Since all of Freezer Meal Frenzy’s current staffers are from the northern United States (we’re located in Minnesota), we don’t have a lot of experience with grits. For our fellow northerners, who may not be familiar with this dish, grits is made of ground corn that is then boiled into a sort of oatmeal-like paste. Now, we’ll take corrections from our southern readers, but this is what we understand grits to be.
So we don’t have a baseline comparison for the Stouffer’s Chicken & Cheddar Grits, which is part of the Urban Bistro line of frozen food. We’re trying this frozen meal anyway, but bear with us, as we’re going into it a little blind.
Maybe this comes from our northern ignorance, but this meal reminds us more of Thanksgiving than of our adventures down south. There’s a chicken broth mixed into the herb sauce, which gives it a gravy-like flavor. And the chicken is a white meat, so when it’s mixed with the sauce, it does take on a turkey-like quality. The grits themselves even look a little bit like mashed potatoes, at a glance.
This diverges from your standard Thanksgiving dinner, of course, when it comes to texture. We’d say this has a gravelly feel, which is partially due to the grits and partially due to the addition of quinoa — which is a brilliant touch.
The savory portion of this meal is complemented by some veggies — green beans and carrots in particular. While the carrots are pretty forgettable, the green beans are loaded with earthy flavor. These are some of the best green beans we’ve had in a frozen meal.
The title of this meal claims there’s some cheddar cheese in this meal — and the ingredients on the box confirms this — but we didn’t taste any. We don’t doubt it’s there; it’s just an addition that was too subtle for us to really pick up on it.
The calorie count isn’t bad here. At just 240 calories (70 from fat), this is a pretty diet-friendly frozen food. Just be careful of that sodium — at 800 mg, this is no sodium slouch.
The Stouffer’s Urban Bistro Chicken & Cheddar Grits is a pretty tasty meal. We can’t really compare this to your average plate of grits, but out of context, we think this is quite good.
To learn more about the nutrition content or ingredients in this Stouffer’s Urban Bistro frozen meal, check out our package scans below.
