We tried the Lean Cuisine Steak Portabella back when it was a part of the Comfort sub-line. In our review, we said, “By the time we were done eating this, we were certainly ready to wash it down with a cold glass of milk and forget all about it.” And we did exactly that. By the time this was moved over to the Features sub-line, we’d forgotten whether we even liked it or not (thankfully, we can read our old reviews to jog our memories).
So today we’re going to give the Lean Cuisine Steak Portabella another go. Since it says “Classic taste you love” right on the front of the box, we suspect that Lean Cuisine hasn’t made any substantial changes to this product. And a quick scan of the ingredients and nutritional content confirms this. So we don’t see much of a reason to compare this to the previous version — it’s virtually the same as it was before. However, since we really don’t remember this (just as we wished we wouldn’t) we decided to give it a second go anyway.
This is a cinch to cook. Pop it in the microwave for two and a half minutes, give it a good stir, then pop it back in for another two and a half minutes. Lean Cuisine rarely makes us work for our food! (If you want to read the full cooking instructions straight off the box, check out the package scans at the bottom of this review.)
You might be surprised to learn that the broccoli portion makes up about half of the meal. This certainly isn’t ideal for meat-lovers, though broccoli fanatics won’t complain — at least, not about the portion size. As for flavor, this isn’t the worst broccoli we’ve had. It holds its flavor pretty well for a frozen vegetable, and it’s even a little bit crisp. It is kind of watery, though, which we weren’t huge fans of. By this we mean that once we got through that initial crunch, the broccoli just sort of melted into a watery liquid.
The steak is not half bad. It can be a little rubbery in some places, but the overall consistency is pretty good. It doesn’t have a ton of natural flavor, but that’s okay because the sauce does a lot of that work. It’s an oniony beef sauce that tastes pretty dang decent.
So how about the portabella mushrooms? Well, they’re here, but the portion size is skimpy and these aren’t very good mushrooms. They’re rubbery and virtually flavorless, so they lean way too hard on the beef sauce to support them. This dish might have been better without them (and we say that as folks who typically love portabella mushrooms).
Despite any of the flavors here, the eye-catching part of all of this is that the meal barely has any calories at all. At just 160 calories, this hardly even counts as a meal. It does contain 770 mg of sodium, though, which is higher than you might expect for such a skimpy little dish. But that calorie count is one of the lowest we’ve seen. Of course, this meal is pretty skimpy in general, so you’ll probably end up going back to your fridge to fill up.
The Lean Cuisine Steak Portabella is a decent low-calorie dinner, though it’s certainly not an amazing one. It’s not super filling, and it doesn’t do anything to really make itself stand out. In fact, we completely forgot about this meal the last time we reviewed it, and we don’t see ourselves committing it to memory this time around.
Thankfully, we can always go back and re-read our reviews!
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this frozen dinner, check out our package scans below.
