If you’re anything like the Freezer Meal Frenzy staffers, then you know what it’s like to have a hankerin’ for lasagna that just won’t quit. We are enormous fans of the stuff here, and we’ll try any variation on lasagna that’s placed before us. So we’re thrilled that Stouffer’s has so much lasagna in their lineup, from the hearty Meat Lover’s Lasagna to the Mexican Style Lasagna to the more recent Aged Asiago Lasagna (which is part of Stouffer’s Urban Bistro line). At one point, it felt like we would never run out of Stouffer’s lasagna to review.
Yet here we are. We’ve tried absolutely every version of lasagna that Stouffer’s offers. But thankfully, there’s another size option of the Lasagna with Meat & Sauce (which we reviewed a while back) — the Stouffer’s Family Size Lasagna with Meat & Sauce. Now, we could try to justify this re-review by explaining that cooking this in the oven in a giant pan fundamentally alters the experience — which it absolutely does — but we’re going to be perfectly honest here. We’re mostly reviewing this particular dish because we wanted more of Stouffer’s delicious lasagna.
Obviously, the major difference is that this version is much, much larger than the single-serve version. And that size difference has an impact on cook time. While we did previously point out that the single-serve version has the pretty extensive cook time of eight whole minutes, the family-sized version has it beat. Prepare to spend at least a half an hour cooking this thing in the microwave, or even worse, more than an hour in the oven. Since we’d already nuked the single-serve version, we decided to be patient and go with the oven this time. (If you want to see the full cooking instructions, check out our package scans at the bottom of this article.)
One of the big benefits of cooking this in the oven as opposed to the microwave is that the cheese gets a little bit crispy around the edges. It’s a small thing, but it does improve this dish. Plus, we previously remarked that the cheese felt like it was barely there the last time we tried this, and that definitely wasn’t a problem this time around. Sure, the ricotta is a bit sparse, but the top has that stretchy quality we really like in our mozzarella cheese.
Now, it’s going to be difficult to write the rest of this review without repeating ourselves. We already knew we were going to enjoy this before we even started preheating the oven — that’s the whole reason we’re eating it again. And all the things we loved about it last time are still true here. The sauce is sweet, yet not overpoweringly so. The meat isn’t the best, but it does add a nice texture. And the noodles are perfectly cooked. This is quite a treat.
The box claims it contains five servings. If you stick with 1/5 a pan, you’ll only be consuming 280 calories (80 from fat). That isn’t all that bad, but it also comes with 750 mg of sodium. Plus, we’re pretty sure you’ll end up eating a bit more than 1/5 of the pan. At the very least, we think this could be split into quarters, which alters that calorie count to 350 (100 from fat) and almost 940 mg of sodium. The portion we show above is about a quarter of the pan, for reference, and we definitely think that’s a good amount. This meal is pretty filling.
The Stouffer’s Family Size Lasagna with Meat & Sauce is a slightly better lasagna than it’s single-serve counterpart. This is a dish that really was made for oven-cooking, and we think that brings out a lot of small improvements that overall lead to a substantial increase in quality. We really like this dish, and we’re glad we were left with plenty of leftovers!
To learn more about the cooking instructions, nutrition, or ingredients for this frozen lasagna, check out our package scans below.
I’ve had Stouffer’s before and I recently tried Rao’s lasagna. At my local supermarket the Stouffer’s is cheaper and you 10 oz. more of a lasagna as good as Rao’s