Part 6 : Banquet Mexican Style Enchilada Combo Meal
Whew, you must be wondering if I’m ever going to run out of Banquet Frozen Dinners to review. There’s at least 3 more to go before I have to repeat eating them. That is if I decide to eat them again.

This one has by far the longest full name: the Banquet Mexican Style Enchilada Combo Meal. I find it sort of funny that they had to say “Mexican Style” enchilada… as if people wouldn’t know? Well, I guess you can’t assume anything with America. But it’s sort of like saying, “Hey, want to go eat Japanese Sushi?”

Well, this one went in the oven on the usual cookie sheet at 350 F. One interesting thing about all these Banquet meals is that the temperature to cook it never changes. I guess they just set the temperature and then reverse engineer how long to cook it and what amount the ingredients need to be precooked?

I have had mediocre Banquet Dinners before (see the Banquet Pepperoni Pizza Meall and Banquet Fish Stick Meal) so I wasn’t really expecting anything spectacular here. At least this one was interesting because it didn’t feature that old standby CORN and had fairly decent (if soupy) mexican style rice instead. The rice grains were surprisingly cooked through; I was predicting they’d be a bit crunchy inside. Little slivers of green and red bell pepper and decent spiciness made it actually the better part of the meal.

I guess they get to call this an Enchilada Combo because there are 2 beef enchilads and 1 cheese enchilada. The beef enchiladas were halfway OK, though the beef is more like beef paste than shredded beef. But I could have done without the so-called cheese enchilada which was filled with what tasted like Nacho Cheese sauce. Urgh! I like that on nachos, but not inside an enchilada. The enchilada’s outside actually reminded me more of the cornmeal of a tamale than tortillas, but it was OK I guess.

I guess my biggest complaint was that they were rather small, though what can you expect for only a buck. I would have given it a slightly lower score but because it was at least a different type of meal and had enough variety in featuring rice instead of corn, I gave it a bit higher marks. I’ve had “frou-frou” fancy expensive frozen enchiladas from Trader Joe’s before and those completely blew these away of course. But I don’t know if you’re going to get a better deal from frozen supermarket food.

One note, the enchiladas were blastingly hot out of the oven and I nearly burned myself on the sauce. Cheap eaters beware!

Cheap Eats Score: 6/10

(You might also want to read Part I: Banquet Chicken Nugget Meal, Part II: Banquet Salisbury Steak Meal, Part III: Banquet Fried Chicken Meal Part IV: Banquet Pepperoni Pizza Meal and Part V: Banquet Pepperoni Pizza Meal)