Banquet Backyard BBQ Meal Review

Do you want to replicate the backyard BBQ experience without the hassle of having to make everything from scratch — or heck, without a backyard at all? Well, the Banquet Backyard BBQ Meal is a frozen option that gives you the cookout staples without requiring you to do any of the work.

Well, there is a little bit of work involved, as you must cook this, but compared to firing up the grill and preparing homemade mashed potatoes, this meal is a cinch.

To heat it up, simply pop the tray into the microwave for three minutes, give those taters a good stirrin’, and microwave the whole meal for another two to three minutes. Yes, that’s potentially six minutes of cook time, which is a little long for a frozen meal, but it’s surely a lot faster than making this stuff from scratch. You can also use the oven to heat this if you’d like, but that will take you half an hour so it might not be worth it. For the sake of this review, we nuked the sucker. (If you want to read the full cooking instructions straight off the box, check out the package scans at the bottom of this review.)

The main event here is a pork-and-chicken patty that’s absolutely drenched in BBQ sauce. In concept, it reminds us a bit of the patty you’d find in a McRib sandwich. The execution falls flat, though. The meat is watery and generic tasting, and the BBQ sauce has a burnt flavor that we found really difficult to get past. We can tell this is a meal that’s trying to taste good, but it just doesn’t pull it off.

We were really curious about these mashed potatoes, because the packaging talks them up a bit. Made with real cream! Well, we’re sad to report that these aren’t anything special. They’re pretty average frozen mashed potatoes, and they’re certainly less exciting than homemade ones. They have a little bit of a gravelly consistency, and we’re much more reluctant to call these “creamy” than the advertising is. Sadly, despite these flaws, the mashed potatoes might actually be the best part of this meal.

Last up you have a batch of corn. While this stuff has a decent enough flavor, the consistency is awful. These are dense and mushy enough inside that they actually grossed us out a bit — the insides of these corn kernels turn into an almost putty-like substance. It’s gross!

At 350 calories, this meal certainly won’t bust a diet, though it does contain 1,140 mg of sodium, which is quite high. Those looking to reduce their sodium levels should probably steer clear of frozen food in general, but this frozen meal in particular should be avoided.

The Banquet Backyard BBQ Meal is a pretty underwhelming take on a backyard-potluck-style classic. The general concept here is great, but every component has problems. We’d love to try a higher-quality version of this meal, but the version that we tried today is simply not very good.

If you want to learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this frozen BBQ meal, check out our package scans below.