Contessa Chicken Fried Rice: Product Review

I do prefer making our meals from fresh ingredients, but every once in a while I just need a break from cooking. On one of those days, I noticed that our local grocery store had Contessa frozen meals on sale, and I decided to pick one up.

Our grocery was only stocking Contessa's Asian meals, and the one I chose was Chicken Fried Rice. Contessa does, however, offer a wide variety of frozen, family-size meals, including Asian, Italian, and other cuisines, with chicken, beef, and shrimp dishes.

All of the meals come complete with meat already in them, so you don't have to buy, cook, and add your own meat. The Chicken Fried Rice includes chicken, pre-cooked rice, vegetables, egg, and sauce. The meal is easy to heat up. The only thing you need to add is some type of cooking oil. Heat the cooking oil in a large frying pan over high heat. Add the entire meal, except for the sauce packet, and stir-fry on high heat for 8-9 minutes. After the dish is heated through, add the contents of the sauce packet and heat it for a few more minutes on medium heat.

The Chicken Fried Rice was good enough as a quick meal. The chicken tasted like chicken, and the vegetables tasted as well as most frozen vegetables. The rice was thoroughly cooked, but not sticky. The egg that comes with this dish looks a little odd - it comes in fairly good-sized solid yellow chunks, but it tastes fine with the rest of the meal.

Contessa Chicken Fried Rice is surprisingly nutritious, according to the package information. One serving contains 45 percent of the daily requirement of Vitamin A and 15 percent for Vitamin C (must be all those vegetables). The fat content is quite low, at only 3.5 grams, and the sodium content is even reasonable for a packaged/processed food (27 percent of the recommended daily allowance).

The Chicken Fried Rice is also part of Contessa's Green Cuisine line. These meals are produced in a green production plant in Los Angeles, which is LEED certified and is specifically designed to reduce energy use and carbon dioxide emissions.

Contessa Chicken Fried Rice is definitely not the equivalent of home-cooked chicken fried rice, but it will serve well as a quick meal once in a while, and I'd definitely be willing to try their other varieties of frozen meals, too.