We don’t always enjoy Marie Callender’s frozen meals, but we do at least appreciate what they’re attempting to do. A lot of times, their frozen food ends up great in concept but lacking in execution. Their Four Cheese Ravioli Bowl and Shrimp Mac & Cheese are just two meals that seemed like good ideas but ended up being kind of disappointing.
Every now and then, however, Marie Callender’s knocks it out of the park. We were surprised by how good their Sweet & Sour Chicken is, for instance. So we’ve been chomping our way through their line, trying to uncover some more of their hidden gems.
Is the Marie Callender’s Slow Simmered Rigatoni Bolognese Bowl one of those hidden gems? Well, dear reader, this is what we’re going to find out today.
First of all, we must cook this. The instructions are not going to throw any curveballs at you — if you’ve microwaved a frozen meal before, you know the drill. Pop it in, give it a stir, then pop it in for a little longer. (If you want to read the full cooking instructions straight off the box, check out our package scans below.)
When you pull this out of the microwave, right away you’ll notice that it’s not nearly as loaded up with sauce as the image on the box might have you believe. Now, it’s actually a fair amount of sauce, when you get down to it, but this meal is certainly not coated in a lovely batch of red with chunks of meat sticking to the noodles.
That said, the sauce is halfway decent. It’s a sort of generic-tasting tomato-based sauce, but it’s not overly acidic like some of these sauces tend to be. It also doesn’t have a subtle sweetness to it, and that’s a small strike against it since we tend to enjoy sweeter sauces.
There are small chunks of ground beef in the mix, and while they might be a little bit rubbery, they’re also surprisingly flavorful. It didn’t take a lot of beef crumbles to give this meal the meaty kick it needed.
This is not a diet food at all. With 470 calories and 1,180 mg of sodium, it’s a whopper of a frozen meal that you certainly won’t want to make a regular part of your lunch routine.
The Marie Callender’s Slow Simmered Rigatoni Bolognese Bowl is a decent frozen pasta bowl that’s worth trying. It’s certainly not perfect, but it’s flaws are minor. The high sodium level is actually our biggest complaint, and if you’re trying to reduce your sodium intake, this meal is off the table. But if you can spare the calories and sodium, this meal ain’t half bad.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this Marie Callender’s frozen meal, check out our package scans below.
