"Mine eyes smell onions; I shall weep anon" (Banquet Crock Pot™ Classics Stroganoff with Beef and Noodles)

The quote is from Shakespeare - All's Well That Ends Well, Act V, Scene III.

Recently I decided to get brave, and risk a beef dish from the frozen foods section of the grocery. Generally I stay away from beef (and pork), as for some reason those meats don’t seem to fare well in TV Dinners or prepared meals. I don’t know if this is due to the meats themselves, or more because I’m very picky about texture, and when meats are being processed in bulk, little niceties like removing gristle and fat tend to get overlooked.

I had enjoyed success with Banquet’s Crock Pot™ Classics chicken dishes – the Banquet Crock Pot™ Creamy Chicken with Noodles and the Banquet Crock Pot™ Chicken and Dumplings – so I thought I would try the stroganoff version of Banquet’s fastest growing product line. This family-style meal is called “Stroganoff with Beef and Noodles,” and the product’s subtitle is: “Vegetables with Beef and Noodles in a Creamy Sauce,” which should have been my first clue. I also would have been less surprised had I bothered to research the ingredients list first at the Diner, or read the list off the package while in the grocery store.

The ingredients section starts with “oriental style onions,” which is another way of saying “diced onions.” A lot of diced onions. A boatload of diced onions. More onions than meat; more onions than noodles. In fact, this dish serves 5 1-cup each servings when cooked (in other words, 5 cups), well over 2 cups of which were …onions. Neither the Hubster nor I are big onion fans these days, so I literally fished them out before putting the ingredients in the slow cooker, which is how I know precisely how many onions there were. I must say, that after having been so pleased with the other Banquet Crock-Pot Classics I tried, I was sorely disappointed with Banquet for their use of onions – a notoriously cheap ingredient – to populate this dish.

That being said, however, having fished out the onions and added a quick small can of mushroom bits (to compensate for volume loss and to add a normal stroganoff ingredient), the resulting meal didn’t taste bad. It wasn’t great. It wasn’t as good as Banquet’s other Crock Pot™ Classics meals with chicken, but it wasn’t inedible by any means. The gravy was “creamy,” (note: you have to add a cup of milk near the end of the cooking process, which obviously isn’t included, so if you buy this, don’t forget the milk) although I couldn’t taste any sour cream flavor. The gravy was beefy-ish, and the dish was certainly filling. Even minus the two cups of onions, the completed meal fed me and my husband each three times, for a total of six servings (although we are not huge eaters, and I served a biscuits with the stroganoff). I got this on sale for $5.00, so each serving was slightly less than a dollar.

I wouldn’t rush out to buy it again, but I’d eat it if it was in the house. If you like onions, have a crock pot, and don’t have the time or the skills to make stroganoff, this is probably a reasonably priced dish with a modicum of flavor. At 350 calories per serving, it’s not a bad dish for busy moms with a family to feed – add a salad and fruit to round out the nutritional requirements, and a can of inexpensive biscuits (or Bisquick biscuits) to stretch your food dollar even further.

For nutritional information on Banquet Crock Pot™ Classic meals, click here
For consumer reviews of other Banquet Crock Pot™ Classic meals, click here

Coming next Wednesday: Quick reviews of the Stouffer's Corner Bistro dishes.