Banquet Hearty One Fried Chicken
Price: $1.82
Size: 16 ounces; 11 cents an ounce
Nutritional facts: 810 calories, 41 grams of fat (10 grams of saturated fat), 2,550 milligrams of sodium
Consisted of: Fried chicken drumstick and thigh, mashed potatoes, corn
Advice: Would do in a pinch
Claim Jumper Restaurant Country Fried Chicken
Price: $3.99 (on special for $2)
Size: 17.25 ounces; 23 cents (12 cents) an ounce
Nutritional facts: 610 calories, 26 grams of fat (6 grams saturated fat), 1,930 milligrams of sodium
Consisted of: Chicken white meat, corn on the cob, mashed potatoes, gravy
Advice: Would do in a pinch
Healthy Choice Country Breaded Chicken
Price: $2.55 (on special for $2)
Size: 10.6 ounces; 24 cents (19 cents) an ounce
Nutritional facts: 370 calories, 9 grams of fat (2 grams saturated fat), 560 milligrams of sodium
Consisted of: Chicken breast strips, gravy, mixed vegetables, cherry dessert
Advice: Not even on a soccer night
Hungry-Man Classic Fried Chicken
Price: $3.99 (on special for $1.79)
Size: 16.5 ounces; 24 cents (11 cents) an ounce
Nutritional facts: 950 calories, 45 grams of fat (10 grams of saturated fat), 2,870 milligrams of sodium
Consisted of: white and dark chicken, mashed potatoes, corn, brownie
Advice: Not even on a soccer night
Ian's Chicken Nuggets
Price: $3.39
Size: 8 ounces; 42 cents an ounce
Nutritional facts: 440 calories, 14 grams of fat (2 grams saturated fat), 320 milligrams sodium
Consisted of: "Nugget-shaped chicken patties," letter-shaped potatoes, strawberry applesauce and a chocolate brownie
Advice: Not even on a soccer night
Marie Callender's Southern Fried Chicken Tenderloins
Price: $3.26 (on special for $2)
Size: 13.5 ounces; 24 cents (15 cents) an ounce
Nutritional facts: 470 calories, 19 grams of fat (8 grams saturated fat), 1,450 milligrams of sodium
Consisted of: Chicken breast tenderloins, scalloped potatoes, glazed carrots
Advice: You could do a lot worse
Stouffer's Classic Meals Fried Chicken Breast
Price: $2.40
Size: 8 7/8 ounces; 27 cents an ounce
Nutritional facts: 360 calories, 18 grams of fat (4.5 grams saturated fat), 880 milligrams of sodium
Consisted of: Chicken and mashed potatoes
Advice: Not even on a soccer night
Swanson Classic Fried Chicken
Price: $2.99 (on closeout for $1.79)
Size: 11.5 ounces; 26 cents (16 cents) an ounce
Nutritional facts: 770 calories, 37 grams of fat (8 grams saturated fat), 2,180 milligrams of sodium
Consisted of: White and dark chicken, mashed potatoes, corn, brownie
Advice: You could do worse (but skip the potatoes)
For somebody like me -- a restaurant critic and lifelong foodie -- it was a daunting assignment: Dine on a week's worth of frozen dinners.
My familiarity with frozen dinners was admittedly slim, limited to a passing notice of what one of my kids might pick up to eat at work or what I might smell near the microwaves in the company lunchroom.
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The truth is, I've arrived at the point in my life where if I'm going to consume calories, I'm going to be sure they're worth it. And I know I can put together a made-from-scratch dinner, tailored to my family's tastes and keeping nutritional content in mind, in not much more time than it takes to heat a frozen one.
But an assignment's an assignment. Besides, it was possible that they might actually be good.
Or ... not, as it turned out. But I will say there are a few bright spots in the freezer.
