9 Boston Market Frozen Meals, Ranked Worst To Best

When you think of Boston Market (depending on how old you are), there's a good chance you envision an actual brick-and-mortar restaurant as opposed to something in the frozen aisle. Indeed, the fast casual-leaning chain had its heyday in the 1990s, but Boston Market has shrunk to just a handful of states over the years – specifically down to just 16 locations as of 2024. Consequently, the average individual likely can't go out and enjoy a meal at a nearby Boston Market location anymore — but they can potentially enjoy a Boston Market frozen meal.

Anyone who frequents the frozen entree section of any grocery store knows there's quite a few options out there, and Boston Market brand meals are one of those options. With that in mind, I purchased, heated, and taste-tested nine Boston Market frozen meals. This way I could determine which (if any) are worth your time, and which ones should stay tucked far back into the freezer.

I based my ranking of these Boston Market meals on flavor, texture and consistency of sauces, gravies, or mashed potatoes, and overall cohesion of each meal. I also paid attention to whether or not a certain meal had a standout flavor or ingredient, or whether they were just downright bad or borderline inedible (unfortunately, there were a few). Here's my ranking of nine Boston Market frozen meals.

I am no meatloaf hater, both when it comes to homemade meatloaf and frozen entrees. In fact, I spoke pretty highly of frozen meatloaf entrees in my Lean Cuisine frozen meal ranking and my Marie Callender's frozen meal ranking. Needless to say, I can recognize — and appreciate — a good frozen meatloaf entree when I see it. Unfortunately for Boston Market, its take on frozen meatloaf and mashed potatoes just wasn't a winner.

As someone who'd always opt for the meatloaf meal when I went to Boston Market as a kid, this one hurt a little bit. Perhaps I set my expectations too high, but whichever way you spin it, this meatloaf meal was downright bad. The biggest offender was the mashed potatoes. Their texture was awful, and for a minute there I questioned if they'd even come together from the liquid mess they were halfway through heating. Their texture remained pretty watery even once fully heated, and I could barely handle a single bite because they tasted so incredibly strange.

Then there was the meatloaf itself. Honestly, the meatloaf wasn't nearly as bad compared to the potatoes, but it certainly wasn't doing anything to help the overall cause of the meal. It was tough and bland, and the gravy was thin and lacking in richness. All together, Boston Market's meatloaf frozen meal is one I wouldn't touch again, so it made for an obvious last place choice in this ranking.

When made at home (or better yet, when made by a professional chef), chicken cordon bleu is a delicious dish. Usually featuring breaded chicken breasts wrapped around ham and Swiss cheese, Boston Market's frozen entree take on chicken cordon bleu doesn't quite follow this traditional presentation. Instead, it features a breaded chicken cutlet with a ham-infused Swiss cheese sauce on top, along with mashed potatoes on the side. While it doesn't look exactly like chicken cordon bleu, such a formula still held potential for success, but the execution simply wasn't there.

For starters, the mashed potatoes were pretty much as bad as they were with the meatloaf meal. Even once they were fully heated, they just wouldn't come together to form a cohesive, creamy potato side. As for the chicken itself, I found the entree portion to be a bit stronger than the meatloaf, but not by much. The chicken cutlet was tough on the inside and soggy on the outside, and that Swiss cheese sauce was very salty with little complexity beyond that. While I found this meal to be a little less offensive than the meatloaf, ultimately, Boston Market's chicken cordon bleu is one frozen entree that I wouldn't return to anytime soon.

If there's one Boston Market frozen meal that intrigued me the most in terms of being unique, it was the chicken pot pie bites. At first glance, the pot pie bites closely resemble classic Totino's pizza rolls, so that alone set the meal apart from the more traditional entrees. Unfortunately for any pizza roll lover out there, it turns out these chicken pot pie bites aren't anything to get excited about.

