Lean Cuisine Vegetable Eggroll

Source: Save-A-Lot

Price: $1.99

Size: 255g (9oz)

Rating: ✮✮✮✮✮

They Say: "One Dish Favorites™"

This was a package that caught my eye because it was around lunchtime and I was in that "Chinese" state of mind. I've had good luck with other Stouffer's Lean Cuisine offerings, and assumed it would be a tasty "one dish" meal. For $1.99, it also fit right in with trying to find something good, that would still be cheaper than a combo meal from a drive through window.

When I got it home, I flipped the box and started reading. 1) Remove tray and vent film. Okay, I can do that easy enough. Plenty of microfoods ask you to slit and slice covers. 2) Cook on 50% power. What? I've had this microwave for three and a half years, and NEVER had to set the power to anything less than "Cook." 3) 1 Tray: 7:30-8:30 minutes. Now, when I think "microwave," I think "fast." There's nothing fast about cooking a spoonful of rice and a skinny little eggroll for 8 minutes.

Finished product? Disappointment. The white rice and mixed vegetables (peas, carrots and red peppers) tasted very much the way I would expect a bag of frozen vegetables to taste. The rice was absolutely as white a supernova, and the vegetables were as colorful as a Disney trailer.  If my rating were based on the rice medley alone, another star would be added. To quote an old boss, "It is what it is."

The eggroll was what made the failure epic. There was no way you could cut it cleanly in half as shown on the box -- Without using a brand new knife from Wüsthof. Any sort of industrial spork in the tech park cafeteria would not be up for the job. I tore at all sides with a regular dinner fork and it came apart in chunks and layers. There was no crispness to the outside shell at all. It was very bland and had the mouthfeel of a sucker stick, long after the candy was gone. The innards had the semblance of a proper eggroll, but it was all mushed down and entwined together like some sort of edible double dutch jump rope. 

Overall, I give the Lean Cuisine Vegetable Eggroll one star out of five. They say it's a "One Dish Favorite," and I would only agree if I were a starving man on a deserted island and a crate of these washed up... Along with a microwave and a manual telling me how to set it to 50% Power!