We love ourselves a cheap frozen meal here at Freezer Meal Frenzy, so we have a long-running affection for the El Monterey brand. No, we don’t expect high-quality Mexican food from El Monterey; we expect something we can buy with spare change scavenged from our couch cushions. El Monterey is basically the Taco Bell of the frozen food world, and we absolutely love that.
So when we spotted the El Monterey Beef, Black Bean & Three-Cheese Loaded Nacho Chimichanga at our local grocery store, we knew right away that we were going to have to try it. As it turns out, these are also available in a 10-pack, but we found an individually packaged one for this particular review.
Cooking this is simple. Just open one end of the package, then pop it into the microwave for about 90 seconds. Slide the chimichanga out of the wrapper and you’re good to go. If you want to shoot for a slightly crunchier shell, you can always go with the oven as well, but for the sake of this review we just nuked our chimichanga. (If you want to read the full cooking instructions straight off the wrap, check out the package scans at the bottom of this review.)
One thing we should warn you out is that this comes out incredibly greasy. It’s so greasy, in fact, that you might be better off eating this with a fork than with your fingers.
As you can probably tell by looking at the image above, this has a ton of shell. That shell is basically a wheat tortilla. It has a decent texture, but it’s kind of bland tasting. That doesn’t seem like a big deal, but with a flour or corn tortilla, there would have been at least a little bit of flavor here, especially considering just how much shell there is.
And the blandness kind of permeates this entire chimichanga. The beef doesn’t have a lot of flavor, and neither do the black beans. The cheese is the most flavorful part of this entire package, and even that’s only just okay. For an item that’s labeled with “LOADED NACHO CHIMICHANGA” in all-caps, you think this would be a little more exciting.
Despite the blandness, this still comes in at 310 calories (110 from fat), even though it’s not super filling. The good news is that there’s just 330 mg of sodium here, so if you do double up and eat two of these in a sitting, you won’t be consuming intense amounts of sodium.
The El Monterey Beef, Black Bean & Three-Cheese Loaded Nacho Chimichanga is kind of like a party that no one attends. You get really excited about it, but then you get there and you’re all alone, and you find yourself asking “Wait, is this it?” There are much better items in the El Monterey lineup than this. We find the Charbroiled Chicken & Monterey Jack Cheese Quesadillas to be pretty tasty, so maybe check those out instead of this disappointing chimichanga if you really want some low-budget southwest-style frozen food.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this frozen chimichanga, check out our package scans below.
