5/13/05 | Albertson’s Fish Fillets
[ Currently Eating: Chicken ]
So at my local supermarket there are two frozen food aisles. One contains all the usual stuff, the frozen dinners, stir-frys, vegetables… all the usual stuff. The other is a sort of hidden “half frozen half not” aisle that contains mostly bulk items, hamburger meats, and if I remember correctly, frozen pizzas. Into this hidden aisle I strolled and immediately came across these Albertson’s Frozen Fish Fillets.
After a halfway decent experience with the Banquet Fish Stick Meal, I thought I might try to bypass the whole frozen dinner and go straight for the gusto. Fish Fillets for everyone! 12 Golden Crunchy Fish Fillets, and note how large the words “golden crunchy” are on the packaging. They don’t want anyone to forget that outer breading which of course can make or break a fish fillet like this.
The major reason I picked up this package is because of the price… as an Albertson’s store brand, it is significantly cheaper. Generic store brands are a tossup though. Certain items seem to be a better buy than others. At $2.99 for 12 fillets it was definitely worth a shot.
Taking these fillets out the cardboard box, I was sort of surprised to see that they aren’t wrapped in the interior in any sort of extra packaging, like plastic wrap or a plastic bag even. The fillets are just shoved into the box as they are, they sort of rattle around in there. I guess they are just trying to save money and they are rock solid frozen after all so they’re not going to break.
Another thing is that the fillets are SQUARE. Interestingly, they remind me a bit of McDonald’s Filet ‘o Fish except smaller. Well, I went ahead and put 5 of them on a cookie sheet in the oven for the required time. It’s required to flip them about three quarters of the way through which is a bit tricky, but I think it’s necessary for crunch. Here’s a picture, the greens on the bottom are just some shredded cabbage to help soak up the copious grease.
Part 5 : Banquet Fish Stick Meal
The fish sticks were surprisingly crunchy… they aren’t the “smooth” battered type you see a lot in frozen food, but rather the crumb kind. Using crumbs on frozen foods is a good way to get a nice crunch if you put the meal in the oven rather than the microwave. But the big problem I had with the fish sticks were that they were so small. These are only slightly bigger than pieces of CHALK for god’s sake. Although you get five of them.
Part 4 : Banquet Pepperoni Pizza Meal
Anyhow, this Pepperoni Pizza was a bit of a bummer. I couldn’t get the cheese to “stretch” like on the box picture and the actual pizza rectangle certainly seemed a bit smaller, maybe the size of one of those squares. More disappointing was the taste. I made this in the oven so I was expecting the crust to be excellent but it had only minor crunch and the pizza sauce was pretty much ketchup. The cheese was OK, but the pepperoni “crumbs” might have been left off in favor of just more pizza.
Part 3 : Banquet Fried Chicken Meal
Part 2 : Banquet Salisbury Steak Meal
I haven’t had frozen dinner for what seems like ages because while they are extremely convenient to have in the freezer, nine times out of ten they are overpriced. Cheap Eats doesn’t place as much emphasis on convenience or portability. However, a friend had mentioned that he always got Banquet Frozen Dinners at the market at the price of TEN for $10.00. I’d been interested in trying it out, but was reluctant to test out TEN dinners. After all if they were really terrible, there went ten bucks!
