Archive for the ‘Rice’ Category

Healthy Choice Sweet Asian Potstickers

Sunday, November 1st, 2009

Reader Dena Struchtemeyer sent in this review of Healthy Choice’s Sweet Asian Potstickers:

Healthy Choice Sweet Asian Potstickers - Ad

Healthy Choice Sweet Asian Potstickers

“I recently tried Healthy Choice’s ‘Sweet Asian Potstickers’ meal. That was a mistake. Notice how the ‘sauce’ looks like sewage? Not a coincidence. By the time the meal was cooked, the rice, carrots and potstickers had become thoroughly soaked in the sauce. As a result, the entire thing tasted like a sickly-sweet soy sauce. Except that is, for the stuffing inside the potstickers. The concoction was so dry that it seemed almost shocking compared to the other soaked parts of the meal.”

“The potstickers aren’t even the same shape or color as on the box and the potsticker casing is so chewy that I almost flung half the meal across the room trying to eat it. That nice creamy on sauce on the box? It’s nonexistent. The nicely chopped green onions? They’re nonexistent too. The large chopped pieces of bell pepper? You guessed it, nonexistent. The whole thing was awful.”

Healthy Choice Orange Zest Chicken Cafe Steamer

Monday, October 19th, 2009

Healthy Choice Orange Zest Chicken Cafe Steamer - Ad

Healthy Choice Orange Zest Chicken Cafe Steamer

Looks: Surprisingly accurate for a dish containing chicken, vegetables, and sauce. A few small differences though cause this meal to miss a perfect 5-out-of-5 score: The sauce (pictured as being poured over the dish) is obviously mixed in, the greens are a little wilted, and the green onions are MIA (or just very small). 4.5 out of 5

Taste: After seeing how close it looked to the box, I expected it to taste as good as it looked too, but I ended up disappointed. The chicken has a strange texture and taste that I wouldn’t have independently classified as chicken; it’s more like a meatball made of poultry. The vegetables don’t have much of a taste either, and they’re a bit too soft to have their texture make up for tastelessness. The sauce-and-rice mixture I had left towards the end of the dish did turn out to be quite tasty – if this meal had been “Sweet & Spicy Orange Zest Rice”, it would have scored higher. 3 out of 5

Healthy Choice Sweet & Sour Chicken

Monday, October 12th, 2009

Healthy Choice Sweet & Sour Chicken - Ad

Healthy Choice Sweet & Sour Chicken

Looks: The vegetables in the chicken mixture don’t have nearly the lustrous sheen that the box depicts, and the peach “crisp” looks more like peach-applesauce. However, all the ingredients pictured on the packaging are there, and they’re mostly the correct color. 3 out of 5

Taste: Depending on which piece of chicken you try, the chicken is either crispy, chewy, soggy, or bland. The vegetables (broccoli included) add nothing, but the rice + sauce mixture is pretty tasty. The peach crisp didn’t do much for me, although it made me forget about the broccoli. I wouldn’t buy this again. 2 out of 5

SmartOnes Lemon Herb Chicken Piccata

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009

SmartOnes Lemon Herb Chicken Piccata - Ad

SmartOnes Lemon Herb Chicken Piccata

Looks: A little soupier than pictured, and without the fresh grillmarks on the chicken. Besides that, most of the colors were right on (especially the vegetables, which is usually a crapshoot), and the ratio of food amounts is as pictured. 3.5 out of 5

Taste: I did not expect to like this dish, given my experience with the last chicken and rice dish I tried, but much to my surprise, I loved it! The chicken wasn’t dry, and the vegetables still had some crispiness to them. The sauce was especially good, with a strong chicken flavor but with light lemony aftertones. I’ll definitely be buying this again. (As with its looks, the soupiness was the main drawback.) 4 out of 5