Diet Food Reviews
Healthy Choice Cafe Steamers: General Tso Chicken
By: | Aug 22, 2007
I totally love the concept for Healthy Choice Cafe Steamers line, with the sauce being in a separate bowl, which helps steams the other ingredients, while the meal being microwaved. But before I talk about the taste, let me mention that when this meal came out of the microwave, it looked absolutely fabulous - the picture on the box doesn't do it nearly enough justice. It seriously looked picture perfect with the rice dotted with different color vegetables, and the meat on one side, just looking like perfect pieces of tempura battered chicken. Kudos to the folks at Healthy Choice for not only coming up with this innovative concept, but making this meal look so great. I actually couldn't wait to dig in.
I poured everything in the bowl with the sauce, mixed it around a little and dug in. I took up a big forkful of veggie rice with sauce and I experienced nirvana. The sauce is sweet and has a little spicy kick at the end. Perfect and an improvement over the original HC General Tso Chicken, which had soggy rice. I could even taste the sweetness of the sweet peas - the taste of veggies are often lost on microwaving. I was all set to give this 5 stars for taste when I remembered that I hadn't even eaten any of the chicken yet. And therein lies my disappointment with HC.
HC, did you all forget to flavor the meat? I'm just going to assume that you guys were so busy making the sauce and the rice perfect that the meat kind of just slipped by, because it is tasteless - needs salt or some other flavor - or something! I suppose you might have meant for us to drench it in sauce so that we wouldn't realize how lackluster it is on it's own - and since my sauce was half finished, I couldn't. This definitely needs some improvement, and was a big letdown after enjoying the wonderful sauce and rice.
Healthy Choice Cafe Steamers General Tso Chicken has 430 calories, 9 grams of fat which is 14% of the daily required amount, of which there is only 1 gram of saturated fat and no trans fat, 25% of the daily sodium suggestion (600 mg), 17 grams of protein and 66 grams of total carbohydrates which includes 10 grams of sugars and 5 grams of total fiber. It's also 9 Weight Watchers Points.
This meal was $3.35. For 430 calories, I definitely want some improvement in the taste. If not for the chicken, this would be a 4.5 lips review, but I'm still testing out more varieties to find the one worthy of 5 kisses.
See more on: Frozen Meals
, chicken, frozen dinner
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:) thanks for the heads up on this. I saw it and because of my disappointment in the past with HC I wasn't sure.. maybe I may try it.. and use the sauce for the chicken ;)
wayyy too many calories for a healthy choice meal- i've been avoiding this one for that reason so i'm glad it wasn't that good.
HC has a special way of making their chicken less tasty then cardboard. I honestly can't figure out how they can wreck probably the most easiest meat on the planet to make tasty.
I saw the commercial for Healthy Choice Steamers, bought 4, tried the chicken margarita, and was VERY disappointed! The pasta was all broken, the chicken tasted like "Play Do", and the sauce tasted liked vinegar! A truly NASTY meal! Don't buy it, I am throwing the rest I bought out, and asking for a refund from the company.
Best, ~Foodie Gal
I haven't tried the General Chicken, but I'm sitting here eating the Beef Merlot for lunch, and it is AWESOME. In the past the meat HC has passed off as "beef" has reminded me of some other critter (possum, hedgehog, who knows). But this is like a wonderful little bowl of beef stew, with crisp veggies and yummy sauce. I'll definitely try more Cafe Steamers.
Does anyone have any coupons for these?? I really want to try this line but can't seem to find any coupons on their site.
Thanks
Alexa
I found the General Tso's Chicken to be quite fishy tasting...or maybe there was malt vinegar and it reminded me of fish. This is a lack-luster dish.