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The perks of frozen entrees...

Frozen entree assets:
quick & easy to prepare
portion control
great for single-serving-needs
prep & clean-up a snap
satisfies a guilty pleasure:)

Stouffer's Mac & Cheese finds its way into my shopping cart at times. Years ago, I loved those Banquet Pot Pies!

What ready to cook entrees do you admit to buying & really liking?

24 Comments:

Eeks, I just baked up a Trader Joe's BBQ Chicken pizza last night and felt guilty about it b/c I usually cook everything from scratch! My husband loved it though!

there aren't many that i really like but i admit that i use them for lunches at work. i can get called into work at 8am for a job that starts at 8:30... no time to make lunch so i grab one to go. one of the best is stouffers carbonara. but it is insanely high in calories for the portion size because they use real cream and cheese.

I have physical challenges, like walking and standing, that make food prep downright painful. I have to rest between short spurts. I've tried a bunch of frozen entrees and wouldn't buy a single one again. Many ended up in the trash after just one bite. If there are any shining stars out there, I'd like to hear about them. I don't want something that only takes a couple of minutes to prepare with fresh ingredients - that would defeat the purpose. Contenders, please come forward. Thanks for the question JEP.

Amy's Organic: lasagna (both cheese and veggie), palak paneer (full meal w/ rice and beans), cheese enchilada (outrageous with a little bit of Fage 0% spooned over the top).

I love these for lunches when I don't have any good leftovers to finish up. Tasty, easy, and I don't feel guilty because they are fairly balanced with not too much salt and no weird ingredients.

My sister and I frequently ate Banquet Pot Pies during summer vacation (back when you had no choice but to cook them in the oven!) but now I can't stand them. Not sure if the quality changed or if my taste buds did.

I think the only frozen entree I really rely on is frozen pizza! I prefer Jack's and can't stand Tombstone- something about the sauce I just don't like. The sister and I also ate those cardboard like Jeno's or Tostino's pizzas, too. Every so often I crave that crispy crust and cheese of questionable origins!

I like Amy's entrees but I think they are pretty expensive, which for me defeats the purpose of a frozen meal. If I'm going to spend $8 on a frozen entree because I'm too tired/lazy to cook, I'd rather order some take out.

while this isn't an entree, i regularly buy frozen naan & frozen gyoza. two things i adore but would never take the time to make myself.

Stouffer's spinach souffle--not technically an entree, but I treat it as such. And put cheese on top. Yum.

Where do you live, ceforrester? $8 is double what I pay for Amy's! I agree that they're a little more than the stouffer's products, but i usually find them to be in the $3.50 range when on sale, and around $4.50 when not on sale. BTW, these are the prices in upstate NY.

I love Amy's Organic Cheese Lasagna. And Stouffer's Macaroni and Cheese (not Lean Cuisine, it's gotta be the full fat red box). And Kashi makes some pretty tasty stuff also. For the most part, I stay away from frozen meals with meat in them. The texture is often troublesom and the taste is often pretty bad. There isn't enough money in the world to make me eat a piece of Lean Cuisine chicken. Well, that's not true. Cough up enough bucks, and I totally will. But only for money.

I have frozen dinners often when I work late. I prefer to cook but sometimes at 8:30 at night the microwave is all I can handle.
Some of my favorites are:
Smart Ones- Angel hair marinara, Thai chicken with rice noodles, fiesta chicken

Lean cuisine- Chicken piccata

Amy's- Tofu rice bowl, tofu ranchero, tortellini pesto

I just tried Amy's quiche. I have to shop online (Acme delivers). It cost $8. It was 2" round! I expected a full size serving for that price. It tasted pretty good, but yikes!

I can't stand most of the frozen stuff, but the Smart Ones line is pretty good. I have tried that thai chicken and I liked it a lot, I just take them for lunch sometimes.

PerkyMac-Not sure if you have these (or something like them) where you live- http://www.suppersolutionsinc.com/
It would be a great alternative to frozen food-you can do it 2 ways- they do most of the prep work and you can assemble there or you can even just have them prepare it/portion it and you just pick it up. It's pretty swift- a busy mom friend of mine swears by these! She likes it because she feels she has more control of her food (calories/ingredients/food allergy issues) than with frozen. I hope that helps out in your search for tasty/simpler food!

@Kerosena - I live in nyc. But it seems like PerkyMac's cost as much as mine.

I'm pretty sure the brand is only available in Canada, but President's Choice frozen foods (and other items) are often good. It's not a guarantee! But my favorite is the reduced-fat shepherd's pie ("Blue Menu" - indicates a 'healthier' choice - healthier can mean many different things though; high fibre, reduced fat, reduced sodium, etc.). Some Blue Menu items are lacking in flavour though, such as the chicken lasagne.

