We love the Devour line of frozen food for the fact that it so freely revels in its high-quality indulgence. Devour is a brand that doesn’t care about calories so much and instead just tries to make the best and most satisfying meals possible.
So we’re happy to see that Stouffer’s has been attempting to compete with Devour’s calorie-loaded-yet-cravable approach by releasing and expanding their own Bowl-Fulls line. While not everything in Stouffer’s Bowl-Fulls line is amazing, we think the Stouffer’s Philly Cheese Steak Mac & Cheese has some real potential. We’re quite excited to be trying it out today.
First off, we’ve got to cook it. And like so many of Stouffer’s frozen meals, this one has a really, really long cook time. Toss it in the microwave for four minutes, give it a stir, and pop it back in for three more minutes. That’s seven full minutes of cook time. If your workplace tends to have long lines at the microwave during lunch time, you probably don’t want to bring this in as your lunch for the day.
After all that cook time, this comes out of the microwave looking soupier than we’d expect for a mac and cheese. The sauce thickens up a little as it cools, but this never really settles into that thick consistency you’d expect from a bowl of mac and cheese.
But that doesn’t mean the sauce isn’t tasty. This stuff is actually quite delicious. It’s a mix of provolone and American cheese sauces (which itself is said to be cheddar and colby), with some gouda thrown in for good measure. It also contains what the box generically refers to as “spices.” We think we can taste a little bit of garlic in here, but we’re not certain.
There’s some sliced beef in here (the Philly cheese steak part of the meal), and it’s pretty decent though not amazing. It’s sliced thinly and has a good flavor, but it’s also kind of rubbery.
There are some veggies to round out the mix, including bell peppers and onions, but it’s the mushrooms that really do it for us. These are some great-tasting mushrooms, and they really kick up the quality a good notch. The mushroom portion is pretty generous too, though we found that most of ours settled to the bottom of the dish.
We warned you about this earlier in this review, but this is not a low-calorie meal. If you’re planning on chomping down this bowl of mac and cheese, you’ll be ingesting 550 calories and 1,310 mg of sodium. If that calore number isn’t bad enough, that sodium really puts this over the top. Yikes with a capital Y.
The Stouffer’s Philly Cheese Steak Mac & Cheese is a delicious-yet-imperfect bowl of mac. While the beef could be better and the calorie count could be lower, this is still a tasty dish that we think you’ll enjoy quite a lot.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this frozen mac and cheese bowl, check out our package scans below.
