Even though they disappoint us as often as they impress us, we keep going back to Lean Cuisine’s line of frozen food. It’s expansive and easy to find, so there’s almost always something by Lean Cuisine that catches our eye when we’re in the frozen food section of our local grocery store.
That was the case with the Garlic Sesame Noodles with Beef. Based on the package alone, this looks like a real winner. So we picked one up, brought it home, and checked to see if it could meet our expectations.
Now, the first thing we must say is that this dish smells very weird when it’s cooked. We don’t know where that strange scent is coming from; we tasted everything and nothing tasted quite like that unappealing smell. We have a suspicion that it might be from what the package calls “caramel color added,” which is one of the major ingredients.
But if you can get past all that, this meal is actually pretty decent.
As you can see from the image below, Lean Cuisine doesn’t skimp out on the beef here. This dish has an unusually large amount of beef for a frozen meal, and we appreciate that.
The beef also tastes quite good. It’s thick and juicy, and the subtle sweetness of the soy garlic sauce really makes it pop. There’s also a fair amount of veggies, including carrots, broccoli, and bell peppers. None of them is particularly fresh or flavorful, and only the carrots feel like a natural match for the soy garlic sauce.
The rice noodles are easily the worst part of this frozen meal. They’re a bit soggy, they have an unappealing flavor, and they don’t blend well with the sauce.
So let’s talk about that sauce for a moment. It’s not very good, but it adds a lot to the beef. So the beef is better because of it to the detriment to the rest of the ingredients. There are also very few sesame seeds. We completely forgot that they were supposed to be part of this dish until we hit the bottom of the tray and found a few floating around in the leftover sauce.
So here’s the bottom line: Lean Cuisine’s Garlic Sesame Noodles with Beef has some great beef in it, but the rest of the dish is pretty mediocre. Check it out if you’ve been unable to find a decent beef dish, but skip it if you just want a tasty noodle-based dish. In fact, if all you want is noodles, try Lean Cuisine’s Chicken Carbonara or their Shrimp Alfredo.
For more information on the nutrition or ingredients found in this frozen food, check out our package scans below.