My editors and I decided I would taste fried-chicken dinners because that is one thing most frozen-foods companies produce, and because fried chicken seems to appeal to a lot of people. All of the dinners had instructions for heating them in the microwave or in the oven but none suggested one over the other; we chose the former because we believe it's the one most people use.
I ate eight dinners, or at least part of them. In the final analysis, my "good" rating would go to a dinner composed of chicken from one company, vegetables from another, dessert from still another. Why the manufacturers can't seem to have consistently high quality across the board is a mystery to me, but it seems that that's the case.
My favorite overall was the Marie Callender's Southern Fried Chicken Tenderloins. Its list of ingredients was just as long as most of the others' -- pay attention to them all and you'll see enough unfamiliar words to fill a whole season of "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?" -- but it was heartening that the first three ingredients were red-skin potatoes, carrots and fried chicken tenderloins. That was reflected in the flavor and texture of the plated dinner: The chicken was the real thing, with a light and grease-free coating. The use of cubed potatoes instead of the ubiquitous mashed seemed a wise decision, as did the use of a cheese sauce that, if fairly bland, was at least not objectionable, and lightly glazed carrots instead of the more common corn.
But Marie Callender's didn't have the best chicken. That honor goes to the Swanson Classic Fried Chicken dinner, in which the chicken had a crunchy coating that wasn't greasy. Swanson also had a pretty good dessert -- a brownie that bakes along with the dinner, and ends up sort of like a poor man's version of a molten chocolate cake. But Swanson's corn was blah, its mashed potatoes cursed with the flavor and texture of wallpaper paste. And Swanson didn't do real well in the nutritional columns.
See what I mean?
Here's how the rest stacked up:
* In the Claim Jumper Restaurant Country Fried Chicken, the finely chopped meat and the breading on it were too soft and bland. The mashed potatoes weren't bad -- at least for frozen mashed potatoes -- with actual pieces of their red skins included, for texture and maybe a little nutrient boost. Gravy was in a separate pouch and was typical prepared gravy, kind of bland and gloppy.
* The Hungry Man Classic Fried Chicken weighs a whopping 1 pound -- and has a nutritional profile to match. Unless you're a longshoreman -- of which we have precious few in Las Vegas -- this is too much food. It's certainly too much food for anyone who's worried about his or her nutritional health. (When a frozen dinner contains 120 percent of the recommended daily consumption of sodium, you ought to be getting the idea that it's too much.) The chicken would've been acceptable except that it was greasy, the mashed potatoes had a distinctive "instant" taste and the corn was basic frozen corn.
* The Banquet Hearty One Fried Chicken was similar in size and nutritional profile. The chicken was better than in the Hungry Man but the potatoes were far worse. The corn was corn.
At the bottom of the pile were the Stouffer's Classic Meals Fried Chicken Breast, Healthy Choice Country Breaded Chicken and Ian's Chicken Nuggets.
* The Stouffer's actually surprised me, because the company's offerings that I remember from my college days were pretty tasty, all things considered. But in this entree, the chicken was finely chopped and soggy, with bland, unpleasant breading. What was supposed to pass for gravy was thin and flavorless. And the potatoes it topped were gluey.
* I expected the Healthy Choice chicken to be drier because of the greatly reduced fat content, but that wasn't really the case. However, the chicken was overly soft, its breading almost mushy, and it had way too little seasoning. The mashed potatoes and "gravy" were flavorless glop. The vegetables were standard frozen mixed vegetables, and the cherry dessert amounted to pie filling with a few crumbs sprinkled atop.
* Ian's Chicken Nuggets were our eighth-day wild card. The only "alternative" chicken meal we could find was this one designed for kids, but it wasn't the size that mattered. The chicken nuggets were formed of what appeared to be ground chicken, and the "Alphatots" nugget-type potatoes had solidified into one big alphaclump by the time the meal came out of the microwave. The strawberry applesauce contained real strawberries but still tasted artificial and was overly sweet. The brownie was dry and gummy.
