We’ve been writing frozen food reviews for long enough now that a lot of the meals we’ve reviewed have been redesigned — or have had their packaging redesigned, at the very least. This means that it doesn’t hurt to sometimes look back at something we’ve already reviewed and give it a second look.
That is the case with the Stouffer’s Tuna Noodle Casserole, which we’re reviewing again. We did review this back when it was a part of Stouffer’s Classics line, but since it was given new box art, we really wanted to jump into it again. Plus, we’d been craving tuna casserole for a while, and we were hoping this one would satisfy that.
Of course, this is not a fast meal to cook. If you heat it in the microwave, which is the preferred method, it will take seven minutes (and if you decide to use the oven, the cook time is 45 minutes). This probably isn’t a meal you’d want to take to work if you have long lines at the microwave in the break room. You might even lose some friends over it! (If you want to see the full cooking instructions for this frozen meal, check out the package scans at the bottom of this review.)
We used the microwave option for our meal, and it comes out looking a little pockmarked and smelling richly of tuna. Seriously, this is not for people who hate tuna (though, we’re not sure why tuna haters would pick up a tuna casserole anyway). It also comes out ridiculously hot, so be careful to not burn yourself!
Let’s just get our one complaint out of the way right away: the tuna here tastes a bit too fishy for us. Sure, tuna is a fish, but it doesn’t always taste especially fishy. The stuff used here absolutely does. It’s not the worst thing in the world, and this is probably a plus for fish fanatics, but we tend to like our fish subtle — and this is very much not subtle.
We could also talk about how we wish there were more mushrooms in this casserole, but we’ve already done that in our previous review so we won’t repeat that here.
Otherwise, this is a pretty tasty frozen meal. The alfredo-like cream sauce is the perfect choice for this casserole, and the egg noodles have a nice consistency. There are some peas and bits of celery, though these are mostly here for decoration. And finally, the breadcrumb topping is lovely, though we’re pretty sure this time around we were given less of this topping than before (you can compare for yourself by checking out the previous review).
This meal is no slouch in the calorie department. At 420 calories per box, it’s not the worst thing in the world you could be eating, but it’s not really fit for dieters. Plus, this casserole dish has 860 mg of sodium, which is quite a bit.
The Stouffer’s Tuna Noodle Casserole is not perfect, but it’s still a darn good casserole that you can make at home. It doesn’t live up to the stuff your mom makes, but it’s a good option if you have a tuna casserole craving and don’t want to make your own from scratch.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this frozen casserole, check out our package scans below.
What in the world happened to the delish Tuna Noodle Casserole ? The baking dish has gone from Black to White, and does NOT bake the same (BUMMER) and the crunchy topping has GONE to almost NOTHING (BUMMER) . Sorry to say very unhappy customer !!
We reviewed this back in May of 2020. If the meal has changed substantially since then, we should probably take another look at it. It’s interesting that if you compare this to the previous review we did (back in 2018), you can see that even the 2020 version had less breadcrumb topping than the 2018 version. If there’s even less now, then they’re definitely moving in the wrong direction with this meal.