If you’re looking for a lightweight way to enjoy a couple guilty pleasures — salisbury steak and mac and cheese in particular — then Smart Ones has just what you’re looking for. The Smart Ones Salisbury Steak seems promising, so we decided to check it out for ourselves.
This meal only has 250 calories, which is pretty impressive for a steak and macaroni combo. Since this is a Weight Watchers product, it has the SmartPoints value stamped right on the box — this meal is worth 7 SmartPoints.
We were a little surprised at the lengthy cook time for this. You’ll need to stick it in the microwave for four and a half minutes, then give it a stir, then put it back in for another minute and a half. That’s a total of six minutes, which is rather long for a Smart Ones product. We’d expect this sort of cook time from Stouffer’s, but not Smart Ones.
We suspect this lengthy microwave session is due to the steak portion, because it’s not ideal for the macaroni. The macaroni portion size is way too small to handle six minutes of microwave time, so it gets a bit dry and sticky. The noodles also seem kind of hard, which we wouldn’t expect from a dish that cooked for this long. Now, this is probably the same mac and cheese that you would find in the Smart Ones Three Cheese Macaroni, but the cook time really messes it up.
The meat isn’t impressive. It’s a ground-beef-and-pork blend that tastes like a low-grade meatloaf. Plus, it’s soft yet gristly, so it feels cheap in your mouth. The gravy doesn’t help much — it has a runny consistency and a brothy-yet-bland flavor. The real saving grace here is that the sauce is loaded up with mushroom chunks and gigantic pieces of onion. Those two ingredients are where you’ll find all the flavor in this meal.
The Smart Ones Salisbury Steak just doesn’t work for us. The macaroni is a weird choice for a side, since it doesn’t do well with this cook time, and the meat itself is just mediocre. We appreciate the low calorie count, but that’s the only good thing we have to say about this meal.
Want the facts from the back, Jack? Learn more about the nutrition content and ingredients of this frozen meal by checking out our package scans below.
