Healthy Choice Café Steamers General Tso’s Spicy Chicken

January 12, 2009 | Reviewer: Guest Reviewers

Healthy Choice Café Steamers General Tso’s Spicy Chicken Price: $3.49
Serving: 1 meal (306 g. or 10.8 oz.)
Calories: 310 per meal
Fat: 5%, 3.5g
Cholesterol: 10%, 30mg
Sodium: 21%, 500mg
Protein: 36%, 18g
Carbohydrates: 17%, 50g
Fiber: 20%, 5g
Sugar: 10g
Weight Watchers Points: 6 Points

Healthy Choice says: Chicken Breast With Rice & Vegetables In Spicy Brown Sauce. Now you can enjoy restaurant inspired meals steamed fresh in your microwave. Our unique STEAM COOKER™ lets you enjoy the naturally fresh flavor of each high quality ingredient.

Corey says: First of all, let’s get one thing out of the way. I don’t eat meals like this. I don’t consciously head to the frozen food section of my local green grocer and grab a handful of chemically enhanced frozen diet food. It’s not part of my typical routine, just as casually watching her step isn’t part of my daughter’s repertoire, or urinating in the yard without barking at every moving tree branch isn’t part of our dog’s.

I don’t do this because I’m uppity. I do this because I’m cheap. Not cheap in the “I’m buying powdered milk instead of the real stuff” way, but in the “why buy General Tso’s Spicy Chicken when you can make your own” way.

Which is why this entire ordeal was quite a shock – even to me. It was as if this Asian Inspired treat jumped into my cart. There I was, wandering down the frozen food aisle and – BLAMMER! – I was checking out, a frozen green and orange box in one hand, a warped check card in the other, overtaken by the need for a fresh steamed lunch that I could make in my microwave.

That’s where the honeymoon ends, my friends. My maiden voyage to the Far East Frozen Food Section ended when I peeled back the sheets, exposing a bed of frozen food, mounded into a mountain of rice, created by a machine, already handled by unloving hands.

First of all, Healthy Choice dupes us into thinking you can legitimately steam vegetables and rice in a microwave using a revolutionary two bowl steaming system. Ha!

Unfortunately, the steaming basket doesn’t steam the vegetables. It boils them. Raised only a centimeter from the bottom of the plastic bowl, the steaming basket is too close to allow for proper steam to escape. Instead, the vegetables are attacked from below with the General Tso’s sauce, battered by heat as if General Tso himself was leading the charge.

It didn’t go well from there. My chicken (only three small pieces) was moist but flavorless and included a touch of gristle, which led me to question whether or not chickens had gristle in the first place. And if so, where is the gristle typically located? The vegetables tasted like frozen vegetables, which is to be expected, and included the typical supply of peas and carrots and what I can only describe as “Red Pepper Skin.” There were green onions, too, and they were surprisingly tasty. As in, I could taste them.

The sauce was the selling point and, ultimately, the downfall of the dish. Put a classy sauce over awful chicken and you can possibly get away with a saved meal. But this sauce, while proper in consistency, was lacking in taste. It was like homemade sweet and sour sauce that was made with an unequal amount of ingredients – as if the sugar was running low, so they used silica gel instead.

Wait. What was I expecting? I will admit – not much. My expectations were low, though as an avid reader of Heat Eat Review, I often see reviews of really good food that I can never seem to find. In addition, I wonder if I would have been happier with a turkey sandwich, a cup of yogurt and a Kashi TLC Cereal Bar, my typical 6-point lunch.

It turns out, I wouldn’t have. The adventure was worth it, even if the food wasn’t.

comments

13 Responses to “Healthy Choice Café Steamers General Tso’s Spicy Chicken”

Black Marks on Heat Eat Review : Black Marks on Wood Pulp / by Corey Vilhauer on January 12th, 2009

[...] The result is here: The sauce was the selling point and, ultimately, the downfall of the dish. Put a classy sauce over awful chicken and you can possibly get away with a saved meal. But this sauce, while proper in consistency, was lacking in taste. It was like homemade sweet and sour sauce that was made with an unequal amount of ingredients – as if the sugar was running low, so they used silica gel instead. [...]
Chavi on January 12th, 2009

Can I get an amen?

I’d like to second all that you’ve said
Red Icculus on January 12th, 2009

You had me at gristle.

