As a so-called food pro, I’m somebody who can visit five hamburger joints in one day, eat two separate dinners while out reviewing, or spit out 150 wines and remain standing upright at a big tasting. You just let out the belt buckle, sigh, and grab the Pepto because early the next day your editor will be all fresh-faced and sunny and hungry for copy.
Your copy. Now.
For me, now has turned into much later. My boss ain’t sunshiny no more. The reason? My assignment was to eat frozen food every night for a week. I couldn’t.
With the proliferation of frozen entrees bombarding the supermarket’s freezer case, we wanted to find out their appeal and why so many Americans prefer frozen foods to home-cooked meals or takeout. But what started out as an offbeat, fun exploration turned into a serious search for dishes that worked. There were a number that did turn out fine but others just didn’t seem to succeed.
I was game at first, believing this task was for the good of the readers. But I just couldn’t stomach a weeklong stretch of eating frozen entrees, especially since I had to try three to six packages in a row. I felt cranky, depressed, unsatisfied and, well, oversalted. And that was after just two nights of tasting.
I quit.
OK, I eventually ate enough frozen food to cover five nights, giving my little red microwave oven a real workout. But I didn’t do all seven, nor did I do it every night in a row. In fact, right in the middle of it, where Day Four should have been, I took off for Miami Beach and Charlotte for conferences. Frozen food was nowhere on the menu or on the mind for 10 whole days.
Then I came home: The frozen food saga resumed, sputtering to this partially thawed conclusion:
On the whole, if it’s not homemade, I prefer takeout.
The assignment: Buy and compare identical entrees from different companies each night. Sounds easy given all those boxes in the frozen-food section. Yet the buying process was complicated. Frozen-food manufacturers make dozens of entrees, and not all that many are alike.
I visited five supermarkets in the city and suburbs looking for different brands. I did not differentiate between the “regular” and so-called “low-calorie” offerings; they’re all jumbled together in the freezer case, anyway.
After I spent close to $90 (it would have been more without sales and customer-loyalty cards) and tasted 31 different frozen-food items, some general threads emerged:
Dining on frozen food is convenient and fast but eating this way comes at a price: loss of flavor, texture, eye appeal.
The high sodium levels listed on the boxes worried me. The ingredient panels left me dizzy with all sorts of surprise ingredients, unintentionally funny descriptors and tongue-tangling scientific jargon. What is “roast flavor” anyway, except it contains something called “disodium guanylate”?
And, yes, on one level I suppose I always knew Worcestershire sauce contained anchovy essence but it’s still weird to see the word on a box of frozen meatloaf.
Portion sizes ranged from ample to distressingly skimpy so I never quite knew in advance whether a product would actually have “filled me up” on its own. And how Stouffer’s could ever consider its meager 12-ounce portion of macaroni and cheese as “about” two servings is beyond me.
Listen, frozen-food makers need to have some fun. Sweet and sour chicken, for example, is meant to be lively, even a little silly. The foods themselves need to look and taste like what they’re supposed to be: The products I tried from Amy’s, Stouffer’s Corner Bistro and Kashi come to mind.
The chart below lists my comments on the winners for each category, along with price, place purchased, package and portion size. Selected nutritional information from the labels also is included.
While I tried to stick to “theme” nights, macaroni and cheese one night and sweet and sour chicken another, I still ended up with a load of mixed frozen entrees. I had too many to ignore, too few to really do a full-blown comparison chart. So I cobbled together an odd microwave buffet of a classic American casserole, Mexican enchiladas and Indian creamed spinach and resisted all urges to wash them down with Scotch whiskey.
Oh, the tribulations of a food writer’s life. Give me foie gras and trans fat any day.
– – –
Frozen factoids
– Nearly $28 billion worth of frozen foods were sold in 2005, including dinners/entrees; poultry, seafood and meat; vegetables; pizza; breakfast foods; appetizers/snacks. Dinner/entrees was the largest category of the six outlined above, accounting for nearly 31 percent of frozen-food sales. That’s $8.6 billion in sales.
– Frozen-food sales peak in January, and sink to the lowest point in July and August. Diet-oriented frozen dinners and entrees sells best at the new year, fueled by consumers’ resolutions to lose weight.
– At least 300 companies market frozen food in the United States. Three of them rack up more than $1 billion in retail sales of frozen food: Nestle USA (Stouffer’s, Stouffer’s Lean Cuisine); ConAgra Foods Inc. (Healthy Choice, Marie Callender’s, Kid Cuisine); Kraft Foods Inc. (Kraft South Beach Diet) (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text).
