Bertolli Oven Bake Meals: Tri-Color Four Cheese Ravioli Review

Bertolli's new line of Oven Bake Meals claim to offer restaurant quality dishes at home, with minimal prep time. Bertolli's other entrées live up to the lofty "restaurant quality" claim, so initial expectations are that the Oven Bake installment will hit the mark.

The Tri-Color Four Cheese Ravioli are filled with ricotta, parmesan, mozzarella, and romano cheeses. The creamy alfredo sauce is made from aged asiago and parmesan cheeses. The dish also comes with crumb topping as a garnish. All the elements exist for a classic ravioli dish.

Baking the product is very easy, as promised by Bertolli's ad campaigns. Perhaps even easier than the other Bertolli products, which require some stirring and watching the burner, the Tri-Color Four Cheese Ravioli can be set in the oven and left for an extended period of time. The only check comes at the 40 minute mark, when the ad-hoc chef must stir the dish and add the crumb package on top. After this check, the meal bakes for another 10 minutes, for a total cooking time of 50 minutes. Prep is equally easy: the only thing required to get this dish cooking is a casserole dish sprayed with Pam and some aluminum foil wrapped tightly over the top. Overall, the cooking process is a breeze. The hardest part is waiting for the dish to finish as the pleasant aroma wafts through the kitchen.

The end result of this easy baking process is good, though perhaps not quite the "restaurant quality" touted in Bertolli's advertisements and on the product packaging. The meal's presentational value is much less impressive than the packaging suggests-although this is expected with most food products, since the final meal never looks as good as the picture. The main aesthetic failing is the crumb topping's overall mushy, melted, amalgamated appearance versus the finely crushed, gently crumbled, crisply baked appearance on the packaging. But, the overall look is still a small step above what one expects from a freezer section ready-to-bake meal. And, of course, the look isn't as important as the taste. Bertolli's Tri-Color Four Cheese Ravioli is delicious, there's no doubt about that, but it does have a few negative aspects. Again, the crumbled topping becomes a problem-melted into the cheese, the crumb topping forms an almost film-like layer on the surface of the ravioli, leading to an unappetizing consistency. However, despite the odd consistency, the crumb topping is admittedly tasty. Unfortunately, it's melted-in nature makes it difficult to get an appropriate helping of topping with each bite; either a large clump of the topping is eaten, or none at all, there isn't an easy middle point without haphazardly chopping up the dish. The ravioli itself is delicious; the filling is in perfect proportion to the pasta, and it tastes excellent. Furthermore, the each piece tastes subtly different due to the varied use of tri-colored pasta. The sauce compliments the pasta well, adding an extra, creamy cheese flavor to the crumbly cheesy ravioli insides.

Overall, Bertolli's Tri-Color Cheese Ravioli is a great, easy-to-make dish. It is not quite up to restaurant par, and a DIY from-scratch recipe might be a little better, it is still very good and serves as an easy dinner option for anybody craving some good Italian food.

Source:

Bertolli, Bertolli Oven Bake Meals, Quick and Easy Frozen Dinners for Two, Bertolli.