The Michelina’s Lean Gourmet Shrimp with Pasta & Vegetables is a low-calorie shrimp pasta for a dollar. Well, it’s priced at $1.39 at our local grocery store, though it sometimes goes on sale for a buck. We’ve also seen Michelina’s meals at Target for 99 cents. So depending on where you shop, you might be able to get this meal for a dollar.
Michelina’s does make some decent-quality frozen food, and we do tend to love shrimp.
So all of this made us curious. Can you really get a decent shrimp pasta for a single Washington, or is this going to be a low-quality disaster? We just had to find out. So we spent one of our hard-earned dollars and picked up the Michelina’s Lean Gourmet Shrimp with Pasta & Vegetables for this review.
Cooking this is simple. Break open a corner of the package, then pop it into the microwave for three minutes. Give it a quick stir, then pop it back in for another minute. That’s all it takes! (If you want to read the cooking instructions straight off the box, check out the package scan at the bottom of this review.)
One of Michelina’s secrets to making low-cost meals is that they skip out on the inner packaging. The outer box also serves as a tray, as you can see in the image above. This does mean that these meals are more susceptible to freezer burn than many of their frozen-food counterparts, so keep that in mind. You might not want to pick one of these up if you don’t’ plan on eating it within a week or two (despite what the expiration date on the box might lead you to believe).
We ended up with six pieces of shrimp in our dish, and they were super tiny. The two pieces that are visible in the image above were the bigger pieces — the other four added up to about the same size as the bigger two.
The flavor is alright, though. While we’ve been spoiled on the amazing shrimp of the Scott & Jon’s brand, this stuff isn’t bad. It’s a tad fishier than we like our shrimp, and it certainly doesn’t have that buttery deliciousness of Scott & Jon’s shrimp, but it’s pretty decent regardless. It’s also nice and firm without being dried-out, which is a good consistency for shrimp.
The majority of the meal, however, is not shrimp. The bulk of this pasta is actually the rigatoni-style noodles in an alfredo sauce. We have no complaints about the noodles, and while we’ve had issues with Michelina’s alfredo sauce in the past, this stuff is actually pretty good. It’s creamy and it has a good, garlicy flavor, though the flavor is a bit muted here.
To make up for the wimpy-shrimpy shrimp portion, Michelina’s added some veggies to this. You’ve got a few tiny pieces of red bell pepper and some broccoli. Both of those things add more color than flavor, but neither is bad. We’d say the broccoli is the better of the two, because it has a lovely crunch and a surprisingly fresh flavor, while the bell peppers mostly hide in the background.
The calorie count does hold up its end of the bargain, living up to the expectations set by the Lean Gourmet sub-line. With just 240 calories, this is comfortably diet-friendly, and the 500 mg of sodium is a lot lower than you might expect from a sodium level in a frozen food. So both of those numbers are looking lovely!
The Michelina’s Lean Gourmet Shrimp with Pasta & Vegetables is a really good value. While it’s not outstanding by any means, it’s a pretty darn good meal for a dollar. If you’re pinching your pennies (and who isn’t these days?), that’s a really tempting proposition!
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this budget-priced frozen meal, check out our package scans below.
