Here at Freezer Meal Frenzy, we’ve never really been fans of the Eating Well brand of frozen food. We find their vac-packed “Fresh Seal” concept to be nothing more than a gimmick, since it doesn’t really seem to work very well. We’ve had plenty of frozen foods we’d describe as fresh-tasting that weren’t vacuum-sealed, and we don’t think a single Eating Well meal we’ve tried has tasted fresh to us.
However, we do love ourselves some breakfast. We’re tempted to say it’s our favorite meal of the day, and we’ve tried plenty of frozen breakfast food that we really enjoyed. So today we’re gritting our teeth and attempting to put our biases aside as we check out the Eating Well Breakfast Burrito Bowl.
This meal has a cook time that seems unnecessarily long. You’ll have to put it in the microwave for five minutes, give it a stir, then pop it back in for another 90 seconds. We’re not sure why this requires so much time. When you peel it open, you’ll notice that it looks flat — it’s so flat that it almost looks like it was just printed on a piece of cardboard. We can see a longer cooking time for a meal that’s really thick, but a flat one? We just don’t get it.
This features chunks of chorizo sausage, which are actually pretty tasty. They’re also spicier than we were expecting. No, we don’t think you’ll be running into the kitchen for a cold glass of milk to douse out the fire on your tongue or anything, but it’s a nice spice level for a southwest-style breakfast food. The problem, however, is that with the extra-long cook time, the meat tends to get sort of dried out. No, the freshness seal doesn’t really help.
There’s also a bit of scrambled egg over a thin layer of brown rice. The eggs and rice also end up a bit dry, and the eggs have a rubbery texture. This part of the meal has very little flavor.
In an attempt to mitigate both problems (the dryness and the lack of flavor), Eating Well has added a salsa, which is tomato-based and includes corn and black beans. If you mix everything together, the salsa does help the flavor and the consistency a little bit, but only enough to salvage the meal. It’s not enough to get us to recommend it.
The calorie count isn’t bad, at 360 (160 of those from fat), and the sodium level is manageable at 600 mg. This isn’t the healthiest food on the market, but it’s actually slightly lower in calories and sodium than your average frozen meal.
The Eating Well Breakfast Burrito Bowl is not the worst item in Eating Well’s frozen food line, but it’s also not very good. It has some pretty big problems, and the salsa it uses to cover those up isn’t enough to ignore them. We’ve certainly had better breakfast bowls, such as the Dr. Praeger’s Hearty Breakfast Bowl. This might be better if you disregard the cooking instructions and give it a bit less time in the microwave, but we’re not sure we’re willing to try that out. We’d rather eat something else.
To learn more about the cooking instructions, nutritional content, or ingredients for this frozen breakfast food, check out our package scans below.
