We were grocery shopping a while back when we spotted a kid, who was maybe about ten years old, shopping with his mom. This kid was absolutely obsessed with the Hungry-Man line of frozen food, and he kept begging his mom to buy him one of these frozen meals. He’d run to the freezer, grab a meal, and show it to his mom, and she’d tell him no. But with every rejection, he only seemed more determined to find the right meal. We’re not sure he ever did convince his mother to let him try one of those meals, but we definitely appreciate his ambition.
Ever since then, we’ve been wanting to sample the Hungry-Man line and review their offerings. After all, if it’s good enough for that ten-year-old kid, it’s probably good enough for us, right?
We did review one of their meals in the past — the Chicken Bacon Ranch Double Chicken Bowl — and today we’re finally getting around to trying a second one. Yes, today we’re devouring the Hungry-Man Boneless Fried Chicken Double Chicken Bowl to see if it satiates the appetite of our reviewer, who happens to be a hungry man. We’re pretty sure he’s the target demographic for this meal!
Now, while the size of this meal is a bit exaggerated by the packaging, the cook time is still a hefty beast. You’ll need to put this in the microwave for four minutes, then stir the macaroni portion, then put it back in for another two and a half minutes. Yes, that’s six and a half minutes of cook time, which means you probably don’t want to bring this to work if you tend to have long microwave lines in the breakroom. You could really make some enemies that way. (If you want to read the full cooking instructions straight off the back of the box, scroll to the bottom of this review and check out our package scans.)
All things considered, this is actually a pretty simple meal. It contains two chicken patties nestled in a bed of mac and cheese.
The chicken patties here are white meat, and they’re covered with a pretty decent-tasting breading. Unfortunately, the chicken itself is kind of bland, and the breading ends up super rubbery around the edges. We appreciate what Hungry-Man was going for here, but we just don’t feel like they pulled it off.
The macaroni portion comes with spiraled noodles in a white cheddar sauce. Normally, we’d be super into this combo, but it just doesn’t work for us here. White cheddar sauce tends to be rich and creamy; this stuff is kind of buttery, but it doesn’t have much flavor otherwise. We would have gladly traded this for a traditional cheddar mac, or even a batch of, say, mashed potatoes. Considering white cheddar is a rather high-calorie choice for a sauce, it just doesn’t end up being worth it.
And speaking of calories, you can completely forget about dieting if you commit to eating this thing. This meal contains 720 calories and 2,410 mg of sodium. That calorie count is what we’d expect from one of Devour’s most indulgent meals, and that sodium level is completely off the charts; this has almost four times as much sodium as we’d expect from a normal frozen meal. We do admit that this is a pretty filling meal, though.
The Hungry-Man Boneless Fried Chicken Double Chicken Bowl is a whole heap of sodium wrapped up in a mediocre meal. While this had the potential to be pretty tasty, the best-tasting part of this entire meal is the fried breading on the chicken. The chicken itself is pretty bland, and the mac and cheese portion is criminally tasteless.
So maybe that kid’s mother was actually onto something here — she was just trying to shield him from the inevitable disappointment that comes from eating one of Hungry-Man’s frozen meals.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this frozen chicken dinner, check out our package scans below.
