Review of Lean Cuisine Chicken in Peanut Sauce

I occasionally like to alter my weekly lunch or dinner selections for opting with a little Asian influence whether it is Thai, Szechwan, or even Cantonese food. When it comes to shopping for quick convenient microwave weekday meals, I make no exceptions. I decided to expand my horizons with the lean cuisine line and opted for the Chicken in Peanut Sauce. This item was on sale for two dollars a box and boasted a mere 280 calories so I thought it would be a great busy weekday lunch at the office.

The meal includes chicken tenderloins with a vegetable assortment of carrots, sugar snap peas, and water chestnuts. The main ingredient aside from the roasted chicken tenderloins is the whole wheat noodles. The entire dish is immersed in a peanut sauce.

Taste

The first taste of this dish was not to my expectations. The sauce was incredibly dense and starchy. The sauce definitely had a much defined peanut flavor but was incredibly thick. The peanut flavor came across as very generic. Lean Cuisine would have been better served to cut down on the thickness of the sauce and use a better quality peanut butter or simply go with chopped peanuts and still call it a peanut sauce. I really had to struggle to get through this dish.

On a positive note, the chicken beneath the peanut enamel sauce had a good firm bite and tasted pretty decent. I enjoyed the accompaniment of the carrots and snap peas, but could have done without the water chestnuts. All of these ingredients mixed in with the tasty noodles would have been better served in an entirely different sauce.

Quantity

The Lean Cuisine Chicken in Peanut Sauce is sold in a small nine ounce box that fits perfectly in the lunch tote for that commute to work. There are approximately five or six small roasted chicken tenderloins and a small dose of vegetables mixed into the noodles. Due to the smaller portion size and the extremely low calorie count, I had to supplement this lunch with a banana to get me over to the mid afternoon snack. The banana also assisted my taste buds in getting rid of that awful peanut taste.

Price

The box of Lean Cuisine Chicken in Peanut Sauce set me back only two dollars as the Lean Cuisine product line was on sale during this time. When these items are not on sale, they usually cost around $2.79 per box. This was a considerably strong buy as I purchased an assortment of five to stock my freezer.

Overall Opinion

Well, my love for all things peanut came to a screeching halt with the Chicken in Peanut Sauce meal. Expectations were high based on previous experiences with Chicken and Peanut based dishes at Chinese and Thai restaurants. Lesson was learned that such a dish as this cannot be replicated in the convenience food market. I will simply rate this with a poor grade and do not recommend this item.