New Product Review! (Banquet Bowls)

Hello again everyone. As I mentioned in this week’s Free Recipe Wednesday I finally have a New Product Review to post here on the blog. Last weekend while grocery shopping I was in the frozen food section picking up some Banquet Sausage & Gravy Pot Pies, which I did a review of previously, and I noticed 5 new frozen meals that Banquet has come out with. Banquet doesn’t really call them anything, they just tell what the dish is and have a picture of it on the box, but I have started calling them Banquet Bowls because every one of them is pictured in a bowl on the box. Obviously the container inside isn’t really a bowl but rather a container like most frozen dinners come in. As with just about every Banquet item, these were cheap at only $1 each so I decided to pick up 3 of the 5 to give them a try. The ones I bought, and tried, were the Cheesy Rice and Chicken, the Queso Mac, and the Three Cheese Ziti. There is also a Cheesy Potato Bake and a Fettuccini Alfredo which I will most likely buy and try after trying the other three.  (Click the pictures on the right to enlarge them.)

With all 3 of the ones I tried, I was pleasantly surprised by the flavor. A lot of frozen meals just lack flavor and you have to salt the heck out of them just to make them taste good enough to get down. These were so good just the way they were and I didn’t even have to salt them, although I did anyway. My favorite of the 3 I tried was probably the Queso Mac. Usually cheesy frozen meals have a runny cheese sauce and you really don’t get a lot of cheese flavor or if you do it’s a weird flavor. This was creamy, almost like Velveeta shells and cheese and the flavor was really good. I could probably eat that one every day. I also really enjoyed the amount of food you get for your dollar. All of the ones I tried were the perfect size for lunch, with maybe a small bag of chips or a piece of fruit to go along with it.

Overall this was another success by Banquet in my opinion. The price is just right, the quantity of food is good, and the flavor is definitely above par when compared to other frozen meals. I personally look forward to trying the other 2 that I haven’t tried yet and buying more of the ones that I did try. Give them a try yourself and post comments below letting me know what you thought about them.