Boston Market Beef Pot Roast – Reclaimed Meat with Wallpaper Paste and Vegetables

Back when I had a Boston Market restaurant near me, I used to enjoy their food quite a bit.  It was an alternative to typical fast food for lunch.  When I had the opportunity to try some of their frozen dinners, I looked forward to it.  Usually they are a bit on the expensive side, but one of the local supermarkets had them on sale 4 for $10.

The Boston Market Beef Pot Roast looked really good when looking at the box.  Gravy and Beef Pot Roast with Carrots, Celery, Green Beans, and Grilled Onions and a Side of Home-Style Mashed Potatoes.

Preparation was easy.  It’s just a matter of heating it in the microwave.  Since there is more food in a Boston Market frozen dinner than a typical frozen dinner, it takes a bit longer. 

I can say of all the frozen dinners I tried from Boston Market, this one disappointed me the most.  The beef was in cubes, and didn’t look like chunks of beef, but something formed in a mold.  I’m told this is because it is “reclaimed meat” rather than being actual beef like I make.  Reading the ingredients list, it’s easy to grasp that as there is cornstarch, soy and other ingredients which seem like fillers or ingredients used to bind something together. It tasted pretty good, though.  It was tender and only had a few spots where it felt chewy.  It wasn’t like when I make pot roast in a slow-cooker and it gets fall-apart tender, but it was still pretty good.

The vegetables are mixed right in with the beef and gravy.  It’s celery, carrots, and green beans.  The vegetables are tender without being mushy and tasted good.  The gravy had a good taste, not too strong that it tasted artificial and not too salty.

The potatoes are a disappointment, especially from Boston Market.  When I would buy food from their stores, I was always impressed by how good their mashed potatoes were.  These taste like typical mashed potatoes found in frozen dinners, possibly worse.  I took a taste of them plain just to verify that they tasted the same as the other Boston Market frozen dinners I tried.  Yup, still the same wallpaper paste.  I stirred the remaining gravy into it and that was a big improvement. 

Nutritionally, this isn’t too bad, especially for a 15 ounce dinner.  There are 390 calories in the entire dinner, with 150 of those calories coming from fat.  That works out to 17g of fat or 26% of the recommended daily value.  Of that, 5g are saturated fat or 27% of the recommended daily value.  Like most frozen dinners, when it comes to sodium this is bad.  There is 1110mg of sodium in the entire meal or 46% of the recommended daily value.  For those of us with high blood pressure, this is not a good choice on a regular basis at all.

While I didn’t find Boston Market Beef Pot Roast particularly bad tasting (with the exception of the potatoes), I really was disappointed.  The Boston Market I remember stood for quality and wouldn’t have marketed something that seems like it’s a step up from dog food.  I can’t say I would ever eat this again.

Review of Boston Market Turkey Breast Medallions

One of my pet peeves over the years with frozen meals is how deceptive their marketing is.  The end product almost never looks anything remotely like what it appears on the box.  I’ve seen food drowned in gravy, or boxes that show an abundance of beautiful chunks of meat only to find a few pieces that were anything I could sink my teeth into.  Perhaps the worst, though is how these products are photographed for the packaging.  The food is usually put on a plate much smaller than a dinner plate to make it appear that there’s more food.

In the case of Boston Market Turkey Breast Medallions, I was actually surprised that this was not quite as offensive as other products in the frozen dinner category.  There is at least a substantial amount of food, even if it doesn’t exactly look like the cover of the box:

The dinner is touted as tender breast of turkey, home-style mashed potatoes and gravy, with carrots and green beans. It’s also larger than many other frozen dinners.  Most of the ones I’ve come across weigh in at 8 to 10 ozs of food.  This one is 14 ozs.  There is a good, filling serving of food here.  It gets heated for 4 minutes in the microwave on high, then it’s supposed to be stirred and put back in for another 1 ½ to 2 minutes.  After letting it sit in the microwave for 1-2 minutes, it’s ready.  I had a problem with stirring the food.  It just didn’t seem like there was that much to stir and as I tried to do it, I found that some of the turkey ended up in the potatoes, and some of the potatoes ended up in the vegetables.  It’s an awkward thing to try to do.

However, for something that comes from Boston Market, I was a little disappointed.  The biggest issue is the potatoes.  Home-style mashed potatoes? Please.  These are no different than every other frozen dinner with mashed potatoes, despite the fact that they look quite nice on the box.  They don’t have much flavor, either until the gravy is stirred into them.  Without the gravy, they are more reminiscent of wallpaper paste.  The gravy doesn’t have a lot of flavor outside of salt, but it was enough to add some to the awful potatoes.

