If you’re looking for a good belly-warming comfort food, you might have been eyeballing the Marie Callender’s Scalloped Potatoes in a Creamy Cheese Sauce with Ham. This frozen dinner promises all the comfort of a home-cooked meal, minus the hassle. Today, we’re checking it out to see if it lives up to those promises.
You can cook this in the microwave if you’d like, but it will take almost 15 minutes. We figured it would be better to just bake ours in the oven, despite the hour-long cook time. We were feeling very patient today. (If you want to check out the full cooking instructions, scroll down to the bottom of this review and take a look at the package scans.)
Because of the ham, this meal produces a bacon-like scent as it cooks. We mentioned that we were feeling patient in the previous paragraph, but by the end of the meals hour-long cook time, that patience was fading fast. This smells very good, and it will definitely trigger some tummy rumbles.
A lot of scalloped potato dishes go for a sharp cheddar cheese. This one, however, stands apart from the crowd by using a creamy sauce made with mozzarella and swiss. This combo accentuates the potatoes quite well, and we really like it. In fact, we think we prefer this to the sharp cheddar variety.
The ham really seals the deal. There are thin cuts of ham here, and even ham-less bites seem to absorb some of its flavor. As a contrast to the creamy sauce, this ham is absolutely wonderful.
Of course, the heart and soul of this meal is the potatoes. They’re not amazing (they’re a bit softer than we were hoping they’d be, and they have a gravelly texture), but the sauce and the ham are both so good that they more than make up for any imperfections the potatoes might have.
This is designed to be a meal for multiple people. The package considers this to be three servings, but we think it’s closer to two. We scooped out half the pan into a serving dish so you can see how much food that really is.
If you manage to eat just 1/3 of the package, you’re looking at 340 calories and 980 mg of sodium. If you bump that up to half the pan, that becomes 510 calories and 1,470 mg of sodium. This is clearly not built for dieters, though to be fair, it’s actually pretty filling. Those potatoes are a hearty bunch!
The Marie Callender’s Scalloped Potatoes in a Creamy Cheese Sauce with Ham is really, really good. While the potatoes here aren’t perfect, the ha-infused creamy cheese sauce makes this into a seriously cravable frozen meal. We really enjoyed this, and we look forward to having it again soon. We just have to be careful because the calorie count is high and the sodium level is through the roof. Cautious eating is recommended here.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for these frozen scalloped potatoes, check out our package scans below.
