Stouffer’s Chicken & Broccoli Pasta Bake Review

Stouffer's Chicken & Broccoli Pasta Bake

Usually, when we review a frozen meal, we try to find the single-serve versions. We do this because they tend to be easier to make, and because then we don’t have leftovers to deal with. Plus, many of our readers take frozen meals to work with them, so reviews for single-serve meals tend to be more helpful than reviews for larger-sized offerings. But sometimes, we simply can’t find the single-serve option for something we really want to try.

That was the case with Stouffer’s Chicken & Broccoli Pasta Bake. We’re not sure why we haven’t been able to find this in a single-serve option — it’s possible one doesn’t exist — but when we spotted the family-sized version at our local Target, we knew we couldn’t pass this one by.

Now, this isn’t our first time trying one of Stouffer’s family-sized meals; we’ve sampled both the Pomodoro Penne and the Chicken Enchiladas.

One thing we learned from our past experiences is that we shouldn’t expect these to be quick to make, and the Stouffer’s Chicken & Broccoli Pasta Bake is no exception — this thing is a monster to cook. You’ll need to preheat your oven to 375 degrees fahrenheit, place the contents of the package onto a cookie sheet, then cook for a whole hour. After that, peel off the plastic wrap and pop it back in for another 20 minutes. Yes, that’s 80 minutes of cook time.

There’s also a microwave option, but even that takes 24 minutes. No matter how you cook this, you’ll want to start preparing it quite a ways in advance.

Stouffer's Chicken & Broccoli Pasta Bake

So is this pasta worth all that work? Well, it depends on how you plan to serve this. If you’re perpetually short on time, this is probably not going to be the thing that gets you to spend an evening at home. However, it’s good for when you have a family to feed. Or, you could cook this up, then portion it up and stick it in the fridge so you’ve got your lunch packed for several days.

But let’s move on. You’re probably wondering how this tastes, right?

Well, first of all, the broccoli steals the show here. There are large chunks of broccoli in the meal, which causes broccoli flavor to seep into the sauce. That means every bite has at least a little bit of a broccoli taste to it. We think this is great, as it blends very well with the cheddar cheese sauce.

And then there’s the breadcrumb topping. Stouffer’s really wasn’t stingy on the breadcrumbs here, so there’s plenty of that crunchy texture to counterbalance the creaminess of the cheese. It’s quite good.

We’re less enthused about the chicken. There’s a lot of it in this meal, and it’s chopped up into bits that are roughly the same size and shape as your average dice. The problem is, it’s not as good as the other ingredients. It doesn’t have a lot of flavor, and it gets a little soggy when it’s covered in the cheese sauce. We actually think this meal would have been better without the chicken portion (and then our vegetarian friends could have tried it too!)

Stouffer's Chicken & Broccoli Pasta Bake

The packaging claims it has about five servings inside, and each serving contains about 270 calories (90 from fat) and 760 mg of sodium. Even if you eat slightly more than the recommended 1/5 of a pan (our serving in the picture above is a little more than a quarter of a pan), the calorie count isn’t bad. That sodium, though, oof!

Stouffer’s Chicken & Broccoli Pasta Bake is a great meal that will serve a small family. Our only complaint is that we aren’t hugely fond of the chicken portion. Everything else, however, is quite delicious. We found it hard to stop eating after just one serving!

To learn more about the nutrition content or ingredients in this frozen food, check out our package scan below.

Stouffer's Chicken & Broccoli Pasta Bake

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