We love mac and cheese here at Freezer Meal Frenzy. We also love shrimp. So what if someone combined the two to make a lovely bowl of shrimp mac and cheese? Honestly, we never thought to ask this question until we stumbled upon the Marie Callender’s White Wine & Butter Shrimp Mac & Cheese Bowl. So we’re quite interested to see what this frozen meal is all about.
First, we must cook it. This is an easy enough meal to heat up in the microwave. Pop it in for about three minutes, give it a quick stir, then pop it back in for another minute or two. It’s pretty standard stuff, as far as microwavable meals go. (If you want to see the full cooking instructions for this frozen mac and cheese, check out our package scans at the bottom of this review.)
It comes out of the microwave looking like this:
What you might not be able to tell from the above image is that the sauce comes out really watery. This is definitely not the ideal consistency for a meal like this, though some macaroni dishes can get away with it just fine. (Despite our best efforts to grow past it, we still love Kraft macaroni, which can be kind of runny as well.) This particular bowl of noodles, however, does suffer for it. The sauce tastes like it should be thicker. It’s a creamy, buttery affair, with subtle hints of bitterness due to the addition of white wine. It’s a decent flavor, but in this particular dish that flavor seems quite weak.
The noodles end up limp and mushy. While some macaronis go for a slightly al dente consistency, this dish goes for an extra soggy one. That means these noodles are the sort that you could slurp off your spoon rather than having to chew them. If you find that appealing, that’s your prerogative, we suppose. Personally, we don’t much like it.
Unfortunately, the shrimp is the worst part of this meal. We mentioned earlier that we typically love shrimp, but this stuff tastes extra fishy and has a rubbery consistency that we’d rather forget. Our expectations for shrimp tend to be a bit higher than Marie Callender’s, we guess.
While this one won’t necessarily destroy your diet, you should be aware that it contains 420 calories and 890 mg of sodium. Both of those numbers are higher than average for a frozen meal.
The Marie Callender’s White Wine & Butter Shrimp Mac & Cheese Bowl seems like it’s maybe a great idea that Marie Callender’s failed to properly pull off. With a thicker, richer sauce, better shrimp, and an improved noodle consistency, this meal has some potential. As is, though, we think you’re probably better off skipping it — at least until the folks at Marie Callender’s decide to update the recipe. It’s not terrible, but it’s nowhere near as good as it could have been.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this frozen mac and cheese, check out our package scans below.