For the sake of fairness, I heated up these pot pie bites in the microwave, as I did with every other meal on this list. After microwaving, the bites were soggy, deflated, and just sad, so I have to at least acknowledge that they might have fared better had they been heated up using a different method (like an oven or air fryer). That being said, no heating method would have masked the fact that these chicken pot pie bites had virtually no filling on the inside.

Now, there was a little bit of filling, of course. But they basically just turned into flat little pieces of crust with the thinnest layer of chicken pot pie filling on the inside. From what I could taste of the filling, it wasn't bad, offering some nice savory and creamy notes. But there just wasn't nearly enough, so considering the lack of filling and overall soggy texture of the bites, I couldn't in good faith rank this meal any higher than seventh.

In my extensive frozen meal experience, Swedish meatballs can be somewhat hit or miss. When it comes to Boston Market's take on Swedish meatballs, I'd call it more of a miss than a hit, though not a total one. There were some redeeming factors to this meal, in fact, but there were also some disappointing qualities that made this one a lower-middle ground option in my book (and these rankings).

Let's start with the positive: The flavor of this entree wasn't bad. And though it certainly couldn't compare to homemade Swedish meatballs, it offered up a certain rich, savory flavor that at least had me going back for a couple of bites. The meatballs weren't bad, either; they didn't offer up a ton of complexity, but still provided a meaty and savory bite here and there.

My biggest gripe with this meal comes down to the texture of the sauce, which never fully came together. The sauce remained pretty watery and loose even once fully heated, so it didn't really cling to the noodles in a way one might hope. Speaking of the noodles, they were well past the point of overcooked, teetering intensely into mushy territory. So while the flavor of this Swedish meatballs entree wasn't terrible, the texture held it back from being anything better in the rankings.

Playing off of the ever-enduring trendiness of hot honey, Boston Market's hot honey fried chicken meal features both hot honey chicken bites along with a side of mac and cheese. As someone who loves hot honey (and sweet and savory flavor combinations), I had high hopes for this one. Now, the chicken part of this frozen meal wasn't so great, but the mac and cheese really shined through as an unsuspecting underdog.

First and foremost, the chicken just wasn't very successful. It was incredibly soggy, though even I could forgive that if it was slathered in a delicious sauce. Yet the sauce also wasn't very good, mainly because it didn't taste like a hot honey sauce. Instead, it sort of tasted like a Buffalo sauce more than anything else, which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if the meal were even remotely meant to taste like Buffalo sauce. The mac and cheese, on the other hand, was some of the best frozen mac and cheese I've had. It was so incredibly rich and creamy, and the unique spiral noodle shape maintained a nice texture even once it was heated up.

In the end, I felt pretty conflicted about this frozen meal overall. The hot honey fried chicken didn't deliver the flavor it was supposed to, but the mac and cheese more than delivered. As a result, this one falls somewhere in the middle ground — not quite terrible, but not quite as successful as the higher-ranked Boston Market frozen meals.

Boston Market's chicken bacon ranch frozen entree is certainly not reinventing the wheel when it comes to combining those flavors. But it is one frozen meal that did surprisingly well in these rankings.. Featuring a rotini-like pasta, chunks of chicken, and a creamy, bacon- and ranch-infused sauce, the chicken bacon ranch entree offered up some solid flavors and, at the very least, a rather cohesive meal.

While Boston Market's frozen pastas have been hit or miss thus far, the pasta in this entree was decent enough. Sure, it was a little overcooked, but that sort of comes with the territory of frozen meals. The sauce was the real star of the show here, offering up a distinctly rich, creamy, and savory flavor profile with a nice ranch undertone (one that tasted less like ranch dressing and more like ranch powder, which has many creative uses). Meanwhile, the chicken was sort of just there — not necessarily making the bowl worse but not exactly adding anything remarkable.

I was also longing for a few more actual bacon chunks as opposed to just a bacon flavor. But since there was at least some bacon flavor present, I could overlook the lack of chunks. My only real complaint with this one is that it became a bit one-note after a few bites. Otherwise, this entree was solid and a good option for those chicken bacon ranch fanatics out there (even if it couldn't crack the top three).

