Aside from pizza, spaghetti with meatballs is probably the first thing you think of when you hear a phrase like “American-Italian cuisine.” In fact, you might be surprised to learn that this dish likely originated in New York in the early 20th Century. Another variation on this dish is commonly found in freezer aisles: spaghetti with meat sauce, which replaces those succulent balls of tasty meat with ground meat, usually beef and/or pork. It’s the latter version we’re reviewing today: the Lean Cuisine Favorites Spaghetti with Meat Sauce.
This is something we’ve reviewed before, but Lean Cuisine claims to have changed the recipe since then. “20% more meat,” the package claims. So let’s dive in and see if the addition of more meat is a positive or negative for this classic frozen meal.
But before we taste this, we must cook it. While the instructions are pretty simple (toss into the microwave, stir, then pop it back in), this needs to cook for a little bit longer than the average Lean Cuisine Meal. Six minutes isn’t an eternity, but it’s certainly on the higher end of the microwavable single-serve meal spectrum.
After all that cooking, you’re left with a pretty average dish of spaghetti. It’s not terrible, but it’s also not great. We’d put this on par with something you’d make at home with a box of pasta and a cheap jar of sauce, then reheat the following day. Not amazing, but it makes for a decent lunch to pack for work (though the six-minute cook time might dissuade you from seriously considering this as a workplace lunch).
The noodles have a decent consistency — not mushy, but also not al dente — and the sauce is pretty alright. It’s maybe a little generic-tasting, but it’s not gross or anything.
So how about that meat? Well, to riff on an old joke, “20% more nothing is still nothing.” Obviously, we’re exaggerating. There is meat here. However, it’s weak and gravelly, and we were disappointed to not find any decent-sized chunks of the stuff. In fact, we remember the other version actually having more meat than this one. There’s hardly enough here to even make a good assessment of the flavor. We don’t like the consistency though. It feels kind of gritty, and it has a tendency to get stuck in your teeth.
The Lean Cuisine Spaghetti with Meat Sauce isn’t improved by adding more meat, especially since it’s not a core part of this meal. It’s just kind of there. In fact, the meal might actually be improved if the meat were removed entirely, to be replaced by some mozzarella cheese. As is, though, this frozen meal isn’t terrible. It’s probably not the craveable dish of s’ghetti that you were hoping for, but it’s a quick meal that’s pretty inoffensive. And that counts for something, right?
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this frozen pasta dish, check out our package scans below.
