Critique: Banquet's Salisbury Steak Meal!

Banquet occasionally puts together a decent frozen meal. The key word here is occasionally. Other offerings are a culinary kiss of death, if you are older and are watching your salt intake! That said, let us venture forward!

Banquet's Salisbury Steak Meal, Now with Mac & Cheese caught my eye while perusing the offering in the frozen food isle at a local grocery. Gosh, it was only a buck and nine cents, a gold mine these days!Quickly, I grabbed one and went bravely onto the next isle..

Once I got home, the smallish meal went into the freezer. There it sat in lonely solitary as I ate up much more healthy choices. Then, one evening, I came up short. There wasn't much in the fridge and so I investigated the freezer compartment. Ah! There in a corner was my little Banquet meal a deal. Out it came and squinting at the small print I readied it for the microwave...

Preparing most Banquet offering are pretty simple; slit the film, nuke for 2 minutes, reseal and nuke for 2 more minutes. Here is what it saw after placing the plastic tray on my plate;

Welcome to the 21st Century, brave souls! Way back in the 70's, I think I saw this very same image on a NASA Apollo mission. Now, here in 2015, I was faced with the same sort of crap!

OK, at only 300 calories, this did fit into my diet plan. But, then I noticed that the sodium level was an astounding 1,110 mg! Ah, no wonder it tasted pretty good! It was the salt!

Well, lesson learned! Some of Banquets meal are not bad - others are best consumed by twenty somethings. I scored this one at an 8 for taste, but don't plan on buying it ever again!

Critique: Rigatoni & Italian Sausage with Meatballs!

In past posts, I've often hammered the Banquet brand, (and for good reason). This critique will not be along the sames lines. Yeah..

For lack of a better descriptor, I'll call these products from Banquet, Mini Meals. This particular meal deal was billed as a 'Rigatoni & Italian Sausage with Meatballs'! Oh yummy! As with most of Banquets $1 meals, I've generally found them best to consumed when you are also somewhat consumed with alcohol!

The directions were pretty easy, as is the case for most of the Banquet dollar offerings. Slit the film, nuke for 2 minutes, open the film and stir and the seal and nuke for 2 more minutes. I found I could even do that!

OK, for a pasta and meat meal deal, I do confess to have enjoyed the taste! And, lo and behold! The sodium was only 650 mg which nicely complimented the also low calorie count of 300! Likewise saturated fats were about 20% and so very livable.

Be still, my heart! But, I think I may just order this one again! Gave it a solid 8!

Critique: Bean with Bacon soup!

Many years ago, when I was younger and even dumber than I am today, my father introduced me to a can of Campbell's Bean with Bacon soup, something I never would have tried myself. Today, it has become one of the very few enduring foods that I really enjoy from time to time.

Today, I cannot afford to buy the name brand product. I have to resort to purchasing a can of Best Choice at $1.29 for an eleven ounce can. Even that's a bit expensive in this Obama economy and so I only enjoy it once or so a month.

Preparation is as easy as it could get; just dump the contest into a small pot, add a can full of water, stir and heat to boiling. Your done and ready to enjoy a unique taste sensation! Each ½ cup serving contain 140 calories and no one I know eats just a cup – the average total servings are 2.5 1/2 cup servings, so I always eat about half or 190 grams at a sitting. This would equate to about 200 calories and that's OK with me. The only down side is the sodium which comes in at an astronomical 980 mg per serving. [That's 41% of a healthy person's recommended daily intake of salt from just this one product]!

On a scale of 10, I gave this a solid 8 and would highly recommend that everyone give it a try!

Schwan's chicken breast #451!

Their take: Schwan's hand trimmed, 4 oz. chicken breast filet's are fire grilled over an open flame to seal in juices. They are perfect for a grilled chicken breast sandwich, sliced over a salad or center of the plate with a side of mashed potatoes and gravy.

If you like chicken breasts, and who doesn't, Schwan's offers up their item #451 (which reminds me of that old movie Fahrenheit 451). Like the movie, heat at 400 plus, is involved both in the cooking of this frozen offering and evidently in the destruction of books! I'll take the chicken meal-a-deal every time!

On this date, I took a frozen chicken breast from my freezer and placed it in an oven that had been preheated to 400°F. (A temperature that I have been assured would not ignite paper or books). As per the instructions, I laid it on a foil-lined cookie sheet which was then covered by another layer of foil. And then in the spirit of the movie, I slathered on some hot sauce! This was cooked for about 25 minutes, after which I let it stand for a couple more before dining on down. My sides for this repast were a California Mix, also from Schwan's!

As has been my experience with most everything from Schwan's, the meat was perfectly moist and delicious! At just 140 calories per serving, this offering from Schwan's works for just about any diet.

Critique: Marie Callender's Salisbury Steak!

