The whole staff here at Freezer Meal Frenzy loves a good lasagna, so we’ve been sifting through some of the hits and misses of the frozen lasagna world to see which ones we love the most. So when we learned that Smart Made has a Turkey Sausage & Roasted Vegetable Lasagna Bake on the market, we knew right away that we had to try it.
While this has one of the higher calorie counts in the Smart Made line at 370 (130 from fat), it still does some things to make it a bit healthier than the typical lasagna. The three things advertised on the box are using a turkey sausage instead of beef, swapping out the regular pasta for wheat pasta, and cramming it with veggies. So does it work?
Well yes, it does for the most part. While this isn’t our favorite frozen lasagna, it’s pretty tasty and it does some things we really like.
For example, grilled zucchini is an excellent choice. There are large slices of it in the lasagna, and you can see the blackened stripes from the grill. It has a wonderful fresh-off-the-grill flavor too, and it blends well with the rest of the dish.
The turkey sausage is very good too. It’s loaded with flavor, and it’s even a little bit spicy. Not too spicy, mind you, but enough that it has just a little bit of kick.
You’ll notice that the sauce here is brown instead of red. Yes, it’s a tomato-based sauce, but there isn’t a lot of it, so it takes much of its coloring from the turkey sausage, which is plentiful throughout. It’s hard to find a bite without sausage, in fact, because there’s that much of it here. But even though the sauce portion is dialed back, its sweetness prevails. There’s a hint of it in every bite.
The wheat pasta is unobtrusive. We wouldn’t have even noticed it wasn’t a standard pasta had we not read the box. We think that’s a good thing, since it’s a healthy choice that doesn’t affect the flavor of the meal.
And yes, there’s a fair amount of ricotta cheese here, which no good lasagna should be without.
This Turkey Sausage & Roasted Vegetable Lasagna Bake is a product of several good decisions on Smart Made’s part. Again, it has a few more calories than many of the other Smart Made dishes we’ve tried, but we appreciate the unwillingness to sacrifice flavor to reduce that any lower. When you start messing up the taste of a dish like this, that’s when you need to stop lowering the calorie count. And Smart Made understands this, so good on them.
If you’re looking for a lasagna on the healthier end of the spectrum without losing all the flavor, this is a pretty good choice.
To learn more about the ingredients and nutrition info for this frozen lasagna bake, check out our package scans below.
