Bremer Chicken Pot Pie Review

As it turns out, the most controversial opinion we’ve ever had at Freezer Meal Frenzy is that the Boomerang’s Steak & Potato Pie is pretty decent. While that might not sound all that controversial to most people, there are some very vocal pot pie fanatics on the internet, and those folks found our approval of such an item to be insulting. “That pot pie just doesn’t have enough meat in it,” they said. And we agree with those people for the most part; we just don’t think a mediocre pot pie is worth getting bent out of shape about.

So as we check out the Bremer Chicken Pot Pie — which is an Aldi-exclusive frozen meal — we can’t help but feel a little bit of nervousness. If we say the wrong thing, we run the risk of earning the ire of this excitable group of pot pie pundits. These people have an almost religious zeal for this particular food item, and we’re sure to be roasted in the comments section if we say the wrong thing. So we’re walking on eggshells here…

Anyway, the box lists out cooking instructions for the microwave and the oven, and we decided to try the oven method. This takes more than 30 minutes compared to the four or five minutes (plus three additional minutes of waiting time) this would take in the microwave, but we’re hoping this comes out better when cooked in the oven. (If you want to read the full cooking instructions for both methods, check out the package scans at the bottom of this review.)

One thing we want to point out is that no matter how you choose to cook these, you’re asked to cut a slit in the top of the pie before cooking it. We’re not sure why Bremer doesn’t just cut the slit themselves before freezing these, because cutting into a frozen pot pie is a difficult trick to pull off. It’s not impossible, by any means, but it’s also not nearly as easy as cutting the slit pre-freeze.

Another thing we should point out is that we cooked this for 31 minutes, which is one to three minutes less than the recommended 32-34, but the crust still ended up browner than we expected. If the pot pie looks like it’s slightly overcooked in any of our images, know that we took it out of the oven a little bit early and still got that result. And yes, it does taste slightly burnt around the edges.

The filling is pretty runny if you break into the shell right after pulling it out of the oven. But you are supposed to let it cool for a few minutes, and this gives the filling some time to thicken up.

But letting it cool won’t fix the portion size, which is criminally small. There’s not a lot inside this shell besides a batch of chicken-broth-flavored goop, with a few pieces of chicken and some carrots and peas. We think we might have found a piece of potato swimming around in there too.

And that goop? Well, that’s the best part of this entire meal. It’s a chicken-based gravy that’s surprisingly flavorful. So maybe we shouldn’t be too concerned about the small portions of kind-of-bland veggies, or kind-of-fake-tasting cubes of chicken. You can cover everything — even that burnt-tasting crust — in this gravy to bury the mediocrity, resulting in something that actually tastes pretty good despite having so many flaws.

One pot pie contains 380 calories and 930 mg of sodium. Both those numbers are slightly higher than we’d like, and this pot pie is also slightly smaller than we’d like it to be. This is a pretty small batch of food, which means you’ll likely need to pair it with another item to make a full meal.

The Aldi-exclusive Bremer Chicken Pot Pie is a pretty mediocre offering that at least has a really great-tasting gravy inside. The good news is that these pot pies are super cheap — barely over a buck a pie — so we suppose the low price does tip the scales for us in terms of value per dollar. Yes, there are much better options out there, but how many of them can you get for just 79 cents? Not many. Not many at all.

To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this frozen pot pie, check out our package scans below.