Price: $2.50 on sale (Free from supplier)
Serving: 1/2 bowl, 3oz. plus water
Who eats a half bowl of microwaved soup? Nobody. That’s why the information below is for the entire bowl.
Calories: 300
Fat: 4%, 3g
Cholesterol: 0%, 0mg
Sodium: 60%, 1460mg
Protein: 10g
Carbohydrates: 20%, 60g
Fiber: 8%, 2g
Sugar: 4g
Weight Watchers Points: 3 Per Serving, 6 Per Bowl

Annie Chun says: I love Thai food and one of my favorite dishes is Tom Yum Soup. I make Tom Yum Soup for myself and have wanted to share it with my customers, but it has taken me a while to perfect. Now I am excited to have a recipe that I can share with you. Tom Yum is the main soup in Thailand - light, fragrant and calming, wonderful on either warm or cold days. This Tom Yum Soup Bowl is super convenient and great tasting, ready in just one minute.

Andrew says: This is the tale of the four-star soup that shouldn’t have been. This soup tried so hard to turn me back, to make me hate it, and yet it was still pretty awesome.

In the beginning, I followed the package’s instructions to submerge Annie Chun’s famous FreshPak noodles (read: pre-cooked noodles vacuum sealed in a plastic chamber) in hot water to break them apart a bit. Upon attempting to pull the noodles apart, though, I was met with a most familiar odor. Could it be … yes, it was Play-Doh, the childhood modeling clay that smelled unsettlingly like bread dough and melted crayons. Was I really about to eat Play-Doh-smelling noodles? Yes. For science.

Then, after draining away that water, I was to add the soup’s flavor essence and toppings. I started with the package of sauce, the heart of the Tom Yum experience. I wrung it from its packet and was met with yet another pungent odor, this one too foreign to describe. After looking at the ingredients I decided that fish sauce, ginger, chilis and lime could well account for the odd spiciness of the scent penetrating my brain. Moving on to the little briquette of toppings, I decided to bust it apart a little before depositing a stone of dehydrated veggies onto my odoriferous concoction. This helped, as I was able to identify individual flecks of red pepper and wild onion.

Next, I added water to the bowl and put it in the microwave for 65 seconds. After I removed the bowl, I recognized that, miraculously, the flecks of veggies and other toppings had indeed reconstituted in the broth to look like actual food! And even though the aroma was still fairly foreign (I’ve never had Tom Yum before), it did smell somewhat appetizing! I spent a minute or so stirring and breaking apart chunks of Play-Doh noodles and then … it was time to eat.

I’ve only ever had one other Annie Chun’s bowl before (Abi: I believe I have you to thank for that as well), and I recall being amazed at the tenderness and utter edibility of these pre-cooked, shelf-stable noodles. This held true again for these Play-Doh-scented noodles. I couldn’t believe how perfectly al dente they ended up being (even if they stuck to each other a bit much).

And all those crazy, fishy, spicy scents from before melded to make a very enjoyable flavor on my tongue. I’ve had other corporate attempts at fusing chilies and lime before and it generally ends up being either too limey or too chili-y. In this soup, those two flavors, along with the fish sauce (as gross as that sounds) and ginger presence combine to bring a satisfying, tangy heat. Even the little flecks of onion, red pepper and — holy crap is that a mushroom? — other veggies added a little something to the experience. It’s not a five-star soup because, well, the veggies are still dehydrated and as much as I’m surprised at the successful flavor integration, I feel that if they could manage to make the broth mixture more hearty, they could squeeze another star out of me. As far as shelf-stable meals go it’s amazing, but I feel as though technology may yield us a more perfect Tom Yum soup before the next decade is out.

All in all, this soup tried really hard to gross me out with its fish sauce and putty noodles, but Annie Chun wins again with an interesting and hearty soup that somehow survives months on end in a pantry. The fish sauce will unfortunately disqualify this for vegetarians and vegans, but the rest of us can marvel at this wholly-natural wonder of modern food science.

[This meal was provided by Annie Chun’s PR people. -Ed.]

