We’ve said it before, but we love lasagna here at Freezer Meal Frenzy. We’ve got a bunch of regular old Garfields on this staff. So when the opportunity arises to check out a lasagna that we haven’t tried yet, we jump on it.
Today, we’re tasting the Marie Callender’s Italiano Lasagna, which seems like a pretty traditional frozen lasagna — at least, it doesn’t seem to do anything wild like adding alfredo sauce and bacon or anything.
Of course, just like a traditional frozen lasagna, this takes a really long time to cook, even in the microwave. You’ll have to cook it on high for three minutes, then cook it on medium for five to six-and-a-half minutes. That’s a total of at least eight minutes.
After all that cook time, you’ll end up with something that looks like this:
That’s a soup, not a lasagna! This is one watery mess. The sauce thickens up a little bit while it cools, but you’ll end up with a soupy lasagna no matter how long you wait. The picture above was snapped after this one had cooled for about three minutes.
And the sauce doesn’t even taste all that great. It has a soup brothy flavor rather than that of a true tomato sauce, which gives the entire meal a generic flavor. And the sauce is really important in a lasagna — a bad sauce can ruin the entire dish. While this isn’t a terrible sauce, Marie Callender’s could have certainly done a lot better here.
Almost as important as the sauce is the ricotta cheese, and this lasagna fails in this department as well. This is not the creamy ricotta of a high-quality lasagna — this is a bland, gravelly substance that doesn’t really belong in a lasagna at all.
The Italian sausage is bland too. It has a little bit of flavor, but it’s certainly not enough to save this dish. It comes in balls that are kind of chewy and rubbery, which makes them feel weird inside your mouth.
Eating this lasagna will run you about 390 calories and 1,150 mg of sodium. The calories are just a tad high, but it’s that sodium that you really have to watch out for. This is not a small amount of sodium.
The Marie Callender’s Italiano Lasagna is a waste of time and calories. It takes a really long time to cook, and in the end it’s just not worth the wait. There are much, much better options in the frozen food aisle, such as the Stouffer’s Lasagna Italiano or, if you live in the Minneapolis area, the Lunds & Byerlys Roasted Vegetable Lasagna.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this frozen lasagna, check out our package scans below.
