Chicken – Page 9 – Food In Real Life

Marie Callender’s Cheesy Chicken & Rice

Looks: Like someone had already chewed it and spit it back into the bowl. Where are the nice big strips of chicken? Where are the fresh broccoli florets? Where is the creamy cheese sauce? Nowhere to be found. The biggest piece of chicken was perhaps a third the size of the pieces pictured on the box, and even before cooking, the cheese sauce was mixed into the rice. I almost didn’t eat it because of how it looked. 1 out of 5

Taste: Even worse than it looks. I was able to stomach four bites before I threw the rest out; because of the way that the cheese sauce gums up the rice and traps the chicken and vegetables in a web of disgusting cheeserice, the entire dish tastes and feels the same – like crap. 0 out of 5

Knorr Rice Sides (Chicken)

Looks: The texture and rice grain size are right on, but the little orange bits on the package are really brown, and the whole dish has a slightly yellowish-green (more yellow than green) tinge that I only see when looking at it side-by-side with the packaging. 4 out of 5

Taste: There’s nothing wrong with the taste – the rice is soft but not too soft, the sauce is just the right consistency (although it took 14 minutes to cook instead of 7), but the dish doesn’t really taste of chicken. I think it tastes how “chicken flavor” is supposed to taste; much like how “blue raspberry” flavoring doesn’t taste like raspberry, but it’s a taste that is universally recognized as blue raspberry. Where was I? Oh right, it’s a pleasing dish, a good complement to a chicken entree. 4 out of 5

Barber Foods Stuffed Chicken Breasts

Looks: Even before cooking, all of the portions were split open on top, exposing the not-quite-the-right-red marinara filling. The chicken doesn’t have the same meaty mass as the box pictures, but the crust and chicken are the correct color, so it’s got that going for it (which is nice). Oh, and the plate pictured on the box would have to be at most four inches in diameter. 3 out of 5

Taste: Confusing. My tastebuds were like “Mmmm, I like these tastes,” but my mouth was like “Uhhhh, I’m not so sure about these textures.” The crust was flavorful and a little crunchy, and the sauce made up for the chicken’s dryness, but none of the textures meshed together. It was more like I was eating some breading and also some chicken and also some sauce that just happened to be sitting next to each other. 3 out of 5

Antioch Farms Chicken Kiev

Looks: While the color and texture are almost identical, the chicken kiev pictured on the box is about 50% longer than the ones found inside. (There is no way that the sliced and unsliced portions on the box belong to the same kiev.) The butter sauce is portrayed accurately, even though my picture doesn’t really show it. (It’s boiling-lava hot, so slicing the chicken without splashing butter magma everywhere was a challenge.) 4 out of 5

Taste: Pretty good. The very ends of the chicken were a bit dry, as they didn’t benefit from the butter bath that the other slices received, but the breading was crisp and the rest of the chicken moist and flavorful. 4.5 out of 5