Price: $1.50 (on sale)
Serving: 1/3 box, 1 cup prepared
Calories: 220
Fat: 7%, 5g
Cholesterol: 0%, 0mg
Sodium: 24%, 570mg
Protein: 8g
Carbohydrates: 13%, 39g
Fiber: 10%, 2g
Sugar: 8g
Weight Watchers Points: 4 points

Near East says: A delicate and flavorful dish consisting of 100% semolina wheat couscous combined with savory roasted garlic, onion and olive oil.

Abi says: Dear readers, please allow me to completely revolutionize your dinner time. If your are unfamiliar with couscous, don’t be scared. If you are familiar with couscous you’re nodding your head right now thinking ‘Dang, why don’t I make couscous all of the time?!?!’ I am appalled that I haven’t written about couscous before now.

For the uninitiated, couscous is basically tiny pasta balls. It is not a grain, like rice or bulgar, but essentially super-chopped spaghetti. But it is 18 times better than spaghetti because it is the easiest pasta ever invented. Also, it will not get marinara sauce on your white shirt. Oh, you are saying ‘What is easier than boiling water, putting in pasta and then draining it?’

Consider this couscous workflow:

• Measure 1 1/4 cups of water into a pot. Add a glug of olive oil and the seasoning packet, bring to a boil.
• Stir in couscous, cover and remove from heat.
• After five minutes lift lid from pot, fluff couscous and serve

How insanely easy is that? You can’t even think of anything easier! Making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is more difficult! Okay, faster - but you have to use a knife!

Now, this couscous from Near East is ‘instant’ couscous, which accounts for its super-speedy cooking time. Near East carries a wide variety of instant couscouses, but I have to say that the Roasted Garlic and Olive Oil variety holds a very special place in my heart. I like it because each box comes with enough seasoning that I don’t have to flavor the other ingredients I add to the dish. Shown here are chicken and peas. I’m also enamored of the serving size. Sure, 1 cup of food doesn’t seem like a whole lot, but once you add a chicken breast and a cup of vegetables you’ve got a remarkably filling, colorful, delicious meal for three.

Or if there are two of you, you can put the 3rd serving in a refrigerator box (anyone want to buy these for me so that I can stop using Ziploc containers?) and one of you can have it for lunch the next day. Couscous reheats beautifully.

You might be confused by my enthusiasm now, but once you give yourself over to the cult of couscous you’ll finally understand what fueled the Islamic Golden Age.*

*This statement is speculation based on a combination of claims in two Wikipedia articles. It should in no way be construed as a definitive statement on the existence of couscous in 7th century Arabia.

Price: $2.50
Serving: 1 meal, 8.5 oz.
Calories: 280
Fat: 11%, 7g
Cholesterol: 12%, 35mg
Sodium: 20%, 480mg
Protein: 19g
Carbs: 11%, 34g
Fiber: 9%, 2g
WW Points: 6 Points

Eating Right says: White meat chicken and spaghetti in a rich basil cream sauce.

Adina says: This meal had a lot of things working against it. For one, it had been sitting in my work freezer for over 6 months. When I opened it up, there was quite a bit of frost covering the food. Two, I ate a very similar dish from Healthy Choice’s Café Steamers line (Chicken Tuscany, which I also reviewed) and that dish made me seriously consider leaving my husband so I could make babies with a microwave meal. Weird, but true.

However, I was pleasantly surprised by the taste and nutritional facts of this meal. The chicken was tender, surprisingly tenderer than the Café Steamer chicken. It had a nice texture and was seasoned well. The basil was a subtle yet present accent to the cream sauce. I love basil in cream sauce, I think it pulls out flavors that you wouldn’t normally experience in a cream sauce. The noodles were slightly mushy, but I blame the layer of frost for this shortcoming. The peppers didn’t punch a lot of crunch or flavor, but they also didn’t suck. So better than most microwave meal veggies, if you ask me.

The only shortcoming is that this is a fairly small meal, weighing in at only 8.5 oz, where the Chicken Tuscany weighed in at 10.6 oz. You’re definitely going to have to supplement this meal with a warm piece of whole wheat bread or a giant candy bar (whichever one is closer), but is that such a bad thing? Candy bars go with everything.

