Lean Cuisine Baked Chicken

June 21, 2006 | Reviewer: Abi

Price: $2.00
Serving: 1 meal, 8.625 oz.
Calories: 240
Fat: 7%, 4.5g
Sodium: 27%, 650mg
Protein: 15g
Carbs: 11%, 34g
Fiber: 20%, 3g
Diet Exchanges: 1 1/2 Very Lean Meat, 2 Starch, 1 Vegetable
WW Points: 5 points

Lean Cuisine says: Tender roasted chicken tenderloins served on a bed of herb seasoned cornbread stuffing with a savory gravy. Accompanied by creamy whipped potatoes with a dash of paprika.

Abi says: Nicole raves about Banquet’s creamy, starchy, buttery mashed potatoes. She uses those words in every single Banquet review that involves spuds. I rarely get meals that involve mashed potatoes. Why? Because I try to eat healthy frozen foods and mashed potatoes necessitate butter. Lots of butter. With salt and pepper and maybe a smidgen of gravy just for some flavor, but not one of those pools of gravy. Ick.

I am generally anti-gravy. As a kid I would sit down with my hot lunch, scrape the gravy off of my potatoes, then wipe off my spork with a napkin and eat all of the plain potatoey goodness. As a gravy hater, I should probably stay away from meals that advertise themselves as containing ’savory gravy’.

Fortunately, these mashed potatoes come plain, with just a sprinkling of paprika. While eating them I thought ‘Wow, these could use a pat of butter’ and then I looked around at my desk as though I was going to magically find some butter just chilling there. Yeah, if butter was made of Post-it notes.

Though the dry mashed potatoes became rocket-debris-safe around the edges the the magic of microwaving, I enjoyed the chicken accompanying them. The chicken tasted like it had been roasted and them microwaved. It was the freezer equivalent of those whole rotisserie chickens from the deli. Yum. The stuffing was not yum. There is only one stuffing that I have enjoyed. It was made by George’s step-mother. It contained seasoned croutons, butter, craisins, butter, sausage, butter, and sauteed celery and onions. That kind of stuffing makes me excited about Thanksgiving. This kind of stuffing was seriously hindered by the chicken blockade created by the two white meat tenderloins. Half the stuffing was a soggy mess and wholly unappealing in texture, though the taste was ok. The other half of the stuffing had returned to survive-a-nuclear-holocaust crouton state and was thoroughly inedible.

Not being satisfied by this meal, I purchased a hot dog with relish and mustard. It was a great hot dog and I had a wonderful time eating it outside on Dupont Circle.

comments

7 Responses to “Lean Cuisine Baked Chicken”

LauraFries.com on June 23rd, 2006

Ok, so the other day I totally had a dream that I ate a microwave pizza with hummus and chicken on it. I cut into it before going “wait!! I should take a picture of that to send to heateatreview.com!”

That makes me sound creepy, if you don’t know that I blog about food too.
Abi on June 23rd, 2006

I wish that I could frame this comment and hang it on a wall in my cube. Seriously, this is the best comment ever.

Last night there was a wide-ranging dinner discussion about hummus pairings. Ideas: pita, carrots (you know, the basics), pretzels, celery, fresh red pepper slices, tortilla chips, beer.

Ok, just kidding about the last one. But hummus and chicken? That’s sort of crazy. What DID you eat for dinner the other day?
Alex on June 25th, 2006

I eat this meal quite a bit, I don’t really know why, but I guess when I’m craving mashed potatoes it calls to me. I do, however, cheat and add that pat of butter to the mashed potatoes. It’s amazing how a little fat can turn something from library paste to delicious. Also, Lean Cuisine sort of makes a “Dinnertime Selects” version of this meal. It’s different, but the same underlying concept is there. It’s roast turkey with stuffing (none of it turns out crusty, due to a sea of gravy), mashed potatoes and green beans with dried cranberries. The really nice thing about it is that it comes with a surprisingly large amount of turkey and is thus very satisfying.
Abi on June 26th, 2006

If Carolyn ever gets her act together (haha, just kidding Carolyn!) we’ll have a review of the meal up. Seriously, if you’re reading this, write your review!
Stouffer’s Oven Baked Chicken : HeatEatReview.com on February 22nd, 2008

[…] for the delicious homemade sort) then you’d prefer this meal to the Lean Cuisine equivalent (Lean Cuisine Baked Chicken). In fact, as I compare the nutritionals, I say that if you skip the gravy (easily done and highly […]
Jerry T. on May 29th, 2008

I just ate this for my first lunch today. I thought maybe I had a bad version of it until I read this review and found the same thing. The “stuffing” was just a bunch of croutons from 2003 that got soft from the “gravy”. Well, most of them got soft, parts of them were crunchy/chewy like that jellyfish I had in Shanghai a couple of years ago.

The whipped potatoes weren’t fluffy as I would expect a whipped potato to be. Well, unless the meaning of the term whipped is comparable to something Captain Bligh would have administered on The Bounty. The potatoes were a solid lump but they did taste decent. The sprinkling of paprika was a nice touch but it needs to all be mixed up pretty well as the sprinkling is scrunched up on the end.

The chicken wasn’t bad but wasn’t anything special either.

I think I got much the same impression from the meal as in the review but giving this three stars? Not a chance!

I couldn’t go above a 1 on this. I shall not eat this Pollo al Horno again (despite that cool name).
Becky on June 2nd, 2008

I, too, just tried this meal, and oddly enough, I was facinated by the rouge crunchy bits of stuffing…where did they come from?! I cheated and combined everything together onto a plate, because mashed potatoes with no gravy scare me… This was okay, but not the greatest, and I think I’ll be hungry again in 2 hours.