Food Review: Atkin’s Chicken Broccoli Alfredo

In my continuing quest for a good frozen Alfredo-based meal I gave the Atkin’s one a try because I really am not a fan of most Italian food. Really when’s the last time you ate a noodle and said, “DAMN! That’s one fine frelling noodle right there! I’ve had some good noodles in my life but that noodle? Mmmmm... damned fine noodle.” Nobody’s ever said that ever. Why? Because noodles are boring. “Oh! You’ve made homemade noodles! That’s amazing! I bet they’re completely unlike every other noodle made with flour & water in the history of the world!” Said no one, ever.

So, I was happy this one had no noodles. Huzzah! The other advantage of Atkins is it, as a diet, doesn’t demonize fat, you know, the carrier of flavor. So, I supposed this dish would have copious amounts of chicken & broccoli with a delicious cheese based sauce that was probably high in fat because they don’t have to worry about fat because Atkins folks don’t care, so it would be resplendent with flavor I was mostly right.

And here it is right after I took it out and peeled the plastic off the top of it. Um, the broccoli is WAY over cooked. But it smelled goodish. Broccoli isn’t the most fragrant of vegetables so I gave the thing a sniff to see if I could detect any pepper in the sauce. I can’t see any at all. I didn’t smell any either. I could smell the cheesy sauce though. It smelled good. I added pepper myself. You know. You can’t tell if this chicken is grilled like in the picture on the box or not. I think to be fair I should plate this stuff up and see how it looks on a plate instead of in that plastic tray thing.

Well, this actually does look better doesn’t it? I stirred it up to distribute the sauce better and since it separated in the steamy bath of the plastic film it looks better mixed. Same camera took all three pictures. That black tray does NOT help the food look good does it?

How’d it taste? There were nice big healthy chunks of chicken that were about like you’d expect steamed chicken to taste, firm pieces, some big enough to be more than one bite. The broccoli really was mush though. The sauce... really that’s what this is all about. I should have just smelled it. It wasn’t flavorful at all. It was anemic and runny with no really strong taste at all. Instead of the food taking on the taste of the sauce the sauce was so lackluster IT adopted the taste of whatever I was eating. If I were eating broccoli it tasted like broccoli and dishwater. If I were eating chicken it tasted like chicken and dishwater.

The best part of this meal is definitely the chicken though. Nice whole pieces of white meat, big healthy filling chunks. I am full after eating the meal which wasn’t true of the others I’ve reviewed. This meal was the most filling of any of them and that’s without pasta.

Would I recommend this meal? I dunno. I think so but that’s purely on how good the chicken was. The dishwater sauce made sure it was moist and not dried out like white meat sometimes can be in these kinds of meals. The meat really is the star here. The sauce from the Michelena one that had no chicken or anything else in it was the best sauce so far.