Overall, it wasn’t a completely mind altering experience, but it was definitely much better than other frozen entrees I have sampled. The nice thing about this meal was that it had more impressive nutritional facts than most. Low fat, low carbs, and definitely lower sodium compared to other microwave meals. Plus, it accounts for 38% of your daily protein, which is a huge selling point for me, considering most of my protein consumption comes from looking at cows when I drive through the country and from greasy medium-rare cheeseburgers from Good Dog Bar (best burger in Philadelphia, possibly the world).

I am pretty sure these sell for $2.50 at Genuardi’s and Safeway, which is cheaper than most microwave meals off-sale, so that is also a plus. In conclusion, this was not a bad meal. It didn’t hurt me to eat this food. I even enjoyed the time I spent eating it, all two seconds of it. Yes, I might be eating a super pretzel later, but what else is new? I could eat a 7 pound burger and still eat a super pretzel for dessert, that is how much I like super pretzels. So I give this meal 4 stars, although it is more of a 3.5 star meal. I am rounding up so that one day God will take pity on me and send me a pasta microwave meal that is 100 oz and zero fat and zero carbs. I am waiting for that day, God.

Price: $2.99
Serving: 1 meal, 10.6 oz.
Calories: 300
Fat: 12%, 8g
Cholesterol: 8%, 25mg
Sodium: 23%, 560mg
Protein: 21g
Carbs: 11%, 34g
Fiber: 20%, 5g
WW Points: 6 Points

Healthy Choice says: We broil lean chicken tenderloin chunks, combine them with a colorful medley of zucchini, spinach and sun dried tomatoes and serve over linguini pasta tossed in a flavorful Parmesan sauce.

Adina says: I am not someone who likes my food steamed. I like it breaded, deep fried, saturated in fat, glazed, covered in gravy, chocolate sauce, bits of bacon, etc. I accept that some food must be boiled (noodles) in order to be married to less healthy mediums (alfredo sauce) to create one, harmonious meal. Rarely will you find me saying “Ohh, let’s steam dinner tonight” or “I’ll take the healthy steamed option please, with a side of broccoli.” And when I say rarely, I mean you can just go ahead and shoot me when that day comes because my life will so be over.

But (and this is possibly the hugest “but” since Baby Got Back hit record stores in 1992), this meal was sort of definitely a delightful dining experience. Dare I say that Healthy Choice finally did something right? God, that feels so wrong to say and yet . . . my mouth doesn’t lie. This meal, it was unbelievably tasty.

The zucchini was perfectly steamed. It tasted much like how I would imagine zucchini would taste if I ever steamed it and then ate it. It was tender on the inside and faintly crisp on the outside. It looked so green and fresh that I actually ate it first. Before the noodles. I KNOW. To me, eating vegetables before noodles is sort of akin to choosing a Brazilian bikini wax over napping. It is just plum crazy. And yet, it was my reality this afternoon as I pushed the noodles to the side to find that last bite of zucchini yumminess.

Not to say the noodles weren’t good. Oh they were good. Especially considering that the sauce was FedExed from HEAVEN. Seriously, the taste is so zesty and unexpected.

It was flavorful and bitey and the picture on the container actually doesn’t do the spices justice. Has that ever happened before? Where the food was actually BETTER than how it looked in the picture? WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY HEALTHY CHOICE?

The chicken was a little dry, but it tasted like dry REAL chicken. As far as white meat goes, this was probably better than any piece of white meat I can cook. I truly believe white meat has like a 2 second window of tenderness and then BAM it’s dry. Anyway, it didn’t matter if it was a tad dry because it just complimented the texture of the melt-in-your-mouth veggies.

So yes, I am giving this Healthy Choice meal 5 full stars. I back this meal with my life. Steaming your food separate from the sauce is brilliant. The steaming locks in the individual flavors, and the sauce accentuates rather than overpowers the meal. Congratulations, Healthy Choice. You have moved from “sucks so bad” to “edible and sort of delightful”. Be proud, be very proud.