Freezer Meal Frenzy first started as a frozen burrito review site. So it should come as no surprise that we have very strong opinions about burritos.
When it comes to the burrito vs. burrito bowl debate, we have team members on both sides. Some of us prefer our burritos to come snugly wrapped in a tortilla, while some of our other staffers believe that burritos are best when eaten from a bowl.
But we’re not going to hear out the merits of each side of that argument right now. Regardless of which side has the better argument, we’re checking out the Banquet Spicy Chicken Queso Burrito Bowl today (which obviously does not come wrapped in a shell).
This takes a bit longer to cook than your average frozen meal, which we’re learning is to be expected of Banquet’s Mega Bowls. You’ll pop this into the microwave for four minutes, give it a quick stir, then pop it back in for a minute and a half to two and a half minutes. That’s a total of 5.5 or 6.5 minutes of cook time. For the record, we went with the shorter time and didn’t feel like an extra minute would have been necessary.
The very first thing we noticed about this when we took it out of the microwave is how soupy it is. Of course, this is a queso burrito bowl, which means some liquid is to be expected. Even so, the consistency here is kind of watery rather than creamy, which is not ideal for a queso bowl.
The bulk of this meal is mostly white rice. There’s nothing special about this rice on its own, but it is absolutely drenched in that watery queso sauce so you won’t really notice the quality of the rice itself much.
The chicken here is surprisingly good. We’re not always impressed with the quality of Banquet’s chicken, but this stuff holds up. it’s juicy and relatively flavorful (for a white meat), and, like the rice, it soaks up extra flavor from the soupy queso.
There are also some black beans and kernels of corn in here, but neither of those does anything special. Neither is particularly amazing, and both are pretty inoffensive.
So is this actually spicy, or is the package exaggerating by using the word Spicy in the title of this meal? Well, this is actually pretty darn spicy. In fact, this is spicier than we expect a frozen meal to be — it’s not going to satisfy true spice fanatics, but for us average Midwesterners, this puts a fire in our mouths for sure.
One bowl contains 460 calories and 1,230 mg of sodium. While this isn’t as bad as some of Banquet’s other Mega Bowls, it’s still quite a bit higher in both calories and sodium than your average frozen meal. For reference, we’d estimate that the average frozen meal contains about 320 calories and about 700 mg of sodium.
The Banquet Spicy Chicken Queso Burrito Bowl does one big thing that makes it worth a look: This is seriously spicy. Aside from that, however, it’s a pretty average burrito bowl (though the chicken is really good). The watery consistency and mediocre white rice really bring down the overall quality, though, so all that spice might not be enough to salvage this. Still, it’s one of the spiciest frozen meals we’ve tried so far.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this frozen burrito bowl, check out our package scans below.