To date, I've written several critiques covering Salisbury steak offerings from; Healthy Choice (Score = 8), Lean Gourmet (a 7), Michelina (a not so solid 7) and Banquet (also a 7). Other than price differences, these meals tested as OK to eat, just nothing to go out of your way for. But, this day, I was going to sample the offering from Marie Callender and I was looking forward to the experience!

According to the box - “Marie Callender's^® classic Salisbury steak is worth savoring. It's topped with a traditional brown gravy, and served alongside oven-roasted red-skin potatoes. The meal also includes broccoli and cauliflower smothered in a creamy cheese sauce. “ Sounded pretty darn good to me. But, then again, every TV dinner I've ever tried sounded good text-wise! The cost of this meal was $2.99 when I purchased it at a local grocery store in the Forsyth Missouri area. I'd eaten this brand before and other than the Healthy Choice series, found it to be generally acceptable. The problem with the HC offering is the high cost, even considering you get an upscale nutritional mix that is generally low in salt.

The directions for preparing this meal deal were straight forward. You remove the tray from the box, slit the plastic over the veggies, nuke on high for 4, open and stir the potatoes, re-close and nuke for another 3 minutes or so. Easy greasy and just the right degree of difficulty for the slower minded among us. That'd be me!

After the required amount of time in the microwave, I sat down to enjoy yet another, in a long line of frozen TV dinners. A history that began for me in the sixties, was interrupted for a time after I learned how to cook, and then was resumed when I became to lazy and too old to want to bother with preparing really good nutritional foods.

Speaking of nutrition, the label wasn't too shocking. About 420 calories with a small mountain of salt added for taste. Salt, you know, is added to a food to help make it more palatable. (Cave women used it a lot when they served what was, in effect, rotting meat to their men). Today's modern man or women of age who eat this stuff are practically begging for a good case of hypertension....

here's the skinny on the contents; the potatoes were helped out with a splash of A1 sauce and were OK, the broccoli and cauliflower veggies in that creamy sauce were actually pretty good and that Salisbury steak...well it's really not a steak at all but just plain old meatloaf. Something to put into your mouth and chew on.

I gave this $3 excursion into the frozen food wastelands an 8! Hooray! It's one of the best of the lot!

Critique: Schwan's Meat Lasagna!

According to Schwan's – Their #709 Meat Lasagna at $5.49, is 'convenient, great tasting, Italian-style lasagna made just for you! This lasagna is made from scratch, with curly edge pasta noodles, three layers of rich meat sauce, and a four cheese filling featuring Ricotta, Parmesan, Romano and Mozzarella. Same formula as our Family Size Lasagna (#716). Perfect for a scrumptious lunch or dinner entrée!'

In the small package, you get two one cup servings that total about 340 calories! The directions are simple; just make 5 small slits in the plastic cover and plop it into a preheated oven set at 375°F for 32 minutes, then remove the plastic cover and cook for an additional 12-15 minutes. The internal temperature should be 165°F or higher. There are also directions for preparation in the microwave.

A customer review: LOVE THIS !!! YUMMMMM!! Date:March 16, 2012

" I grew up in an Italian neighborhood and ate homemade lasagna a lot. Next to what I ate then, this is as close as I have ever come. I cook in microwave, and after it is done I leave it in there for five minutes or so. Result: YUMMMMM !!! "

My take on this meal was that for the money, it is a phenomenal deal. The taste was superb, the noodles cooked to perfection and I was tempted to eat both serving at one sitting! I gave this meal a solid 8 on a scale of 10 and plan to order it often!

Schwan's mini Deep Dish Pizza a failure?

I recently purchased a box of 6 'crispy, 5-inch deep dish crust is loaded with slices of premium, smoky pepperoni, along with creamy, 100% real Mozzarella cheese.' And, while the taste was awesome (a solid 8), and they are super easy to prepare (just 2 ½ minutes in the microwave), there was also definitely a flaw!

At 460 calories each, these little gems are Diet Busters of the first order! For someone on a 1500 calorie per day diet, I just can't afford to eat more than one a week! While each little pie constitutes a complete meal, they go down my throat in a heartbeat! Still, for a late night snack, they cannot be beat, and at just $10.64 for the box, they are a pretty decent deal!

Critique: Marie Callender's Country Fried Chicken and Gravy!

I've commented on some if the Marie Callender products in the past and can say, without a doubt that this is one of her better creations! You get just about everything a hungry man would want in a meal. There's that chicken breast thing sitting pretty as you please in a pile of mashed pertaters along side of which is a hearty helping of corn! And at only 560 calories, this meal won't break the diet budget!

While tasty! This meal has over a 1000 mg of sodium!