Yuck.
James on January 13th, 2009

I have to say, I bought this meal yesterday because I couldn’t stand the thought of any of my regular favorites and I LOVE General Tso’s chicken. For anyone that doesn’t already know, it’s probably the worst thing you can get at a chinese restaurant.

I *just* finished my lunch and I have to say, I thoroughly enjoyed it. The meal definitely is lacking substance (very little chicken), but if you really love chinese food and have had to rule it out of your diet, this is a nice little treat.

It certainly doesn’t have the same flavors that home cooked or restaurant versions do, but as far as microwave meals in the diet category go, I enjoyed it. I’d give it probably 3 1/2 stars. (Mine didn’t have gristle nor nearly as much sauce as the reviewer’s has in the picture, and I don’t cook :-D)
Valerie on January 13th, 2009

I tried this last week, and was *extremely* disappointed. Way too many peas and carrots, and mine also had the measly 3 pieces of chicken. This is on my permanent no list.
Hunterkate on January 14th, 2009

The “old” version of this was better. There was this batter around the chicken that had some kind of ‘fried’ flavoring on it and it help sate a craving for fried food. The old version also had a higher calorie count- perhaps the highest ever for a HC meal - like 410 calories. Which may be why it ultimately failed.
rose on January 16th, 2009

that looks entirely too soupy.
Dean on January 29th, 2009

Just finished eating one of these…

Mediocre to say at best. 3 pieces of chicken with a bad tasting sauce.
Janet on February 4th, 2009

Unlike a lot of the reviews, I throughly enjoy this meal. I have this quite often for lunch. I have never experienced the meal being soupy. Yes I agree there is not much chicken in the meal but what does everyone expect from a “Diet” Meal. If you truly want to lose weight and are not just buying these for a quick lunch, meaning I see a lot of over weight people eating these meals with a pepsi and then chocolate cake for desert. I personally want to lose weight and have been succeeding, so I appreciate being able to enjoy the foods I love while losing the weight. Try this meal, if your serious about weight loss. It has never disappointed me. (By the way I am 70 pounds over weight, so its ok for me to talk about overweight people and I do not ever drink soda).
Kristin on February 18th, 2009

I live on this meals during the week. It was the best find in the store! Its the perfect low calorie, portion controlled meal out there. I do agree that more chicken woudl be nice, but that would take out the portion control part of the meal. For those that are having a “soupy” issue. Let it sit for a minute after you mix the two together.
Sherry on March 4th, 2009

I just had one of these cafe steamer bowls, a chicken and shrimp “cajun” deal. These things are a triumph of marketing over common sense, nutrition and good taste.

Calling something a “healthy choice” when you nuke it in plastic gets things off to a bad start. But, let’s gloss over that and open the package.

The contents are an inexcusable example of overpackaging. How can anyone be this clueless about the environment in this day and age? Do they live under a rock?

Finally we get to the food. What there is of it.

The sauce was bland and watery. It was basically a bowl of almost unidentifiable mush, with three small squares of chicken and a few shrimp tossed into the breach.

Using brown rice instead of white would have bulked things up a bit, offered a modicum of nutrition and, considering how mushy the whole affair was, probably wouldn’t even have been noticed as non-white by even the most hard core white rice eaters.

This entire meal–and our planet–would have benefited from being packaged as a regular frozen dinner. But wait, they already HAVE a dinner just like this! Putting it into an ecological disaster of a package gives them… more shelf space. Yep, this is all about marketing.

Even with a coupon I wasted my money. Now that the company has so thoroughly displayed its contempt towards its customers, I’ll probably skip any of Healthy Choice’s frozen offerings.
Angela on March 12th, 2009

I just tried this today, and while I can see the argument about the packaging being a bit much…I also think that many people could and should at least recycle the bowl that it comes with. I plan on using it for my cereal in the mornings at work. The food, I thought, was pretty good. It exceeded my expectations. The rice and veggies were steamed well and tasted great. I enjoyed the sauce too and didn’t think the chicken was really all that bad. It just tasted like baked or steamed chicken without coating. I plan on buying this again soon. It’s interesting to see such different tastes. Remember people…you are judging a frozen diet meal…….not a gormet dish!
mike on March 13th, 2009

u guys are funny!! what do u expect?? u r on a diet theres not to many food right now that are going to be good because the way we have feed our bodies in the past… face it bad food taste good and heathy food sucks lol..