A Lean Cuisine Review: Orange Peel Chicken

That's right, now that I don't "work" during the day (or, really, at all) I've found that I have an abundance of two things: time & frozen foods. So I've decided to try my hand at something: food reviewer. See, I eats me a ton of, what I like to call Lean Cuisines (because that's what they're called). Today, I will be trying the Orange Peel Chicken dinnertime selects, because this week at Safeway, the "dinners" were cheaper than the smaller-portion lunches (though, note to the good people at Lean Cuisine, could you lay off the goddamn broccoli just a little bit? I mean, no one actually likes broccoli. No one. I've checked).

Anyhow, on with this review.

The first thing I look at on a Lean Cuisine is the cooking times. I was amazed at the Orange Peel Chicken cooking time: 4:00 to 5:30 minutes, and you don't slit the plastic wrap! Holy Toledo, I've never seen this before, in all my 27 years of eating frozen dinners! No prep, just throw the bitch in the microwave! Wow!

The next thing I look at is the picture on the box. This one looks pretty damn tasty, nasty broccoli business aside. Now, here's what actually came out of the microwave:

I thought, maybe that's not fair, so I decided to put on my food dressing hat, and place the little bastard on a white plate, arranged like it was on the box. I think I did a pretty damn fine job.

Now, step two, after cooking the meal, is to throw away all of the crappy parts of the meal. In this case, sayonara, broccoli.

Step three, get what you need to really enjoy the meal. Here, it's a fork, and a Sprite.

Finally, eat the damn thing. I'll spare you those messy pictures, needless to say, when it was finished, my beautiful white plate (that I'm going to have to wash now) looked a little something like this:

First off, I must say this: I believe "orange" and "meat" go very well together. It's a very happy marriage 90% of the time. And this meal was no exception. The sauce tasted (incredibly) like orange. However, I must admit, it was a bit spicier than I would have liked. Don't get me wrong -- spicy has its place. Unfortunately, that place is in a Mexican Restaurant, not a typically mundane frozen dinner.

Now, you notice that I ate this with a fork? Big mistake; this is a spoon-eatin' affair. This is because the rice has all the "flavor" of "unflavored white rice." It's up to you to get some of that spicy orange sauce onto the somewhat chalky white rice. Once this is done, the rice becomes palatable (even better if you can mix a chunk of chicken or two with the rice -- something very difficult to pull off armed solely with a fork).

But it's not fair to compare a Lean Cuisine to an ordinary dinner, of course. And I would never be so petty. However, we do need a little perspective. It looks like Lean Cuisine has already posted reviews for their Orange Peel Chicken here, but those blurbs are obviously either ghost-written by staff memebers, or stammered out by total morons.

For instance: "Wow, this meal was delicicious! The chicken was tender and the breading didn't get soggy in the microwave. I adored the fabulous sauce, the zesty flavor of orange added an incredible zing to the veggies and chicken. Its destined to be a favorite dinner for me on a summer night. Melissa H. Saint Peters, MO"

A) The chicken was soggy. B) The sauce was too spicy. C) The veggies you speak of were crappy broccoli and (I think) pepper slivers already mixed in with the rice.

But I digress. Here's my final scores, from 1-10:

Prep: No cutting! Fast cook times! AWESOME! 9

Appearance: Chicken too small, rice too big, and BAH! BROCCOLI! 5

Taste: Not the worst in the world, but too damn spicy. 7

Filling: Well, it got the job done. I guess I'm not hungry any more...still, I would have expected more food on a dinner item. 6

Cool Factor: Sounds like a fancy restaurant meal, but really just spicy sauce over breaded chicken and carrots next to crappy rice and broccoli. Plus, I didn't see a single orange peel in the entire meal. 5

Final Score: 6.4