Another day, another Boston Market frozen pasta — but this time, it's the best pasta meal of all the ones I sampled for this ranking. The penne with meatballs certainly seemed unsuspecting enough, especially once I opened up the package to discover a mere four meatballs in the mix. Once I heated this meal up, however, I was met with some surprisingly tasty flavors, along with more meatiness than what originally met the eye.

There's no getting around the fact that four meatballs is a disappointing amount to find in your frozen entree, but that blow was lessened once I realized that the pasta sauce itself was laden with chunks of Italian sausage. So, while I was skeptical at first, there was plenty of meaty goodness at play in this entree, and both the sausage and meatballs were pretty tasty. The pasta itself was sort of like mini penne, and it held up well after being zapped in the microwave.

As for the tomato sauce, it was somewhat reminiscent of classic SpaghettiOs (which is the best canned pasta). Maybe this is just nostalgia talking, but I enjoyed it the more that I ate it. All together, the penne with meatballs featured nice textures and lots of savory flavors, making for a successful frozen entree in my book, and third best Boston Market frozen meal I tried.

I was certainly weary before sampling Boston Market's country fried beef steak meal, largely because I'm still feeling scorned from trying Dolly Parton's frozen meal line's lackluster take on country fried steak. Fortunately, Boston Market's version of this frozen entree was actually pretty good. And though the meal just sort of looked like a big sloppy bowl of potatoes and gravy once heated up, there was some serious savoriness going on amidst the mess.

Interestingly enough, while I absolutely despised the mashed potatoes in both the meatloaf and chicken cordon bleu meals, I didn't have that same experience with the mashed potatoes here. These mashed potatoes were remarkably delicious; they weren't at all watery, and were surprisingly creamy and full of flavor. The country fried steak was also pretty tasty, and though it didn't retain much crispiness once it was heated up, it still had a decent texture overall.

But the white gravy is what made this meal truly exceptional. It offered up a rich and decadent flavor profile that paired well with both the potatoes and beef. Though I went into this frozen meal a skeptic, I came out a true believer thanks to its exceptional delicious savory flavor profile, so it comes in second place.

Coming in first place among Boston Market's frozen meals is the sweet and sour chicken. This not only exceeded my expectations, but also managed to nab the top spot in the ranking. Even before I heated the meal up, I could see how much soon-to-be-saucy goodness there was in the chicken portion of the entree, so that had me hopeful right off the bat. The chicken nice and saucy, plus that sweet and sour sauce happened to taste delicious, too.

While I can't say the sweet and sour sauce on the chicken was akin to a sweet and sour sauce you might get from an American Chinese restaurant, it was still tasty nonetheless. I worried that it might be overly sweet, but it had a nice tanginess to balance out any sweetness. The chicken itself didn't retain much crispiness once heated up, but since it came absolutely slathered in all of that sweet and sour goodness, I wasn't even mad about it.

The rice was solid, as well, complementing the chicken while offering a nice texture and a little bit of added veg to boot. Overall, I found this sweet and sour chicken frozen meal to be very cohesive with delicious flavors across the board, and it made for a clear-cut first place option in this ranking.

To maintain fairness when sampling these Boston Market frozen meals, I heated all of them up according to microwave instructions on the package as opposed to other methods (like oven or air fryer). Though I'd imagine some meals would have fared better had I used a different heating method, I opted for the microwave since that's the typical route that one might take when heating up a frozen meal.

When determining the ranking of the meals, it largely came down to flavor and cohesion. Higher-ranking meals — like the sweet and sour chicken or the penne with meatballs — had ingredients or components that worked well together; no single ingredient stuck out in a bad way or lessened the overall quality. On that note, another factor was whether or not the meal had a particularly good or bad component. The two lowest-ranked meals both had exceptionally bad mashed potatoes and lackluster entrees, so their rankings reflect these negative elements.

Finally, I also paid attention to texture when compiling the rankings. A bad texture (as exemplified by the chicken pot pie bites, for example) led to an overall lower ranking.