Lean Cuisine Features Sweet & Spicy Korean-Style Beef Review

Lean Cuisine Features Sweet & Spicy Korean-Style Beef

We love a good serving of Korean BBQ beef now and again, so the Lean Cuisine Sweet & Spicy Korean-Style Beef always catches our eye. We did review this meal before, back when it was part of Lean Cuisine’s Marketplace line, but now that its been moved to the Features line, we wanted to give it another try.

This is a cinch to heat, which is pretty much expected for a Lean Cuisine meal. Simply pop it into the microwave for three minutes, give it a stir, pop it back in for another minute, and let it cool for a minute. That’s all there is to it. (If you want to read the cooking instructions straight off the box, you can check out the package scans at the bottom of this review.)

The last time we reviewed this, we thought the beef portion was great, but the mediocre rice brought down the overall quality of the meal. A quick scan of the back of the box makes it clear that Lean Cuisine changed the formula a bit, since this now has less sodium and a few more calories than it did before. Unfortunately, there was only one thing that changed for the better (well, two if you consider the lower sodium amount). Everything else seems like a step in the wrong direction.

Lean Cuisine Features Sweet & Spicy Korean-Style Beef

Starting with the positive, Lean Cuisine seems to have upped the zucchini level. That’s a really great change, because this stuff is very good. It has a surprisingly fresh flavor to it, which we weren’t expecting.

Unfortunately, the rice is still pretty bad. It’s soggy and starchy, and it has a stale flavor to it. This was the part of the meal we were hoping would change, and it really hasn’t.

Last time around, we actually thought the beef was pretty decent overall. Not so much now. This stuff is super inconsistent, with some pieces being overly soggy and others being weirdly chalky. We had one piece that was just fine, but the rest was kind of bad.

That could have been covered up with the sauce, which is as delicious as ever, but we strongly suspect that the lower sodium was a result of substantially diminishing the sauce portion. There’s just not enough of it here to really do anything for this meal. That’s really sad because this is a great sauce — it’s delightfully sweet with just a little bit of spiciness to it.

This meal contains 330 calories and 600 mg of sodium. Both of those are slightly below average for a frozen meal, but keep in mind that frozen meals tend to be pretty high in sodium compared to other types of food. 600 mg isn’t a small amount of sodium in general; it’s just slightly lower than average for a frozen meal. The sad, simple fact is that if you’re trying to reduce your sodium intake, you’ll probably want to take a break from frozen food for a while.

The Lean Cuisine Sweet & Spicy Korean-Style Beef has changed, but not for the better. Lean Cuisine didn’t fix the meal’s biggest problem, and they added some new ones while they were changing things. We’re sad to say that this just isn’t a very good meal.

To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this Lean Cuisine frozen meal, check out our package scans below.

Lean Cuisine Features Sweet & Spicy Korean-Style Beef
Lean Cuisine Features Sweet & Spicy Korean-Style Beef
Lean Cuisine Features Sweet & Spicy Korean-Style Beef
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