We love us a good penne, and we eat a decent amount of it here at Freezer Meal Frenzy. It’s a pretty hard dish to screw up, so we find that frozen versions of the meal do pretty alright for themselves more often than not. So today we’re going into the Michelina’s Penne with White Chicken in a Creamy Sauce with more excitement than hesitation.
If you’re not familiar with the Michelina’s brand, they make budget-friendly frozen meals. We oftentimes see these puppies on sale for a buck a pop, which is not bad at all for a frozen meal.
So let’s cook this thing up and see if Michelina’s is up to the task of making a great-tasting penne for a dollar!
Cooking this is a breeze. Toss it into the microwave for three minutes, give it a good stir, then pop it back in for another minute or two. Easy peasy. (If you want to read the full cooking instructions straight off the box, check out the package scan at the bottom of this review.)
Now, if the tray looks a little blocky, it’s not because we made this in Minecraft! No, it’s because Michelina’s skips the inner tray, instead using the box as a tray. That saves money for them, and in turn, it makes the meal cheaper for you. The downside, of course, is that these won’t last as long in a freezer as, say, a Lean Cuisine meal.
When we pulled this out of the microwave to stir it, the sauce was super watery. We were a bit worried about this, but after another minute of cook time, it seemed to thicken up just fine. As far as flavor, though, it’s a bit on the weak side. We’re also not sure we’d use the word “creamy” to describe this, despite it being in the title of the dish.
The chicken comes in tiny little cubes of white-meat chicken. They’re not great — they’re surprisingly salty — but they’re also not terrible, and they add a little bit of texture to the meal. We would have certainly preferred some bigger chunks here, but we’ll take what we can get for a buck.
And then you’ve got the penne pasta itself, which is pretty unremarkable. The thing that stands out the most, we suppose, is that these are smaller than your average penne noodles. That’s not a good thing or a bad thing; it’s just an observation.
This is a pretty diet-friendly dish, with just 290 calories and 580 mg of sodium. Both of those numbers are lower than your average frozen meal, but we should also point out that this is pretty small. It won’t satisfy an aggressive hunger, and you might want to pair it with a salad or a soup to really make sure you’ve got your belly full.
The Michelina’s Penne with White Chicken in a Creamy Sauce is good but not great. It’s hard to beat a batch of penne for a buck, but this also won’t fill you up, and Michelina’s does make some sacrifices in the quality department to bring you that low, low price.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this budget-priced frozen food, check out our package scan below.