– Supermarkets ring up more frozen-food sales than any other source, accounting for some 71 percent in 2005.
– Who says they often eat frozen dinners? Shoppers ages 18 to 24, those older than 75, one-person households and consumers who are single.
More frozen factoids
– Approximately 400 new frozen-food products are introduced each year.
– Market forces include demographic changes toward more two-career and single-parent households, concern for health and wellness, and an increasing interest in world cuisines and flavors.
– Slightly more than half (53 percent) of all American households use frozen dinners.
– Mexican frozen foods, from dinners/entrees to appetizers to breakfast foods, are experiencing double-digit growth in sales.
Factoids source: Packaged Facts, publishing division of MarketResearch.com
– – –
Five days and a microwave
We sample more than 30 products to find the best.
DAY 1: MEATLOAF
1. Marie Callender’s Complete Dinner Meat Loaf and Gravy
Two slices of loosely textured meatloaf mildly seasoned and moistened with a simple brown gravy garnished with sliced mushrooms and chopped onions. The mashed potatoes are creamy and not marred by harsh or ersatz flavoring like some other products. The vegetable, a medley of corn, green beans and carrots, seemed least affected by being frozen compared to other brands.
Price: $2.50
Net weight: 14 ounces
Servings per package: 1
Calories: 480; fat: 22 g; sodium: 1,080 mg
2. Banquet Meat Loaf Meal
The single slice of meat loaf has an interesting, coarse texture but is slightly rubbery. The simple brown gravy gives a dinerlike homeyness. The mashed potatoes are salty; the corn is starchy and gummy.
Price: $1
Net weight: 9.5 ounces
Servings per package: 1
Calories: 280; fat: 14 g; sodium: 900 mg
3. Stouffer’s Meatloaf
More dense and finely textured than its Lean Cuisine sister, this meatloaf has a creamier, smoother flavor than its lower-calorie counterpart. Although billed as “ketchup-glazed” there’s little trace of tomato flavor in the brown sauce. The mashed potatoes are ordinary, but at least they don’t taste tinny like Lean Cuisine’s.
Price: $3.50
Net weight: 9 7/8 ounces
Servings per package: 1
Calories: 340; fat: 20 g; sodium: 780 mg
Also tasted: Lean Cuisine, Healthy Choice
DAY 2: MACARONI AND CHEESE
1. Amy’s Macaroni & Cheese
Amy’s understands the importance of goo in mac and cheese. This is the gooiest, densest, most hunger-sating entree of the entire lot, even though the serving looks like one of the smallest. Made with organic pasta and colored an appealing dark orange, this is close to macaroni and cheese your grandmother would make. While tummy-warming, this dish could use a little more cheese flavor.
Price: $3.60
Net weight: 9 ounces
Servings per package: 1
Calories: 410; fat: 16 g; sodium: 590 mg
2. Banquet Macaroni and Cheese Meal
This is a great pasta for kids because the taste is lightly cheesy and slightly sweet. The color is a cheery light orange-yellow. The macaroni has some bite to it, but I wish the flavor could be kicked up a notch for us adults. Surprisingly, this dish doesn’t taste too salty despite offering 40 percent of a person’s daily recommended sodium intake.
Price: $1.90
Net weight: 12 ounces
Servings per package: 1
Calories: 400; fat: 11 g; sodium: 990 mg
3. Stouffer’s Macaroni & Cheese
The creamiest of the lot and most caloric, too, if you remember this 12-ounce carton supposedly serves “about two” and nutritional info is pegged to a single serving. Still, this dish is a classic favorite for a reason: pillowy pasta, lots of sauce and plenty of cheese flavor. But too, too salty.
Price: $2.80
Net weight: 12 ounces
Servings per package: “About 2” (1 cup is the suggested serving size)
Calories: 350; fat: 17 g; sodium: 920 mg
Also tasted: Lean Cuisine, Smart Ones, Healthy Choice
DAY 3: SHRIMP SCAMPI
1. Stouffer’s Corner Bistro Seafood Scampi
Six shrimp as big as quarters and six small plugs of scallop float in a sea of linguine. Both are rather briny but look like real food, something that cannot be said for all of the products in this category. The garlic sauce is buttery enough but too salty. The green beans are impressive, offering texture and a fresh flavor, but the strips of yellow carrot add little but color.