I like their frozen meatballs a lot, though they are not a full meal. We serve them at parties, in our crockpot, with barbecue sauce.

I ate some Amy's meals when I lived in the US but they are overpriced here. I liked the mattar paneer and the veggie loaf, and the whole wheat spinach pizza.

I don't buy frozen meals any longer -- no need -- but I do freeze leftovers in one- or two-serving size containers. Or I'll double a casserole recipe and freeze the second one.

Of course, there are some ready-made, quick prep foods from Costco that you'll usually find in my freezer, including flautas, spinach ravioli, and natural chicken sausage (Sausages By Amy). And, always, always a big box of Boca Burgers. So that's almost the same thing, I guess.

Back when I was a commuter and my kids went to a preschool where the staff could heat up the kids' lunches in the micro, I used to buy Amy's products. Sounds like some are paying WAY more than retail, though. Around here, most are in the $4-$5 range, although pizzas go for about $7, and some of the small things, like pockets and burritos, are about $3. My kids loved those pockets -- like a hand-held pot pie.

Pretty much the only frozen foods I buy at the supermarket anymore are vegetables, and sometimes IQF fish when it's on sale.

Trader Joe's has some new frozen entrees that are outstanding! I can't remember what they are called but there is a Chicken with gorgonzola sauce that is so fresh and delicious you might think it was carry-out from your favorite restaurant. There is enough for two people in each package. Cook for 30 minutes in the tray. They also have Salmon Mojitio, Citron Talapia and another Chicken dish which might be Chicken with Chipotle. I also buy the frozen rice bags from TJ's, they cook up nicely in 3 minutes and make an excellent companion to the frozen dinners. PS: I am super picky about frozen meals and RARELY if ever eat them.

Lein Cuisine - Steak Portebello and Brocolli

It's tastes good, easy to take to work for lunch, and low in carbs.

When I lived alone, I used to buy frozen entrees quite often. But now I'm with LoCo - I don't buy frozen meal any more, for a number of reasons (one of them being that my hubby is lactose intolerant and it's such a pain to read the ingredient list sometimes:-)), but I often make our own frozen entrees - it's not more difficult to make meatballs from 4 pounds of meat than it is from 2, so there we go. I freeze everything:croquettes, puff pastry with various fillings, spring rolls, dumplings, turkey, latkes, you name it. It's really nice though to be able to get something out of the freezer when you don't have time or too tired to cook, or just don't feel like cooking (yep, as much as I love cooking, the latter still happens:-)).

We like our store-brand extra thin crust pizza better than any pizza we can find in our city.

I'm a fan of Smart Balance (Weight Watchers) frozen lasagnes, esp. the lasagne florentine. My husband is anti-lasagne (crazy, I know), so I don't make it myself nearly as often as I'd like to. I'll keep these around for lunches at school or for dinners when my husband is working.

I've tried the Bertolli's frozen pasta, the orecchiette with a kind of pesto. I'm happy to eat that with some grilled chicken. I know it seems extraordinarily lazy not to make your own pasta, esp. if it's just pesto, but I don't make pesto (no green thumb at all, so no basil) and I can't find a good one in the shop. Plus, I like how the orechiette are nice and chewy. If I'm going with frozen foods, its because I don't want to bother with a) cooking, and moreso b) cleaning up.

It's not an entree, but if could be: the Goya frozen plantains are really, really good, and perfect straight from the microwave.

And from Stouffers, I like the veggie lasagne, the spinach souffle, and maybe there is something with corn, I can't remember. The meatloaf is okay, by meatloaf standards.

I keep a "tube" of Costco salmon burgers in the freezer for emergency meals. We dress them up with a white wine sauce or even just some Sriricha (sp?). The other frozen food item I get are the frozen cheese raviolis from Costco. They are my guilty pleasure.

Costco also has some delicious frozen foods:
ravioli, the porcini mushroom and lobster ravioli are delicious
Individually packed organic salmon filets (already seasoned)
Chicken paella
meatballs
Cascadian farms grilled chicken strips.
I find the quality of the Kirkland (Costco) brand to be extremely high.
And ever since I was little, I've loved weaver chicken croquettes with white gravy.
These are all better prepared oven or stove stop and not as fast as individual microwave entrees but they are quite tasty.

The $8 2" frozen quiche I mentioned above is Nancy's, NOT AMY'S.

pretty much all of amy's entrees are good, but my favorites are the lasagnas and the veggie salisbury steak, actually if anyone has a recipe for something similar that would be great because i've been searching and searching for one

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