The turkey medallions, however, were nice.  These were tender bits of turkey.  Some did fall apart, leaving behind bits of turkey in the gravy that I later stirred into the potatoes.  I did like this quite a bit.  The carrots and green beans were good too.  They were tender but not soft, and tasted like they had a light coating of butter or butter-like flavor.

Nutritionally, I didn’t find this to be that bad.  There’s just 290 calories in the dinner, which is quite good for the amount of food in it.  Of that, 80 calories are from fat.  That works out to 9g of fat, or 14% of the recommended daily value.  In there is 2.5g of saturated fat, or 12% of the recommended daily value.  Like most frozen dinners, it’s quite high in sodium at 1050mg or 44% of the recommended daily value.  I suspect the bulk of it is in the gravy from how it tasted.

I normally love turkey and was hoping for good things from this frozen dinner. The potatoes were particularly bad for some reason, whether it was the particular batch with this frozen dinner or something else, I don’t know. It’s enough to make me reconsider whether or not I’d buy this again, which is a shame because I did enjoy the rest of the frozen dinner. With the high sodium content, I wouldn’t recommend eating it on a regular basis.

Review of Boston Market Oven Roasted Chicken

Back in the day, I used to love getting food from our local Boston Market restaurant.  The price wasn't much more than I’d spend at a typical fast food restaurant and the food was inherently healthier, although still not perfect.  Boston Market came out with a line of frozen foods as well.  These are typically a bit more expensive than other frozen foods.  Recently, though, my local supermarket had them on sale for 4 for $10 so I decided to try a few varieties.

One of the first varieties I tried was Oven Roasted Chicken.

This promised a hearty serving of only white meat chicken with home-style mashed potatoes and gravy and a side of green beans and carrots.  It comes in at a healthy 16 ozs where most other frozen meals are anywhere from 8 to 11 ozs.  The picture on the box looked great.  The directions stated to heat it in the microwave for 8 to 9 minutes on HIGH, then let it sit for another 1 to 2 minutes.  I split the difference and cooked it for 8 ½ minutes.  After that, this was what it looked like.

It was a bit of a disappointment to see this after peeling back the film.  I know to expect that these meals are gussied up for the photo on the box, but here it really seemed deceptive at first.  The carrots appeared to be overcooked a bit after 8 ½ minutes in the microwave.  The chicken appeared almost non-existent under the gravy and dwarfed by the potatoes which looked no different from every other frozen dinner I’d had with mashed potatoes.

The carrots were tender though, without being very mushy.  The green beans were the same.  These had some flavor and there was just enough butter or butter flavor to augment it rather than drowning it in a thin, watery butter-like sauce.  The potatoes tasted like typical frozen mashed potatoes.  I've had Boston Market potatoes back when we had a restaurant near us and they were so much better.  Once I stirred the gravy into them, they tasted better.  The gravy was a bit overpowering in flavor.  It worked good to stir into the potatoes, though.

The chicken breast was actually larger than I thought it would be, it was just covered a bit too much in mashed potatoes & gravy.  Once I cleared some of this off I could see the white-meat chicken was actually a decent size.  It was a bit tough to cut.  Overall, it was tender although I've had chicken that was more tender.  Still, it didn't fall apart and was definitely real chicken, rather than scraps pressed together to look like chicken.

Nutritionally, for the amount of food that comes in the meal it isn't bad overall.  There are 330 containers in the meal.  Of that 80 calories are from fat.  That comes out to 8g of fat, or 13% of the recommended daily value.  Of that, 2.5g are saturated fat, or 12% of the recommended daily value.  Like most frozen entrees, this suffers when it comes to the salt content.  There’s a whopping 1300mg of sodium in the meal, or 54% of the recommended daily value.  Yeah, for someone like me who is already on blood pressure medication, this is a heart attack in a box.  Well, maybe not quite.

I did enjoy Boston Market Oven Roasted Chicken.  It was quite filling without being too high in fat and calories.  The amount of food in this is a lot more than in many other frozen entrees, but it is also typically more expensive.  Still, when it’s on sale it’s a good deal.  I wouldn't want to dine on it every day, especially with the sodium levels that high, but the taste and substance were good enough for me to recommend it.