We’ve said this before, but we’ll take any chance we can get to review a frozen lasagna. In fact, we’ll even bend the rules so we can review lasagna that isn’t frozen. So when we saw that Stouffer’s had released a new lasagna, we knew right away that we had to try it. So today we’re checking out the Stouffer’s Family Size Five Cheese Lasagna.
This is a special treat, in fact, because while Stouffer’s has a pretty wide selection of lasagna to choose from (ranging from Mexican style to traditional style), very few of them are vegetarian-friendly. And our vegetarian staffers have been wanting to sink their teeth into a Stouffer’s frozen lasagna for quite some time now.
Now, this is no single-serve meal. No, this is designed to feed multiple people. As such, it’s going to take a good amount of time to heat it up. If you go with the microwave, this will take you 25 minutes. With such a long cook time, you’re going to have to plan ahead with this meal, so you’ll probably end up just cooking it in the oven, like we did. (If you want to see the full cooking instructions, check out our package scans at the bottom of this article.)
So let’s dig in, shall we?
First off, we should mention that the pasta gets a little hard and crunchy around the edges when you cook this in the oven. That’s not ideal, but it would be forgivable if the rest of the noodles weren’t so tough and rubbery. These are so tough that they can be difficult to cut through with a fork in places.
That said, the rest of what this lasagna offers is pretty good. The sauce is a red sauce that errs on the side of sweetness, which we think is a good flavor profile for a red sauce. In fact, a sweeter tomato sauce tends to be ideal for us when it comes to lasagna.
The middle of this lasagna is just loaded up with cheese, as you can see in the image below. Since there’s no meat in this, the cheese is simply thick and uninterrupted. It oozes out of the sides when you take your fork and push down on the top of the lasagna.
The package claims to hold about 4.5 servings. As such, each serving contains 230 calories (60 from fat) and 570 mg of sodium. While that doesn’t seem too bad, we think you’ll probably eat more than that. We split our tray three ways, which seemed like a pretty reasonable serving size to us (the image above shows 1/3 of the pan in a serving dish). That means our serving had 345 calories (90 from fat) and 855 mg of sodium. That’s still not terrible, but it’s certainly higher than what’s advertised on the box. Plus, all three of us reported that we were still a little bit hungry afterward.
The Stouffer’s Family Size Five Cheese Lasagna isn’t a perfect lasagna, by any means, but it’s still pretty tasty. We really like how loaded this is with cheese and how sweet the sauce is, but we thought the noodles were a bit lower in quality than we were hoping. If you’re not opposed to eating meat, we recommend the Stouffer’s Family Size Lasagna Italiano over this one.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this Stouffer’s frozen lasagna, check out our package scans below.
