Hangin' On The Corner (Stouffer's Corner Bistro™ Dinners)

I’ve been seeing a lot of searches, both here on Food Life and over at the Icebox Diner, for information on Stouffer’s Corner Bistro products, both the regular frozen meals and the panini. You can find consumer reviews of Stouffer’s Corner Bistro Panini here; today, I’m going to provide mini-reviews of the Stouffer’s Corner Bistro meals.

Click here for nutritional information and additional consumer reviews (or to add your own reviews to the Diner's growing database of over 1400 products) of Stouffer's Corner Bistro meals at the Icebox Diner.

The Stouffer’s Corner Bistro meals line consists of 6 dishes, of which I’ve tried four that I’ll mini-review here:

• Stouffer's Corner Bistro Chicken Carbonara;
• Stouffer's Corner Bistro Garlic Chicken Pasta;
• Stouffer's Corner Bistro Grilled Rosemary Chicken;
• Stouffer's Corner Bistro Monterey Chicken;
• Stouffer's Corner Bistro Seafood Scampi, and, lastly,
• Stouffer's Corner Bistro Sesame Chicken.

It's a tie for first place in my affections between the Chicken Carbonara and the Rosemary Chicken dishes.

The Chicken Carbonara, served over pasta, has a nice, creamy taste, the chicken breast is an actual chicken breast, the peas and bacon add a nice textural touch. Absolutely yummy. Definitely a dish I not only recommend, but actually look forward to eating.

The Rosemary Chicken is also excellent; served over a bed of veggies in balsamic vinaigrette, along with penne pasta in a yummy fontina sauce. The flavor is excellent, and the combination of the sweet/tart vinaigrette coupled with the salty fontina is surprisingly successful. My sole complaint with the dish is that the "veggies" are roasted red, yellow and green peppers; I think some variety would have added texture to the dish. Again, however, I genuinely enjoy eating this meal, and gave it 4 stars at the Diner.

The Seafood Scampi is a little less successful, although still not bad. Shrimp and scallops are lavished over a bed of linguine in garlic-butter sauce, with a serving of green beans and julienne yellow carrots on the side. I thought the sauce need a little "something," although truthfully I'm not quite certain what it was that it lacked, exactly, and the scallops admittedly were a little worse for wear for having been frozen. The shrimp surprisingly were not too tough. A worthy effort, but not remarkably distinguished. I added both salt and a droplet of lemon juice to make the dish a bit more piquant.

But, alas, now we come to the Garlic Chicken Pasta. This dish is supposed to be white meat chicken, with bowtie pasta, asparagus, mushrooms and sun-dried tomatoes in a garlicky cream sauce with romano; as I said somewhere else, what's not to like, right? But I absolutely hated it. The dish is simultaneously bland and overpowering, as idiotic as that sounds. The romano is undiscoverable, the basil in the dish overpowers any remaining taste in the sauce, is the only thing you can smell, and the garlic leaves you with that yucky burning aftertaste. I don't think any simple addition like salt or romano can save it. At the Diner, I gave this a one-fork rating, although I would note that at 340 calories, this is the "diet" meal of the group.

I haven't tried either the Sesame Chicken or the Monterey Chicken, but they are on my list to try soon. Overall, I genuinely appreciate the Stouffer's Corner Bistro meals. They are definitely an upscale attempt by Stouffer's to compete against chilled prepared meals from companies like Trader Joe's and A.J.'s, and probably a harbinger of yet more frozen dinners to come on a par with the Carbonara and the Rosemary Chicken, and that's good news for busy consumers.

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