Did the day slip away? Do you need a quick meal, or a frozen family-pleaser with no time to cook it? You may be in the market for some frozen meatloaf, in that case. But when you’re stumbling through the frozen aisle, which should you grab? What’s gonna give you the most bang for your buck?
I’ve been writing about food for a decade, and I’ve taste-tested just about everything in the grocery store. But meatloaf? That was new to me. Here are eight popular frozen meatloaf brands, ranked.
Best: Lean Cuisine Protein Kick Meatloaf with Mashed Potatoes
Let’s get straight to the point here. Would I, under any circumstances, recommend this food to somebody? No, I would not. If you enjoy life, if you enjoy food, if you enjoy homemade meatloaf, I advise you to steer clear of consuming a frozen meatloaf at any point. That said, I do not have enough hands for all the high fives I’d like to give to the Lean Cuisine team for this one. Lean Cuisine’s meatloaf is like… real food!
Green herbs are peaking out of the meatloaf patty, which looks and tastes like it’s made of ground beef that came from this dimension. The sauce isn’t too ketchupy and has real tomato chunks. The potatoes themselves are legitimately good, too; globby, chunky, full of garlic, and flecked with chives.
Unlike everything else I tasted, I would not call this “gross.” Lean Cuisine wins this by a landslide and a half.
2. Yellowstone Dutton Family BBQ Meatloaf and Mash
Yellowstone, which is now a frozen food line in addition to what feels like 85 different television shows, is sort of using a cheat code. This bad boy is drenched in BBQ sauce and melted cheese. Things that are drenched in BBQ sauce and melted cheese often taste better than things that aren’t, so Yellowstone leapfrogs much of the competition in that regard. Unfortunately, the potatoes remained cold even after following the microwave instructions to a T.
3. Marie Callender’s Meat Loaf & Gravy
Like Lean Cuisine, Marie Callender’s frozen meatloaf looks and tastes like it was made from real beef, rather than being squirted out of a tube in some laboratory. The corn is bland, but again, that can be a relief compared to some of the sinister stuff going on in some of these meals. This is acceptable nourishment.
4. Stouffer’s Meatloaf
I wish so badly that I could swap this gravy for the one from Boston Market. Stouffer’s meatloaf patty holds together well, despite drowning in a pool of watery gravy. The potatoes taste like garlic, which is nice. It’s edible.
5. Boston Market Meatloaf
Boston Market’s meatloaf in the restaurant is probably not too far off from this. The frozen version yielded no watery potatoes, no gray meat, and had perfect microwave instructions. That thick, salty gravy is doing all the heavy lifting here, but no other frozen meatloaf I tried came with gravy that had the proper consistency. While this isn’t something I enjoyed, it’s leaps and bounds better than everything that follows in my frozen meatloaf ranking.
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6. Healthy Choice Meatloaf and Mashed Potatoes
How do you feel looking down at this food? Same as I did, probably. It sort of felt like the beginning of a movie where everything slows down to a freeze, and then my voiceover narration was like, “You’re probably asking yourself how I got into this situation!”
Unlike many of the other meatloafs (Loaves? Loafs?), Healthy Choice is going unsauced, which kind of freaks me out. The meat is extremely bland, which, compared to Atkins, is a gift. The real bummer is that the best corn of the bunch is trapped inside this sarcophagus with it.
7. Banquet Meatloaf Meal
Here’s something that the whiz kids behind all these frozen brands haven’t considered: When you have to do a two-part microwave process (zap it once, stir it around, zap it again), the stuff gets so, so watery. Most of these come out bathing in their own swimming pool of juices. As such, the potatoes here came out so wet that they were more like porridge, except wetter.
Flavor-wise, Banquet’s meatloaf is the bare minimum of what’s acceptable. It doesn’t taste like anything at all, so it gets a pass compared to the stuff below. And full disclosure, I didn’t try the apple dessert. You can’t make me.
8. Atkins Meatloaf with Portobello Mushroom Gravy
Atkins tells you to slice this open and let the food vent while it’s in the microwave. What it doesn’t tell you is that it will explode all over your microwave and create a really, really fun mess that you have to clean up.
It took me a really long time to put this into my mouth. We stared each other in the eye for a while, he and I. Two gunslingers, fingers itching above the trigger. Finally, I shot my shot. Atkins’ meatloaf is every bit as horrendous as it looks, and it comes with a “side” of vegetables in the same way that a Bloody Mary is a “salad” because it contains a celery stick.
I couldn’t even get myself back to taste this for the slightest nibble. What is that pattern, y’all? What has this meat been pressed against? And why is it white? Why does the whole thing taste more like bad Chinese food in brown sauce than a homestyle meatloaf? Sometimes things are so disgusting that I have to ask myself if they were made with evil intentions, as a trick or something. And for this one, I’m really considering it.
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More Frozen Food Rankings From Cheapism
- I Tried 8 Frozen Bean and Cheese Burritos, and This Was the Best — While nothing out of any frozen grocery aisle will ever compete with the authenticity and flavor of a homemade bean and cheese burrito, you can trade that for convenience.
- Frozen Mac and Cheese Meals, Ranked — Want to know which mac and cheese is the best choice at the grocery store? Read on to find out.
- The Best Frozen French Fries, Ranked — Unless you’re getting ready to slice a ton of potatoes and fry them up yourself, you might just want to throw a bag of frozen fries in the oven — or far better yet, an air fryer.
