Typically, we review frozen food here at Freezer Meal Frenzy, but we do make the occasional exception. Today, for example, we’re checking out the Trader Joe’s Meat Lasagna, which you won’t find in the freezer aisle at Trader Joe’s. No, this is a refrigerated meal. You can freeze this if you’re not going to eat it right away, but it’s not technically a frozen meal.
Still, it looks amazing, and we really, really wanted to give it a shot. So we’re going to give our thoughts on the not-frozen Trader Joe’s Meat Lasagna. (We’ll go back to reviewing frozen food tomorrow.)
This is a pretty big pile of food, but since it’s not frozen, it doesn’t take excruciatingly long to heat up in the microwave. Five minutes is pretty short for a lasagna dish that contains two and a half servings. You can also cook this in the oven, and that will take you quite a bit more time, but we just heated ours in the microwave. We were in a hurry because we were pretty hungry, so we didn’t want to wait for a half an hour. (If you want to see the full cooking instructions, check out our package scan at the bottom of this article.)
The cheese in this thing is divine. Not only is the top coated in a layer of stretchy mozzarella, but the inside has an incredible cheese filling that is a blend of ricotta, mozzarella, and romano. This filling is especially dense in the middle of the lasagna, and it’s very creamy and delicious. Seriously, we don’t think we’ve ever had a lasagna that could be appropriately described as creamy, but this one fits the description just fine!
The sauce is a little too basil-y for our tastes, but some people will find that to be irresistible. It’s not bad-tasting at all; it’s just not really our thing. We tend to prefer a sweeter red sauce, and this is definitely not one of those.
The meat, which is represented by the first word in the title of this dish, is a pretty simple ground beef. It’s perfectly alright, but it’s nothing special. We would have been just fine without it, and then we could have shared this meal with our vegetarian friends.
If you stick with a single serving, this meal isn’t especially bad for you. A serving contains 480 calories and 890 mg of sodium. However, if you attempt to eat this whole thing in a sitting, you’re going to be scarfing down 1,090 calories and 2,010 mg of sodium. That’s quite a lot. But this is a ton of food. Even though we were very hungry when we plopped this in front of us, one person was only able to eat about two thirds of it before being too full to keep on going.
The Trader Joe’s Meat Lasagna might not be designed for our particular taste buds, but the gobs of cheese filling are enough to win us over. If you’re a fan of non-vegetarian lasagna and you love cheese, you’re really going to enjoy this refrigerated take on the dish.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this Trader Joe’s lasagna, check out our package scan below.
Horrible