Occasionally, something catches our eye that seems vaguely familiar. When we inspect it more closely, we realize it’s a redesign of something we’ve already reviewed. Sometimes we pass those meals by, but once in a while we find value in revisiting them to see if a package change correlated with a change to the recipe.
That’s the thought process that led us back to the Lean Cuisine Favorites Alfredo Pasta with Chicken & Broccoli. Yes, we reviewed this before, and no, it hasn’t since been moved out of the Favorites line. And really, the package has’t even changed that much. Still, we were craving alfredo, and we thought that was probably our bodies telling us it was probably time to revisit this old classic.
This is as easy to cook as any other Lean Cuisine meal. Simply pop it into the microwave, give it a stir, and pop it back in for a little longer. We do think the five-and-a-half-minute cooking time is a little too long, and you could probably cut 30 seconds off that. It depends on your microwave, we suppose. (If you want to read the cooking instructions straight off the box, check out our package scans at the bottom of this review.)
The ingredients hardly seemed to have changed at all, though it does seem like a few things have moved a bit. Salt, for example is listed one item later than it was before, suggesting that either the salt content was reduced or the enzyme modified parmesan cheese paste was increased. This version has more sodium than the previous as well (at 650 mg compared to 600 mg), but the calorie count remains unchanged (at 280 calories). So it seems there have been some very minor tweaks to the recipe.
In our prior review, we said the sauce was kind of runny and that it didn’t have a lot of flavor. That seems maybe slightly less true this time around, though a good deal of the flavor still does come from the broccoli.
The noodles seem a little bit starchy to us, though that’s not necessarily a bad thing, and the chicken is pretty alright. Too often, Lean Cuisine chicken ends up too gristly; the stuff we had in this dish actually had a really nice consistency. It tasted pretty good too, though, like we said before, the broccoli really does the heavy lifting in the flavor department. There isn’t even a ton of broccoli here; it’s just the most potent ingredient in the dish.
The Lean Cuisine Favorites Alfredo Pasta with Chicken & Broccoli is a halfway decent low-calorie meal. It’s not the best alfredo we’ve tried, but it’s also not bad. While we probably haven’t developed a craving for this particular dish (we still do crave alfredo in general), we wouldn’t mind having this Lean Cuisine frozen meal again in the future.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this frozen meal, check out our package scans below.
