We’re always a little nervous to try frozen fish meals, and Lean Cuisine’s Tortilla Crusted Fish is a great example why that is. The quality of the fish is simply too low to be enjoyable.
Now, when this dish is heating up, expect your whole kitchen to fill with the scent of fish. This meal does not have a subtle smell; it’s pungent and overpowering. It’s not a bad smell if you like fish, but it’s undeniably strong.
The taste is simply lacking. The tortilla crust is decent, but it doesn’t do enough to hide the unpleasant aftertaste left behind by the fish.
Oddly enough, the rice that comes as a side to this dish is quite good. It has a lemony taste, and the buttermilk and cheddar cream sauce is great. It’s even got some peppers and bits of corn to make it more interesting. In fact, we’d be interested in trying a frozen burrito that had this mix in it; we bet it would be delicious.
But the rice alone isn’t enough to make us comfortable recommending this Tortilla Crusted Fish. Lean Cuisine has some pretty good items in their selection, but this is simply not one of them.
For full ingredients and nutrition info, check out our package scans below.
Because this is incredibly hard to read, here are the ingredients from Lean Cuisine’s website:
Ingredients: tortilla crusted alaska pollock (alaska pollock, enriched bleached flour {wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid}, water, modified cornstarch, tortilla chips (yellow whole corn, vegetable oil {corn, soybean, and/or sunflower oil}), sugar, yellow corn flour, potassium chloride, white corn flour, salt, spices, dextrose, egg white, tomato powder, natural flavor, whey, maltodextrin, yeast, onion powder, leavening (sodium aluminum phosphate, sodium bicarbonate), soy flour, garlic powder, torula yeast, citric acid, corn oil. prefried in cottonseed and/or canola oil), blanched enriched long grain parboiled rice (water, rice, iron, niacin, thiamin mononitrate, folic acid), skim milk, corn, tomatillos, red peppers, water, chile peppers, onions, 2% or less of reduced fat cheddar cheese (cultured part-skim milk, salt, enzymes, annatto color), buttermilk powder, dehydrated sour cream (sour cream (cultured cream, nonfat milk)), modified cornstarch, salt, soybean oil, garlic puree, cultured whey, cilantro, jalapeno puree (jalapeno peppers, salt, acetic acid and calcium chloride), bleached wheat flour, sugar, potassium chloride, lactic acid, spices, calcium lactate.