The Stouffer’s Bowl-Fulls line has been kind of hit or miss for us. While we’ve found some decent items in this “gourmet” collection of frozen meals, we’ve also suffered through some pretty huge disappointments. We see this as Stouffer’s attempt at cashing in on what Devour is doing, but these meals just don’t live up to the high standard set by Devour. It takes more than a few hundred extra calories to make a Devour-like frozen meal.
But we’re holding onto the hope that we will find something truly amazing in this line. So we’re crossing our fingers today, hoping that the Stouffer’s Blackened Chicken Alfredo is going to be a winner.
As a Stouffer’s meal, we were expecting a long cook time, even in the microwave. So we weren’t surprised to see that this will take a total of seven minutes to cook. That’s not the worst cook time we’ve seen, but it certainly takes this out of the realm of something to bring to a crowded workplace lunchroom. (If you want to read the full cooking instructions, check out the package scans at the bottom of this review.)
The alfredo sauce is fan-freaking-tastic. Stouffer’s has a way of just sneakily busting out this incredible alfredo sauce now and again, and they’ve used that sauce here. It’s rich and creamy, and really, really good all around. This sauce is one of Stouffer’s most powerful secret weapons, and it’s used here to brilliant effect. And the portion size is generous too — every noodle and every piece of chicken is drenched in the stuff, and even then there’s plenty left over for bowl-lickers.
The chicken is amazing too. It’s a basic white-meat chicken, but it’s heavily peppered and seasoned to the point where the flavor is really, really potent. This flavor cuts through that creamy sauce like a knife, and it has a bit of a spicy edge to it. This particular chicken and this particular sauce really do seem like they were made for each other.
The noodles here are big, flat rigatoni-style noodles. While we think shell pasta would have really been killer here, these are a pretty good replacement. They do exactly what they need to, and they make for a really lovely base for the sauce.
Are you ready for the bad news? This meal contains 580 calories and a whopping 1,260 mg of sodium. Those are some big numbers, for certain.
The Stouffer’s Blackened Chicken Alfredo is a standout meal in Stouffer’s Bowl-Fulls line. This is the best Bowl-Fulls meal we’ve had so far, and we might even go so far as to say it’s one of the best frozen foods we’ve tried from Stouffer’s yet. This is a really fantastic bowl of pasta. The downside, of course, is that it’s not even pretending to be diet-friendly. This will set you back in the calories department, and it will load you up with sodium as well. But from a flavor perspective, this bowl knocks it out of the park.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this Stouffer’s frozen meal, check out our package scans below.
