We’re sometimes surprised by just how big Stouffer’s lasagna line really is. If you’re looking to eat like Garfield without spending several hours prepping for your big meal, Stouffer’s is a pretty great option. We’ve tried more of their frozen lasagna dishes than we can list from memory, and yet here we are, adding yet another meal to that already-lengthy list.
Today we’re tasting something made especially for vegetarian eaters, the Stouffer’s Meatless Lasagna. This features a meat substitute (the Awesome Grounds) made by Sweet earth, whose food we’ve been reviewing for as long as Freezer Meal Frenzy has been a website. And it really seems like the Sweet Earth brand is getting around these days, teaming up with other frozen food makers to bring the world more vegetarian-friendly food. We have to admire that!
If you’ve ever cooked a Stouffer’s lasagna before, then you probably already know that it’s super easy, but that it will also take a while to cook. In the microwave, this requires six and a half minutes of cook time; in the oven, you’re looking at 40 minutes. For the sake of this review, we went with the microwave. (If you want to read the full cooking instructions straight off the box, you can check out the package scans below.)
One thing we should point out right away is that the sauce distribution isn’t exactly right. The portion size is generous, but a lot of the sauce ends up on one side of the dish instead of being spread out evenly. You might want to take the opportunity to mash that around a little bit when you take it out of the microwave the first time. We didn’t, and the edges of our pasta ended up crispy. It’s an easy enough thing to fix, but you’ll probably want to be aware of this before you cook up your own serving of this frozen dish.
Now, some of Stouffer’s lasagnas go for a sweeter sauce, while others go for a more subtle one. This is very much in the former camp, with a satisfyingly sweet taste to the tomato-based sauce. And, like we mentioned earlier, the portion size is pretty substantial here, so you shouldn’t find yourself running out of sauce too early so long as you mix this around a little bit before eating it.
The real draw here, though, is the batch of Awesome Grounds you’ll find inside. While these grounds have less form and texture than a real ground beef, they still add a little something extra to this dish. Flavor-wise, this is obviously a faux beef, but it does have just a little bit of kick to it. We thought we tasted a little bit of fennel seed here, but we were surprised to see it absent from the list of ingredients on the box.
We do wish there were more cheese here. This does contain a little bit of cottage cheese inside, and some melty mozzarella on top. However, both of those have a pretty scant presence when compared with the sauce or even the Awesome Grounds. If we had it our way, we’d have tripled the amount of both. Of course, that might crank that calorie count a bit too high for a single-serving meal.
And speaking of calories…
While this doesn’t have any meat in it, it does contain 380 calories, which isn’t the worst calorie count we’ve ever seen but it’s also slightly outside what we’d consider diet-friendly. It’s the sodium here that’s the real killer, though. With 1,200 mg of sodium, this is definitely something you’ll want to enjoy in moderation.
The Stouffer’s Meatless Lasagna is a pretty good vegetarian take on meaty lasagna. Instead of offering a veggie-filled delight, this goes for a more traditional lasagna style, only with vegetarian-friendly beef substitute instead of real beef. While we do wish there were more cheese here, we think this is still a pretty great-tasting lasagna.
We tried the single-serve version of this meal for this particular review, but if we come across a multi-serve version of this in the future, we’d be more than happy to give that a taste as well.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this vegetarian-friendly frozen lasagna, check out the package scans below.