The directions are simple. (Something I insist on if I'm going to go to the bother with when preparing a TV dinner). You just slash the plastic over the corn and the little packet of gravy, nuke everything for about 4 minutes, lift the plastic and stir the potatoes while rotating the chicken a quarter turn, reseal and then give her

another shot on high for about 3 minutes. Simple enough even for an aging gnome like myself. And while I can't remember what I payed for it, I know it was either on sale or under three bucks. I'm too cheap to spend much more than that.

Taste wise, this meal hit all the marks! The chicken was moist, the taters tasted like taters and the corn was sweet! I gave this a solid 8 on a scale of 10!

Oven baked hot chicken legs!

I decided to bake some chicken legs in the oven on this day rather than to try and cook them out on a grill on what was a very windy day! This little recipe is easy, fun and fast to do. It can also be easily up-scaled to larger numbers of legs for families and such!

I started this hot chicken leg effort by preheating my oven to 350°.

Ready to go into the oven!

While the oven was heating, I washed three chicken legs and dried them thoroughly with paper towels so that the flavorings and the oil would stick better. I then brushed on a bit of olive oil over each leg, added some hot sauce with a little black pepper and cayenne pepper and then placed them into a Tupperware ceramic pot. I baked these, uncovered, for 30 minutes, then turned them over and went for 20 minutes longer. Have patience, we're almost there...

Finally, I increased the oven temperature to 400° - removed the legs from the pot with tongs and placed them on top of a foil covered cookie sheet. I then baked them for about 20 minutes longer, turning them over after 10 minutes, until they were nicely browned on both sides. As a last thought, I drizzled a bit more of the hot sauce over the legs as they cooled down! Serves 1 to 2 adults.

My Thoughts: Overall, not a bad tasting chicken recipe. The chicken was well cooked, but they weren't as hot as I would have preferred, (the fresh sauce did provide a bit of a kick)! I ate these with blue cheese dressing as a side, broccoli and a small salad for a total of about 400 calories! A good combination!

Critique: Lean Cuisine Steak Portabello!

At a sale price of just $2.50, this frozen entree from Lean Cuisine sported a couple of words that I really relate to; the word steak and the bastardization of the word portabelly. I love anything that's steak and happen to sport the other around my waist! And just check out that picture! (How can a mere mortal like myself NOT want to embrace such a sumptuous meal)?

So, I brought this 'incred-a-deal' and got it home post haste. And even though the package looked, how can I say it... a bit on the petite side, I was sure that it would satisfy the hungry man inside me. Well, shouldn't it?

At first glance, the 150 calorie content was bliss to a man on a diet, and while the sodium was a bit high at 450 milligrams, I was still a go! (I just figured that out there in the land of cheap deal meals, they had to use a lot of salt to make it taste...edible). Was I wrong to think that?

The Land of Reality

OK, here is what the dinner looked like after following the simple instruction of making a slit in the plastic and nuking on high for four and half minutes! Sweet! And you know what, I actually liked what I saw! Sure, the amounts were very small (especially the steak), but the taste was all that I could hope for. This creation gets a solid 8 on a scale of 10 and yeah, I'll plan to buy it again in the near future.

Critique: Gorton's Grilled Tilapia!

I thought it to be way past time to try out a fish dish and so I made it a point to pick up a box or two of Gorton's Grilled Tilapia at the grocery. One of the boxes contained Tilapia which is a mainly freshwater fish that inhabits shallow streams, ponds, rivers and lakes and which is now grown commercially. They have been served as far back as 2000 years ago! On a good note, they are very low in mercury, and on a bad note they are not very high in Omega-3 fatty acids. Oh well...

According to the package instructions you preheat an oven to 400°F and bake them in a shallow pan for 18 to 20 minutes. Easy greasy! I like to eat my fish with a dab or two of a 'special' sauce. Interestingly this sauce was being served over 2000 years ago and is still popular today. The ingredients are mentioned in the collection of ancient Roman recipes called the Apicius and are a combination of 'liquamen (Garum), pepper, cayenne, eggs, lemon, olive oil, white wine, anchovies, onions, tarragon, pickled cucumbers, parsley, chervil, hard boiled eggs, capers, green peppers and mustard. Give up? We call it tartar sauce and, like the ancient Romans, I feel it is a must have addition whenever I eat fish!

After cooking, I sat down at the dinner table, added a bit of the aforementioned sauce and dug in. (For a side, I had prepared a package of 'country mix' vegetables which I thought added greatly to the overall look of this dish)! The calories for just the fish came in at a modest 80. I also got 25 mg of Omega-3 fatty acids which was better than a sharp stick in the eye and the taste was really quite good. I gave this Gorton's fish offering a solid 8 and will plan on making their fish offerings a regular item on my table.

Critique: Healthy Choice Honey Roasted Turkey!

