Lean Cuisine has surprised us in the past with its pasta. The Four Cheese Cannelloni was particularly good, and the Lasagna with Meat Sauce was better than expected. So we went into the Classic Five Cheese Lasagna with high hopes.
One of the things that struck us as odd about this frozen dinner is just how long it took to cook. We made a similar observation about the meat version of this dish, but the Five Cheese version takes even longer. Three and a half minutes in the microwave for the first round, then peel the plastic off the top and heat for four more minutes. That’s a total of almost eight minutes. If you stick it in the oven, expect it to take almost an hour.
As weird as this may seem, if you follow the directions to the letter, the pasta will come out exactly as it should. And, believe it or not, the temperature is not hotter than hellfire when it’s done cooking for all that time.
This is advertised as a five-cheese dish, but the mozzarella on top is so scarce that we’re not sure it should count. The rest of the cheese — mostly ricotta, with the addition of romano, parmesan, and asiago — is in the middle of this dish, and it tastes quite good. The sauce is pretty good, but the noodles are a little too rubbery.
All in all, Lean Cuisine’s Five Cheese Lasagna is a fine frozen lasagna dish, though we have to say we prefer the meat version just a tad bit more.
For full ingredients and nutrition info, check out our package scans below.
Because the scan is a bit hard to read, here’s the full list from Lean Cuisine’s website:
Ingredients: blanched macaroni product (water, semolina), tomato puree (water, tomato paste), water, low fat ricotta cheese (pasteurized whey, pasteurized milk, pasteurized cream, vinegar, carrageenan, xanthan gum), reduced fat mozzarella cheese and modified cornstarch (reduced fat mozzarella cheese (pasteurized milk, nonfat milk, cheese cultures), modified cornstarch, salt, sodium citrate, flavors, vitamin a palmitate, enzymes), tomatoes (diced tomatoes, tomato juice, citric acid, calcium chloride), onions, 2% or less of modified cornstarch, provolone cheese (cultured milk, salt, enzymes, natural smoke flavor), bread crumbs (bleached wheat flour contains 2% or less of: sugar, yeast, salt), sugar, soybean oil, romano cheese (cultured cow’s milk, salt, enzymes), dehydrated garlic, parmesan cheese (cultured milk, salt, enzymes), salt, cheese flavor (cheddar cheese (cultured milk, salt, enzymes), water, salt, enzymes, cultures, phosphoric acid, xanthan gum), spices, yeast extract, extra virgin olive oil, asiago cheese (cultured milk, salt, enzymes), enzyme modified parmesan cheese (cultured milk, water, salt, enzymes), xanthan gum, enzyme modified romano cheese (cultured cow’s milk, water, salt, enzymes), potassium chloride, whey.
