Hullo. I don’t usually wax (on and off, Karate Kid style) poetically about frozen food. Especially high end stuff like these Bertolli Frozen Entrees.

But holy rigatoni, these are probably the best frozen meals I’ve had in a while. And we try a lot of frozen food.

Granted, when you’re eating Banquet Meals on a regular basis, you’re probably going to be blown away just a little bit by such luxurious things as whole cherry tomatoes and grilled steak.

I was sent a few of these Bertolli Entrees and decided to try the Steak, Rigatoni & Portabello Mushrooms Skillet Meal. They come in a bag, weigh 2 pounds, and cost oodles more than a CJ’s Six Dollar Burger.

Incidentally, hey Carl’s Junior: I have a big, fat, enormous bone to pick with you that’s probably going to be the subject of an upcoming rant. I’ve been thinking of writing it for over 3 years now. But you can start with firing all your marketing people, the ones that tell you what your “image” should be and also produce those loathesome commercials. No I’m not Adam Carolla, I agree that guy is a dill-doh. But the bone I have to pick with you stretches magnificently over the course of 25 years. I’m thinking of writing a book about it. I will call it: The Illustrated History of How Carl’s Junior Broke My Heart. More on it later.

Now where was I? Oh yes, the wonderful Mediterranean style Bertolli frozen meals. OK, I know these are expensive. Even though it says “2 Servings of Vegetables & Grilled Steak” on the bag, I was easily able to scarf the whole thing myself. At between $6-8 dollars a pop, that ain’t Cheap Eats. But man, I was getting so tired of reviewing dollar store food. This was a nice change. I felt like I was at the Hamptons picking eggs with Martha Stewart. So upper crust…

So, this is a skillet preparation meal – you dump the whole thing frozen into a skillet, cover it, and cook for 10 minutes. Pretty easy – the only thing is I don’t have a skillet cover. So whenever I need to make one of these things, I need to get my second skillet and balance it precariously on top. It’s fun. Wait, no it’s not. But it works.

The ingredients in this thing are pretty damn amazing. I mean, I don’t even buy cherry tomatoes normally. It had WHOLE cherry tomatoes and they didn’t skimp. There were large chunks of yellow bell pepper – not the dehydrated flakes you usually see. There were sliced mushrooms that were actually creminis instead of portobellos – but since the former are baby versions of portobellos, I guess they’re not really lying. There was spinach in it. There was large strips of steak. And there was rigatoni in it that didn’t taste like Campbell’s soup noodles. (Yeah, I know – I actually like the jello noodles in Campbell’s soup too.)

I think what impressed me was that the sauce and the overall pasta wasn’t extremely salty like most frozen meals I eat. I mean, I always figured that the cheaper meals jacked up the salt content so that you wouldn’t taste how much the food sucked. But I’ve eaten a lot of high-end meals that tasted like a deer-lick. This had an excellent taste, the noodles were perfect al dente, the salt content seemed about right, and the ingredients were generous. The tang of the tomatoes balanced nicely with the steak strips.

A few things I noticed: the steak in the picture on the bag had grill marks, but the actual steak strips I got didn’t have any. The steak also had a little bit of that “processed” taste – but hey, it wasn’t like salisbury steak or anything. It was real meat. The sauce was a little heavy on the garlic side. But I think I’m really just trying to find something to nitpick on now.

In a perfect world – all frozen meals would taste like this… and they would all cost the same as a Banquet Meal. It’s really an apples to oranges (or a Carl’s Junior to In-N-Out) type of comparison. This isn’t a perfect world, and this is Cheap Eats. But I’m human – so sue me if I liked this high end meal even though two of them cost as much as it does to fill up the gas tank of our Prius. I had to take the score down a notch because it costs so much, but if you happen to win the lottery and you can’t cook, you should fill up your freezer with some of these.

[Editor's Note: I saved the empty Bertolli bag so that every now and again I could huff in some of that wonderful garlicky mediterranean meal smell to remind myself of what a great break that was from reviewing cans of Beanee Weenee. Also, I don't want people to think I dislike CJs because of an isolated incident. They WERE our favorite burger place. This was a decades-long crescendo of gradual disappointment involving our family giving so many CJs franchises across so many states so many chances. I'm no mealy mouthed, one-time customer troll looking to flame a CJ rep. This is something that keeps me up at nights when I should be sleeping. I have insomnia thinking of all the good times in high school hanging with the Happy Star. Sorry, I have a tear in my eye. *Sniff*]

Price: $6-8 for 24 oz.
Found At: Albertsons
Cheap Eats Score: 7/10