Meatloaf and mashed potatoes are a classic combo. Of course, if you’re going to make this combo from scratch, you’ll probably spend a good while in the kitchen. But Lean Cuisine is trying to tell us that we don’t need to make it from scratch, because their Meatloaf with Mashed Potatoes heats up in minutes! We wondered if this could possibly be a passable alternative to the real thing for those days when you just don’t have a lot of time, so we picked one up to find out.
We should clarify the thing we just said about this heating up in minutes. The instructions say to stick this in the microwave and heat this for four minutes, then take it out and stir the potatoes, then pop it back in for another minute and a half. That’s a total of five and a half minutes of cook time, plus stirring time.
As you can see in our photo below, the meatloaf and mashed potatoes come in a tray with a divider between them, so the juice from the meatloaf doesn’t seep into the mashed potatoes.
And that’s fine with us, because the sauce is pretty mediocre. Keeping it contained is definitely a benefit here.
Now, we’re not sure why Lean Cuisine chose this particular shape for their meatloaf. When we hear the word meatloaf, we tend to think of something a little more, well, loafy. This hunk of meat is shaped like the person’s head in Edvard Munch’s The Scream. Or we guess you could say it’s almost the shape of a vampire coffin.
The texture is a bit off too. It has a melt-in-your-mouth softness that we really like, but this is accompanied by what can only be described as a layer of slime. Yes, this meat feels a little slimy. And it really doesn’t taste like much. There are some onions mixed in, which try to cover this up, but that just makes this whole coffin-shaped loaf taste like onions. There’s very little actual meat taste.
The mashed potatoes are actually pretty good. Mind you, these aren’t thick and rich like your grandma’s homemade mashed potatoes, but they have a nice garlic flavor that gives them some oomf. We’re guessing the garlic was added to hide how bland this potato mash would otherwise be, but it ended up being a pretty decent choice here.
This meal only has 240 calories (60 from fat), which is way less than you might expect. The sodium is a little high, at 540 mg, but that’s actually lower than quite a bit of the frozen food we’ve tried here at Freezer Meal Frenzy.
Lean Cuisine’s Meatloaf with Mashed Potatoes consists of a barely mediocre chunk of meat with a side of salvageable mashed potatoes. For a much, much better meatloaf, try Devour’s Bacon Topped Meatloaf with Smoky Garlic Mac & Cheese. It has more calories, but it also has more than enough flavor to make up for that.
If you want to learn more about the nutrition content or ingredients in this meatloaf and mashed potato combo, check out our package scans below.
