) bloated grubs in the mud. Yeah, I see a lot of bloated grubs… in mud. What can I say? It’s Florida.

In closing, I enjoyed the noodles but this wouldn’t make a good or healthy meal on a regular basis. The overall meal rated Rating: 3 out of 5 stars out of the package. It could get a bump by including fresh vegetables and an egg while cooking. Oh, also the package costs about $1-1.50 depending on where you go.

-Matt in Tampa

When you look at the box, it paints a pretty picture of these noodles. As a seasoned TV veteran, I understand that Bullshit and Marketing go hand in hand. This package is certainly no derivation from the norm:

My my, now doesn’t that look delicious. Fresh vegetables on top, vibrant looking noodles, all mixed with a smooth sauce. Hell this looks like something you could eat daily! That is, until you look at the Nutrional Facts. Calorically, this isn’t that bad.. sitting at 320 calories for the entire box. The kicker is that the sodium is at 42% of your daily value. The one plus, is that this is about half of what many other ramyun noodles tote; Nong Shim’s NeoGuri Spicy Seafood ramyun noodles sit at a nice 86% of your daily sodium per package (in fact most of the values are double, one thing to note, the Nong Shim noodles make far more food). Enough of the calorie counting, onto the food!

Well that certainly isn’t as impressive as the box. Please note, both pictures were taken in the same lighting. As you stir the noodles to mix in the dehydrated vegetables with the Terikyucky sauce you need to really put some elbow grease into seperating the noodles. The essence-of-vegetable dots the noodles along with the murky teriyucky sauce. The plus is that this meal took 1 minute to microwave and about 5 minutes to eat. The flavor isn’t awful, a bit on the overly sweet side and lacking any kind of kick and the texture of the noodles is kind of what you’d expect from the apperance (sticky, almost gummy). I’m not astounded and I’m not puking. There’s no MSG so this makes a decent at-work meal if you didn’t have time to prepare something for yourself. For the environmentally conscious, the container is made of a biodegradable cornstarch tray. At slightly over $3.50 a pop, I’ll stick with a PB&J next time.

-Matt in his Cubicle.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars