Because we at Freezer Meal Frenzy have such a long history with frozen burritos, we always feel obligated to check out anything that’s even in a similar general category. Yeah, that’s a complicated way of saying we review a lot of burrito bowls.
Today, we’re kicking the tires of the Lean Cuisine Unwrapped Chicken Burrito High Protein Bowl. According to the box, this meal is both high in protein and gluten-free. While we do love ourselves a good tortilla, getting rid of the shell really helps in the gluten-free department.
Anyway, the process for cooking this is pretty much exactly what you’d expect from a Lean Cuisine Frozen meal. Toss it into the microwave for three minutes, give it a quick little stir, then pop it back in for another minute and a half. It’s pretty simple, right? (If you want to read the full cooking instructions straight off the box, check out the package scans at the bottom of this review.)
Pretty much the first thing we noticed about this is just how jam-packed with corn this is. Just look at this:
If this were fresh, yummy, flavorful corn, this would be incredible. We love corn, and this has the potential to really set itself apart from other frozen burrito bowls. However, this stuff isn’t great. In fact, it’s kind of terrible. This has virtually no flavor, and it’s mushy. Now, this is the specific type of mushy that bad frozen corn gets, where it sort of turns to putty as you chew it. It’s a shame, because the rest of this meal is actually pretty good.
The chicken portion here is actually really generous. It’s not amazing chicken by any means, but there’s really nothing wrong with it. It’s moist and has a great yet muted flavor — it’s a white meat chicken, so we weren’t expecting it to be jam-packed with flavor. It also has prominent grill marks on it, suggesting this was cooked over a grill (though we know those can always be painted on).
This has brown rice, but not a whole lot. It’s there to serve as a bed for the rest of the ingredients, not to take over the whole dish. We think that frozen burrito bowls too often make the mistake of using rice as filler — that doesn’t seem to be the case here. this rice is a little mushy, but we can forgive that because the portion size is small enough that it doesn’t matter much — if this were jam-packed with the stuff, it would be an issue.
The real star of this show is the combination of the verde salsa and the cheese blend (which is monterey jack and cheddar). The verde sauce gives it a fresh, almost fruity flavor, while the cheese brings it all together. There’s not a ton of either ingredient, mind you, but they both do a lot of work in the flavor department.
And then you’ve got a handful of poblano peppers and black beans. Neither of these really stood out to us, though.
This meal contains 340 calories and 620 mg of sodium. Those are some pretty appealing numbers for a frozen food to print on the box, though we do think this meal is less filling than we were expecting it to be.
The Lean Cuisine Unwrapped Chicken Burrito High Protein Bowl takes a pretty good burrito bowl and tosses in absurd amounts of really bad corn. Without the corn — or with a fresher corn portion — this would actually be worth recommending. As is, though, we think this needs some adjustment. If it was the verde sauce specifically that brought you here, we’d recommend the Frontera Chicken Verde Taco Bowl over this.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this frozen burrito bowl, check out our package scans below.
