There’s nothing quite like a low-calorie pasta dish to kill a craving while on a diet. At 260 calories — and with plenty of broccoli, if the image on the box is to be believed — the Creamy Rigatoni with Broccoli and Chicken by Smart Ones promises to be that exact craving killer. And, since Smart Ones is a Weight Watchers brand, the SmartPoints value is printed on the side of the box. This meal is worth 7 SmartPoints.
When you first pull this out of the freezer, the sauce actually looks like a thick gravy. It thins a little bit while it’s cooking, but this is a thick, creamy sauce, not a watered-down one. While the consistency is great, this sauce unfortunately doesn’t have a lot of flavor. There’s a fair amount of spices added in, but that’s clearly just to mask the overall blandness of the meal. It’s also a little too salty.
This is where the broccoli really pulls its own weight. It’s a little bit soggy, but otherwise it tastes rich and fresh, and it dominates the flavor of this whole dish.
It’s unusual for a meal with chicken in it to put the word “chicken” at the very end of its title, but there’s a reason Smart One made that choice here. There isn’t a lot of chicken in this dish; ours had two long strips and a short one in it. But the small chicken portion isn’t a problem here because it’s not very good. It’s a little dry around the edges, it has a weird texture, and it’s a bit too salty — though that last part is probably due to the sauce and not the chicken itself.
A perfect bite of this meal will include a few rigatoni noodles, some sauce, and a chunk of broccoli. If you can manage to consistently fork up these ideal bites, this meal is actually pretty good. But once the broccoli runs out, the rest of the meal loses its luster.
The Smart Ones Creamy Rigatoni with Broccoli and Chicken is a light meal that’s light on flavor. The broccoli really saves the day here, but without it, this is a pretty mediocre pasta for dieters. It’s loaded with sodium too, at 700mg, which offsets the healthiness of it by quite a bit.
To learn more about the ingredients or nutritional content in this frozen rigatoni dish, check out our package scans below.
