We love lasagna here at Freezer Meal Frenzy. We’ve tried quite a few of them, from the Amy’s Kitchen vegetarian take to Devour’s alfredo-based version. We wouldn’t mind trying a new lasagna every day, in fact.
While there’s not enough frozen lasagna to make it an everyday thing, we’re definitely glad that Stouffer’s has a pretty decent selection of lasagna in their frozen food line. We’ve tried their classic Lasagna with Meat Sauce, as well as their Mexican-inspired take on the dish, but today we’re trying the Stouffer’s Lasagna Italiano, which is part of their Creative Comforts line of frozen food.
Like so many of Stouffer’s dishes, this takes a pretty substantial amount of time to cook. The microwave instructions ask you to cook it for five minutes, remove the film that covers the tray, then put it in for three more minutes. That’s eight whole minutes of cook time. This is definitely not a quick meal to make, compared to many of the other frozen pasta options out there.
Plus, once you finally take it out, it’s steaming hot, so you’ll have to wait for it to cool down before you have your first bite. There’s also the added annoyance of having to wipe out your microwave afterward, because once you take the film off, the sauce flies all over the place while it’s cooking.
We’re not fans of how the pasta cooks. Any piece that’s not fully submerged in sauce will come out hard and crispy, which is a bad consistency for a lasagna noodle. The consistency is fine for any of the pasta that stays beneath the sauce, but since you’ll cook this for five minutes before you peel back the film, you’re not going to be able to swish some sauce over the exposed noodle until you’re pretty far into the cooking process.
One of the biggest differences between this and the Lasagna with Meat Sauce is that the Lasagna Italiano uses a completely different sauce. That’s actually a good thing, because while we thought the other sauce had a good flavor, it was a bit runny. This sauce is thicker, and it still tastes great — it’s a bit sweeter than the other sauce, but we actually really like that. There are also real chunks of diced onion mixed in, as opposed to the onion powder that many other frozen lasagnas use (the Stouffer’s Lasagna with Meat Sauce included).
There also seems to be more ricotta cheese in this lasagna. That’s a vast improvement over the Lasagna with Meat Sauce, as ricotta cheese is the backbone of any good lasagna.
The meat here is rather inoffensive. We mentioned that the Lasagna with Meat Sauce’s beef had a little bit of a meatloafy flavor, but this one seems less so. Perhaps it’s the addition of pork, or maybe the sauce just buries it a little better here. Either way, we’ve got no complaints about the meat content.
We were surprised that this meal only has 340 calories. While that’s outside the diet-friendly range, it’s also fairly low for a serving of lasagna. Of course, there are also 700 mg of sodium onboard, which is closer in line with our expectations (and something we’re far less enthusiastic about).
Stouffer’s Lasagna Italiano might very well be Stouffer’s best lasagna. It tastes great, it’s high in quality, and the calorie count is reasonably low. Minus our complaint about the noodle consistency, we really enjoy this dish — it’s a great lasagna!
To learn more about the nutritional content or ingredients in this frozen lasagna, check out our package scans below.
We baked a Stouffer’s Lasagna Italiano(family size) tonight. It has too much sugar and hardly any meat. We were very disappointed! I would rate it one star.