It seems like it hasn’t been that long since Lean Cuisine introduced their Life Cuisine brand, but it was announced back in May of 2020. Has it really been that long?
Anyway, we’ve been slowly making our way through the Life Cuisine line (in between all the frozen pizzas we’ve been eating). Today it’s time to give the Life Cuisine High Protein Lifestyle Chicken Enchilada Bowl a spin on the ol’ Freezer Meal Frenzy review-go-round.
This is easy enough to cook, but the cook time is a bit longer than you might expect. The instructions say you should put this in the microwave for six and a half minutes, then give it an extra minute to cool before digging in. If your workplace has a crowded lunchroom with a shortage of microwaves, your coworkers might not appreciate having to wait around for your enchilada bowl to cook. This might not be ideal for work lunch.
When we pulled this out of the microwave, we were surprised by how empty the bowl was. It seems like there’s hardly any food here — the actual food portion is maybe three quarters of an inch deep. This certainly doesn’t seem like it was made for hearty appetites.
This bowl contains an actual corn tortilla — not a chopped-up one but an actual full tortilla that is just small enough to fit inside the bowl. That means this dish is pretty much an unwrapped enchilada. The tortilla is soft enough to easily cut through with a fork (though ours was a bit tough on one edge), and it has a lovely flavor to it. In fact, the presence of the tortilla raises the bar for the entire dish.
We’ve had problems with Lean Cuisine chicken in the past, but this stuff seems pretty good. It’s juicy and has a decent flavor, and the chicken portion isn’t as stingy as we’ve come to expect from chicken-based frozen foods.
Nothing else here is really surprising. You’ve got your corn (which is great) and black beans (which are less great but still passable). Then there’s some chili peppers, cheese, and a roja sauce to really complete the enchilada vibe. We think the sauce is a bit too watery, but aside from that, we don’t have any big complaints about any of this.
This bowl contains 350 calories, which is a little more than we’d expect from a Lean Cuisine meal. Still, this is a reasonably guilt-free frozen meal. There’s 700 mg of sodium here, which is pretty average for frozen food (though a bit high for non-frozen food). Those numbers are less impressive, of course, when you consider how small this portion actually is. This isn’t a full meal for a hungry adult; it’s more of a side or a light mid-afternoon meal.
The Life Cuisine High Protein Lifestyle Chicken Enchilada Bowl is surprisingly tasty, but that’s really only because of the corn tortilla. Without it, this would be a sort-of-okay frozen meal, but with it this becomes a memorable frozen meal that we hope to return to in the future. Of course, it’s not very filling, so keep that in mind if you decide to pick one up.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this frozen enchilada bowl, check out our package scans below.
