As seasoned frozen food reviewers, we’d like to think we’re pretty savvy at spotting rebranded items. For example, we strongly suspect that the Casa Mamita brand, an Aldi store exclusive, is just the El Monterey brand in disguise. That seemed to be the case when we dug into the Bean & Cheese Burritos, anyway.
To test this hypothesis, we’re sampling another item from Adli’s freezer aisle, the Casa Mamita Steak & Cheese Chimichanga, which we’re guessing is actually the El Monterey Shredded Steak & Three-Cheese Chimichanga. The only way to find out is to dig in!
We should point out that this won’t be a one-to-one comparison, since we typically microwave El Monterey products and we were curious to try heating this Casa Mamita chimichanga in the oven. While we came up with our own method of oven-cooking frozen burritos a long while back, we’re going to follow the package instructions for this chimichanga. If you want to see what those are, scroll down to the bottom of this review and check out our package scans.
Now, upon closer inspection, we did realize there are some differences between this chimichanga and the El Monterey one. The El Monterey chimichanga has way more cheese, while the Aldi one uses corn masa for a more textured tortilla. The Aldi version uses jalapeños and green chilis both, while the El Monterey chimichanga uses green chili peppers only (those are very close to the same thing, but not quite). The Aldi version contains more sodium, and the El Monterey version contains more fat.
“Okay,” you might be saying at this point, “so how does this doggone thing taste?”
Ah, so let’s get to that part. This is actually surprisingly good. When cooked in the oven, the shell ends up with the perfect consistency — soft underneath but with just a little bit of a crisp to it. The corn masa adds a nice texture and an even nicer flavor. We tend to expect frozen burritos and chimichangas to have a bit of a generic shell; this one really takes the shell seriously, and we love that.
Inside the shell, you’ve got beef, gooey cheddar cheese, and peppers. While this certainly isn’t as loaded with cheese at the El Monterey chimichanga we’ve been comparing this with, we actually think the amount of cheese here is perfect. It’s enough to add a creamy texture and a cheddar flavor without getting in the way of the beef. And the peppers add just a little bit of heat to this, though we’d hesitate to call this spicy.
The Casa Mamita Steak & Cheese Chimichanga is really, really good. We feel a bit silly for initially assuming that this was a rebranded El Monterey chimichanga, because it very clearly isn’t. This is on an entirely different level.
It turns out we’re not quite as savvy as we’d like to think.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this frozen Aldi chimichanga, check out our package scans below.
