Back when the Lean Cuisine Salisbury Steak with Macaroni & Cheese was part of the Comfort line, we called it “a low-effort attempt at adding an unnecessary dish to their already robust frozen food line.” We complained that the meat portion tasted “like week-old leftover meatloaf” and that the mac and cheese was “soggy and flavorless.”
Oof.
Now that this dish has been moved to the new-ish Features line, we thought we’d let bygones be bygones and give it another shot. Perhaps Lean Cuisine took our scathing criticism to heart and turned this dish around. If Lean Cuisine puts in the effort, then we owe it to them — and our readers — to make note of it.
Of course, we were also looking for an excuse to eat more mac and cheese…
So we picked up a fresh box of the stuff and brought it into the Freezer Meal Frenzy labs for an examination. And after a pretty long cook time (of six minutes, plus an extra minute to cool), we were ready to dig in once again.
As you can see in the image above, the color of the tray has changed from black to clear. Is that a sign of good things to come? Not really. But it is a sign that at least something might have changed here.
The beef portion looks almost like a hamburger patty and has a bit of that meatloaf flavor we expected from this. However, we do think it tastes a bit less stale than the previous version did. Of course, this meal does still skimp on mushrooms and onions, and the sauce really isn’t impressive. This salisbury steak is mediocre at best.
The mac and cheese is deceptively bland. It looks like it should be creamy and rich, but when you actually pop it into your mouth, it tastes almost watery. Despite how thick and yellow this cheese sauce looks, you’ll actually taste the pasta more than the cheese. It’s a frustrating experience, to say the least, especially since we were excited to have another go at the macaroni portion of this dish. It’s still not great.
At least this isn’t a very calorie-loaded dish. At 240 calories and 550 mg of sodium, this meal lives up to the Lean part of the Lean Cuisine brand name. Plus, both of those numbers are lower than the ones on the box for the previous version. This dish trimmed down a bit since the last time we tried it.
The Lean Cuisine Salisbury Steak with Macaroni & Cheese is perhaps a slight improvement over the previous version of this dish, but it’s not enough to rise above bland mediocrity. The thing is, Lean Cuisine has some wiggle room on the calorie content here. If they were to make the cheese sauce a bit richer, it would add some incentive for us to actually enjoy this dish. As is, it’s just a weak main course with a bland, dull side, and none of it is worth getting excited over.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this microwavable meal, check out our package scans below.
