Lean Cuisine’s Asian-inspired frozen foods can be hit or miss, so we went into their Orange Chicken dish with hopes high but expectations tampered.
Our true desire for this dish was that it would be on par with fast food-style Asian-themed restaurants such as Leeann Chin or Panda Express. We ended up with something below even that level, but not by an enormous margin. Lean Cuisine’s Orange Chicken is a slightly-better-than-mediocre take on an Asian classic.
The chicken itself is halfway decent. It’s maybe a little soggy, but it also has a melts-in-your-mouth consistency that makes it go down easier. And the sauce is pretty good, though the orange peel tends to dominate the flavor. It has a little bit of spice to it too, which came as a pleasant surprise.
The rice is bland and soggy, with some uninspired, bleak looking vegetables mixed in. It has an unexpected crunch thanks to the addition of almonds, but it was a crunch we weren’t all that fond off. There’s plenty of sauce to try to mitigate the blandness of the rice, but the nutty flavor of the rice and the citrusy flavor of the sauce don’t actually mix all that well.
We assume all this mediocrity was in service of the low calorie count of this microwavable meal. There are only 310 calories (70 from fat), making it one of the leaner Asian meals we’ve tried. Of course, it also comes with 60 mg of sodium.
Lean Cuisine’s Orange Chicken simply makes too many flavor-based compromises to be truly enjoyable. If you’re looking for a better dish with some Asian zest, you could try Sweet Earth’s Korean Japchae or Amy’s Kitchen’s Chinese Noodles & Veggies.
If you want to know more about the nutrition content and ingredients of this frozen food, check out our package scans below.