This complete meal from Healthy Choice features turkey breast meat covered with a sweet glaze, green beans, sweet potatoes and a caramel apple desert!

How, I wanted to ask, could you go wrong with a meal as good as this one looks? A 306 gram meal that boasts only 250 calories, a modest 350 mg of sodium and only 40 milligrams of cholesterol! From a nutritional standpoint, this meal is out of the ballpark!

The chunks of turkey are real bit-sized and yes, those are tasty bits of sweet potato that strangely work well with the glaze and the turkey! On the side is a combo of green beans and shredded carrots that perfectly compliment the main course. Finally, but not to be considered lastly, is the apple desert which I found to be just OK. The apple slices were a bit too al dente for my taste.

For a few dollars, this meal (as is the case for most of the Healthy Choice entrees) can be considered a good investment. I gave this meal a solid 8 on a scale of 10.

Critique: Chicken Romano Fresca

What's on the outside is what's on the inside!

Let me begin this critique with a brief discussion of the word ‘Romano’ which is used in the naming of this dish. Romano is actually a reference to the Romans who made it a habit to introduce the ‘backward Brits’ to the concept of fresh vegetables as part of a healthy lifestyle. One way for the new ‘Romano-British’ elite to demonstrate their high status of that period was to invite their aristocratic neighbors to dine lavishly on food imported from around the Roman Empire. On the other side of the coin, no one seems to know where the hell the term ‘Fresca’ came from. (I think the HC people used it because it sounds so cool when used right after the word Romano). (Hey! Maybe I should change my name! “Hi, DanO Romano Fresca here! Would anyone care for a game of squash?” Then again, maybe not)!

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I originally purchased this entrée alongside another similar dish called ‘Lemon Herb Chicken’ both of which are made by the folks at Healthy Choice. They are part of a group of entrees that are ‘steamed in situ’, which basically means you leave the plastic cover in place while nuking the contents on high for about four minutes. (Somehow this makes it a healthier experience according to HC, although I’m not really sure why that would be so).

At only 230 calories and with low levels of cholesterol and sodium, this meal passes muster when it comes to good nutrition. (I’ll give credit where credit is due). HC does make an effort to keep some ingredients that can be bad for you (like sodium) at lower levels than what is found in other similar frozen offerings. In general they will cost a bit more, but if you suffer from hypertension, I feel they are worth it! Now, what about the scoring?

Category                    Score                              Comments

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Appearance:                  8                Very appealing  

Smell:                            8                Wholesome and good

Texture:                         8                Pasta done right and meat was perfect!

Taste:                             8                A satisfying blend of taste sensations!

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Average:                         8                We got ourselves a winner here!

This offering by the folks at HC hit a home run in my opinion. Low calorie impact and great taste combine to make this a meal to try and then to stock up on!

Disclaimer: All content in this post is the sole opinion of the author and may not reflect that of other readers.

Critique: Banquet Meatloaf Meal

Holy mashed pertatters! Just a day after I published a critique on Banquet’s Salisbury Steak Meal (wherein I compared it to meatloaf), now I have an actual meatloaf meal with which to make a side by side comparison. Bless my lucky stars.

This meal has the same two sides as the Salisbury Steak Meal. And, yes, the Salisbury has grill marks! A dollop of mashed potatoes and a smattering of corn. Not enough to really me fill, but enough to tantalize.  Now, let’s take a look at the nitty-gritty. Shall we? Let’s see what we get for eighty-eight cents (now a buck in late 2011 and still a buck in Dec 2014)!

First the directions for preparing. In this meal, you are instructed to remove the plastic film from over the potatoes which is just like the Salisbury Steak (hereafter referred to SS). As with the SS, I was instructed to nuke it on high for three minutes. Stir the potatoes. Check. And then nuke it for about two minutes more. Pretty much the protocol for the Salisbury. Wait! Is it possible that the meatloaf meal and the Salisbury steak are one and the same? Let’s look at the nutritional analysis. Maybe there’s some difference there!

OK, let me see. The calories in this meal is at 280 as compared to 290 for the steak. Calories from fat were 150 for the Salisbury and 120 for this meal. Cholesterol is 10 mg higher with the meatloaf at 40mg. But, there’s 100 mg less salt. So, all-in-all, these two guys are pretty much the same deal.

Now, as to taste. After nuking the tray for the required time, I slathered on a little butter, salt and pepper for added gustatory enjoyment and chowed down. In a nutshell, not really all that bad. The meatloaf tasted like meatloaf (abet a thin meatloaf). It could have also been the Salisbury steak for all I could tell. The corn was excellent and the mashed potatoes tasted even better after I spooned some gravy over them. Made me wonder what was in that stuff? But, for a Saturday night, while watching a really bad movie on the Sci Fi Channel, this deal was OK. Score = 8!