Lean Cuisine Chicken Spinach & Mushroom Panini

April 27, 2006 | Reviewer: Jess

Lean Cuisine Chicken Spinach Mushroom Panini Price: $2.50 (on sale)
Serving: 1 sandwich, 6 oz.
Calories: 280
Fat: 12%, 8g
Sodium: 29%, 690mg
Protein: 21g
WW Points: 5 Winning Points
Diet Exchanges: 2 Lean Meat,2 Starch,1/2 Fat

Lean Cuisine says: Grilled white meat chicken strips with spinach,mushrooms,roasted red peppers, three cheeses and a cheese sauce on italian bread

Jess says: Buckle up, Internet. This is a long one.

Why would anyone want to eat a frozen food panini? As if such a thing were even possible?! In my mind, panini brings to mind the sizzle of bread underneath the pressure of a food iron (I don’t know what the sandwich press thing is actually called. You could Google it. I’m not going to do everything for you.). The cheese oozes out of the sides of the sandwich. Perhaps you see a glimpse of the veggies that are sailing on the lactose sea. And you wait, stamping your foot impatiently, while Italian men say dirty things about you because they think you are a dumb Americana (your impatience regarding food that takes a total of 3 minutes adds to their disdain). I did, in fact, purchase this meal. This was mostly out of curiosity. Moreover, it was an excuse to write this paragraph.

First, a warning (why do my reviews come with warnings?). Do not haphazardly tear apart the container!!! You must skillfully lift the tab, and pull back slowly along the perforation. This will reveal your little open face panini wrapped in a plastic blanket, resting atop its grey toasting sheet. Leave the sandwich in the plastic as you position the grey toasting sheet atop the box (which you have turned upside down to make a platform). Grey side up! All depends upon this detail. Then you take the plastic sheet off the sandwich. All the contents of this open face sandwich will have jostled about in the plastic. Therefore, you have to reassemble the frozen vegetables and cheese atop the frozen bread. This is fun, as long as you are not too hungry. And when you are done, you rather feel like you just played a pretend model game with your food. It looks like quite the star all pretty on its platform. THEN you microwave it for like 2 and a half minutes. The box illustrates these details in the 3 succinct steps. They hire people less wordy than me. I hope these people like their jobs. What an awesome job!

Back to the food. The box makes it extremely clear that the grey toasting sheet will be EXTREMELY HOT. I wanted to test fate and touch it anyway. However, Carolyn burned herself on her food and one microwavable food incident a day is one too many. We have a spatula in our office. Who knows why? I used it to move the halves to a plate (one with a lovely flowered rim, see picture) and then I quickly sandwiched them together. Okay, LC, where were my pretty little grill marks, huh? Don’t bother answering. We all know that your stupid grey toasting sheet (while, yes, making my frozen bread unsoggy) was not going to add perfect grill marks to my food! Promote the cooking preparation writer to food image creator because the current food image creator is a fraud!!!

So I toasted it in our toaster oven. (Someone should tell you, food review reader, the story of the toaster oven one day. But not me. This is already ridiculous.) That added some much-needed crispness. I cut it. I photographed it. A co-worker hit me in the head and then the shoulder with 2 grapes. Then I ate the panini in 2 seconds. It was like the insinuation of a panini. Was it worth all that work in preparation? Absolutely not! Could I have made a fresh panini in our toaster oven in that time? Absolutely. What the hell, LC? I will need more food, like, 3 minutes ago. I had some fun today, not because of you but in spite of you. Also, where should I send my resume?

comments

6 Responses to “Lean Cuisine Chicken Spinach & Mushroom Panini”

Ashley on April 27th, 2007

I made this at work and actually got nice grills marks on mine. The bread was very crispy. Maybe you didn’t cook it long enough? I cooked mine for 3 minutes and 20 seconds. I have had the steak and cheddar one at home, and did not get grill marks there. It’s probably because we have a commerical microwave at work, and I have a low wattage one at home. I like the sandwiches, at least for lunch, as they give me the cheesy bread flavors I crave and don’t get very often being on Weight Watchers. This one is also 5 points, not 6 points, according to the box and my WW calculator. I’m not likely to grill up some chicken and saute spinach, peppers and mushrooms, make a cheese sauce, and shred some mozarella for my at-desk lunch, so I think this is a great quick lunch idea.
John on September 18th, 2007

You need to leave it on the tray for 1 minute after cooking, in the mircowave. Not sure why, but I took it out right away and the bread was soggy. I left it in for 1 minute and it had grill marks and was crunchy. I took it out right away and left it on the tray for 2 minutes, not as crunchy and less defined grill marks.
Shann on December 6th, 2007

My mom ate this and liked it. The only draw back was the peppers. She doesnt eat peppers and it ruined it for her.
Lean Cuisine Chicken Tuscan Panini : HeatEatReview.com on January 10th, 2008

[…] Paninis. All of these sandwiches that I’ve tried (this would be the second, the first was the Chicken, Spinach and Mushroom variety) are best called stale-toast-inis and offer very little in either substance or taste. The bread […]
Mardi Cunningham on January 17th, 2008

These are pretty good, especially for a quick lunch at work. However, I would like to make a suggestion, as we are really suppose to be shying away from white and Italian bread, could you possibly make these with whole grain breads? And, also, the strips of chicken almost taste like pseudo chicken,
not from real chicken breast.

Otherwise, good. Thanks for making them.
xena1441 on March 26th, 2008

Eating it right now. I like it. Got the grillmarks and everything.

The only thing I don’t like about it is the spinach but thankfully there’s not much of it on there.