Looks: The image on the packaging conveniently omits all of the hat-shaped onion end-pieces which seemed to comprise my entire box, but the color and texture are appropriately represented. 4 out of 5

Taste: The onion is sweet, the breading is crunchy, and they taste great dipped in ketchup, catsup, or Generic Tomato-Based Dipping Sauce. To more adequately describe these rings, allow me to draw upon personal experience: in my life, I have encountered three types of onion rings:

1. “Onion” rings, which are essentially deep-fried breading with the faintest bit of onion inside – these are what Burger King sells.
2. Onion “rings”, which are more onion than anything else, with not enough breading to adequately cover and give structure to the onion. These are found at 2nd-tier concession stands and poorly-run restaurants.
3. “Onion rings” – healthy slices of white onion with healthy amounts of breading. Both components have their own flavors, and both textures are detectable in your mouth.

These rings are definitely a variant of #3. They have enough breading to make you feel bad about yourself for eating the entire box, but enough onion to make you feel good about yourself for eating an entire vegetable. 4 out of 5

Looks: The sauce doesn’t have the texture that’s depicted on the box – it’s closer to Ragu than Prego, if you know what I mean – and the lasagna didn’t quite keep its structure after being cut, even though I let it stand for the recommended 10 minutes after removing it from the oven. 4 out of 5

Taste: This lasagna tasted amazing for being boxed and covered with a thin plastic sheet, and it took literally no culinary ability to prepare, so even my wife could make it! I love my wife. The only change I would make to it would be to remove one of the five cheeses. Four is plenty, and by the end of my seventh piece, I was starting to feel a little logy. 4.5 out of 5

Looks: Apart from the cheese not spreading as judiciously as it does across the potato skins on the box, these frozen recreations could be straight out of a TGI Friday’s kitchen. 4.5 out of 5

Taste: I’ll be honest with you – I didn’t eat these. My wife was making them for a snack and I grabbed them to photograph after they came out of the oven but before she realized they were done. Sort of a potato-napping, if you will. Based on her level of displeasure at finding that her skins were missing, I’d peg their potential taste at about a 3.5. 3.5 out of 5

Looks: Like most frozen pizzas, this pizza isn’t cheesed adequately enough to ever have melty cheese string from piece to piece. Apart from that, the shape and color are appropriately depicted on the box. 4 out of 5

Taste: I present to you two facts:

1. This pizza is “Tony’s Crispy Crust Pizza.”
2. I’ve never eaten a less crispy pizza in my life.

It was very bready, and very chewy. If I ignore the fact that it was supposed to be crispy, it wasn’t too bad for a $1 grocery store pizza, but I have to score it low though due to the missing advertised crispiness. 2 out of 5

Looks: The taquitos on the box looks more like they’re breaded and baked, but the real-life product is obviously more likely battered and fried. The filling doesn’t come off as “appetizing” like it almost does on the box either. 3.5 out of 5

Taste: What you see is what you get. By that, I mean that you barely see the filling, and you barely taste it too. I tried both this chicken ranch flavor as well as a pepperoni variant, and I couldn’t tell them apart – the shell is the only taste that stands out. The tortilla wrapping is satisfying though – crunchy and crispy, with definite layers, so I can’t give it too low a score. 2.5 out of 5

Looks: It didn’t bake up quite as flat as the one on the packaging, but overall color and texture are close enough. 4 out of 5

Taste: Like a little circle of heaven. Just kidding – it was good though; warm, chewy, with a crusty outside. Really, what else is there to say about the taste of a biscuit? 4 out of 5

Looks: I still can’t get these pizzas to brown properly, even after following different advice I’ve gotten from readers: “Move it under the broiler”; “don’t preheat the oven”; “use a blow-torch.” None of it works. 4 out of 5

Taste: There is a definite quality scale of frozen pizzas: it starts with your Lunchables mini pizzas (ketchup and bread), then you have your Jack’s/Jeno’s/Totino’s, then up on the high end, you have your Digiorno’s and Freschettas – the “pizzeria-style” pizzas (if you believe their commercials). I would place this Red Baron above Digiorno, but below Freschetta. The cheese is thick, the sauce is zesty, and the crust is nice and chewy, but not as nice as Freschetta’s. This pizza has a good collection of herbs mixed in the cheese as well, and I think that is what really sets it apart from the Jack’s and Jeno’s. 4 out of 5

Looks: They look a little dryer than the nuggets on the box, which appear to be sweating, so maybe that’s a good thing. 4 out of 5

Taste: Sweet and juicy. The breading has a nice honey undertone, and the chicken meat inside is very moist. I have no complaints about them, except that I expected to find a dipping sauce inside the box, but instead I had to supply my own. 5 out of 5

Looks: The only difference I found between the box and the real deal is that the real fries have a significant number of black specks on them (probably part of the Ranch seasoning). You might also be able to make the argument that the fries on the box have a bumpier texture than the fries inside the box, but I don’t think it’s an argument you’d win. 4.5 out of 5

Taste: Ranchtastic. Wait, I want to say Chickentastic instead. Wait, I mean… Ranchickentastic. Whatever word I use, the fries were crispy on the outside, juicy on the inside, with just the right amount of ranch flavor – not so little that you can’t detect it, but not so much that your breath smells like salad dressing the rest of the day. 4 out of 5

Looks: Remember how the Pizza Rolls looked like they were singing? Well these Cordon Bleu Bites look like they’re puking their literal guts out. Even after cooling for a few minutes, the filling wasn’t thick enough to remain inside the bites, and instead poured and popped out with every bite. 3.5 out of 5

Taste: I thought they were just ok – the filling didn’t have much flavor and it gummed up my mouth, and the outer chicken sphere was a little dry. My wife, on the other hand, thought they were quite good; she liked the crunchiness of the breading and the cheesiness of the filling. (I already knew she loved cheesy things; she married me, didn’t she? *ba-dum-bum*) 3.5 out of 5

Side note: Over the weekend, I put together a more professional setup for taking these photographs. I built a light tent, purchased some dedicated lighting, and I’ve started experimenting with the advanced features of my camera. Today’s post is the first food picture I took in the new setup. What say you, Internet – is it an improvement?