With the fall season comes a bounty of delicious fall-themed foods. And you know that your trusted review team at Freezer Meal Frenzy goes absolutely bonkers for this stuff. So we’ve been making our way through this year’s offerings from both Trader Joe’s and Aldi.
Today we’re checking out another Aldi fall food, the Season’s Choice Butternut Squash Risotto. If this looks familiar to you, that’s because this is a squash variant of the Season’s Choice Pumpkin Spelt Risotto. Of course we had to try both versions of this dish!
So let’s cook up this squashy supper and see what it’s all about. Thankfully, that part is pretty easy. Simply dump the contents of the bag into a pan with a little bit of water, then cook it for four minutes on medium heat, followed by three more minutes on low heat. Keep stirring it all the while, and you should be golden. (If you want to read the full cooking instructions straight off the bag, check out the package scans at the bottom of this review.)
The rice here ends up a little firm, which we really enjoy. It creates a really nice texture that contrasts with the pieces of squash. And those squash chunks are pretty large. They are also kind of firm, and we’d say they’re almost crunchy in the middle. Oh, and one other thing we noticed is that we found a couple squash seeds in the mix.
But don’t let the orange color fool you; not every orange cube in this dish is butternut squash. There are also smaller chunks of carrots mixed in, which does prevent the flavor from becoming overwhelmingly squashy.
We loved the sauce in the pumpkin version of this risotto, and we love it here too. It’s nice and creamy, and it serves as a wonderful backbone for the squash flavor. This does lack the sweeter undertones of the pumpkin version, though. In fact, we think there’s a slight saltiness to this one that we didn’t notice with the pumpkin version.
If you look at the package, you’ll notice that a serving has just 130 calories and 360 mg of sodium. However, if you look even closer, you’ll notice that this is only 1/4 of the bag. If you eat all of this in a sitting (which is quite doable), you’ll be up to 520 calories and a whopping 1,440 mg of sodium.
The Season’s Choice Butternut Squash Risotto is yet another fall-themed treat that you’ll find for a limited time at your local Aldi. We think it’s great, but we also think we prefer the pumpkin version over this one, just ever-so-slightly. Still, this is definitely worth picking up before it’s gone.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this frozen risotto, check out our package scans below.