Price: $4.75
Net weight: 14 ounces
Servings per package: 1
Calories: 410; fat: 11 g; sodium: 990 mg
2. Stouffer’s Lean Cuisine Lemon Garlic Shrimp
Nine nickel-sized shrimp are chewy but otherwise OK. The linguine is soft, almost fluffy with a buttery taste. The lemon-garlic sauce doesn’t taste like either. Tiny broccoli florets provide a touch of green.
Price: $3.
Net weight: 12 ounces
Servings per package: 1
Calories: 350; fat: 7 g; sodium: 830 mg
3. Gorton’s Shrimp Bowl Garlic Butter
This dish looks more like soup than an entree. Twelve nickel-sized shrimp bob in a vapid garlic-butter sauce tangled with fettuccini. At least the dish is colorful, thanks to the cubed carrots, chopped bell pepper and peas.
Price: $3
Net weight: 10.5 ounces
Servings per package: 1
Calories: 260; fat: 6 g; sodium: 910 mg
Also tasted: Michelina’s
DAY 4: SWEET & SOUR CHICKEN
1. Stouffer’s Lean Cuisine Sweet & Sour Chicken
Lean Cuisine strikes the right pose with this brightly colored and sassily seasoned dish that is at once retro-trashy and fun. The chicken is somewhat forgettable, but there are pineapple chunks and green peppers and carrots for color and crunch. The sauce is a tad tinny but there is a real sweet-sour thing going on. White rice provides welcome relief; its blandness highlights the sauce’s zing.
Price: $3.49
Net weight: 10 ounces
Servings per package: 1
Calories: 300; fat: 3 g; sodium: 680 mg
2. Michelina’s Yu Sing Asian Style Cuisine Sweet and Sour Chicken
Another lively entree, complete with pineapple pieces too. The chicken bits are little more than nubbins and the red and green peppers provide color, but the real thing here is the gloppy, tangy sauce. Fun.
Price: $2.95
Net weight: 8.5 ounces
Servings per package: 1
Calories: 370; fat: 2.5 g; sodium: 970 mg
3. Kashi Sweet & Sour Chicken
Kashi’s signature seven-grain pilaf is the key element here. It’s very textured; edamame beans provide a little pop to the mix. The accompanying grilled green beans are very good, with grill marks and a pleasant grilled flavor. I would have liked to have more than three, however. The chicken and the sweetish sweet and sour sauce get lost in all of this.
Price: $4.99
Net weight: 10 ounces
Servings per package: 1
Calories: 320; fat: 3.5 g; sodium: 380 mg
Also tasted: Smart Ones
DAY 5: MISCELLANY
MEXICAN
Weight Watchers Smart Ones Chicken Enchiladas Suiza
The package promises a “zesty sour cream and green chile sauce” and largely delivers. The spunky sauce gives a needed spark to this Smart Ones entree that neither the Lean Cuisine nor Banquet versions have. Still, this one is salty and more than a bit harsh. The tortillas are filled with a pasty chicken filling.
Price: $2.60
Net weight: 9 ounces
Servings per package: 1
Calories: 310; fat: 8 g; sodium: 730 mg
Also tasted: Lean Cuisine, Banquet
INDIAN
Amy’s Indian Palak Paneer
Amy’s version of this popular dish of creamed spinach and cheese tastes like takeout from an Indian restaurant. The spinach is plushly textured, holds together well and tastes garlicky and assertively spiced. The bland tiles of cheese are the perfect contrast to the seasoning. A salty dal of red kidney beans and some rice accompany the palak paneer.
Price: $4.50
Net weight: 10 ounces
Servings per package: 1
Calories: 240; fat: 9 g; sodium: 680 mg
Also tasted: Ethnic Gourmet
AMERICAN
Stouffer’s Tuna Noodle Casserole
Way creamier and three-dimensional than the leaner Smart Ones rival. Chunks of tuna are buried in the pillowy mass of noodles and the bread crumb topping actually crisps on the edges like an oven-baked casserole. Salty, yes, but the creaminess smooths it all out.
Price: $2.80
Net weight: 10 ounces
Servings per package: 1
Calories: 350; fat: 15 g; sodium: 930 mg
Also tasted: Smart Ones
(Packages were purchased at Dominick’s and Jewel; prices are rounded off and may reflect frequent-shopper discounts and /or sale prices.)
