11 Michelina's Frozen Dinners, Ranked

There are seasons in life when you're so busy, the idea of making dinner can seem laughable. But ordering out all the time can take a serious toll on your wallet, which isn't ideal if you're also struggling to make ends meet or are saving for something important. That's when frozen dinners might seem like an attractive option. At my grocery store, the brand Michelina's offers the absolute most frozen dinners in the entire aisle, making them seem like a solid choice when you're really pinching pennies. But how do these frozen dinners stack up against one another, and which are the best ones to try?

I'm not going to sugarcoat things for you: These frozen dinners were not particularly delicious. But at my local grocery store at the time of writing, they cost less than $2 a pop, so it only makes sense that you're not getting the highest quality. While some of these dinners are, in my opinion, really quite bad, there are others that are passable when you're hungry, only have a microwave, and are on a serious budget. I ranked these meals according to overall flavor and texture. Many of these dishes were incredibly bland, so the varieties that had the most pronounced, balanced, and natural-tasting flavors ranked near the top. Texture-wise, I was just on the hunt for limited sogginess and a pleasant mouthfeel, which was surprisingly hard to find but which showed up in a few of the higher-ranked meals on this list.

I'll admit that I'm not the biggest fan of fettuccine Alfredo, even when it's homemade. That being said, I can still get down with a simple, creamy pasta, since there's so much you can add to the dish to make it taste better, even if it's just a few seasonings. But I'm sad to announce that Michelina's Fettuccine Alfredo just cannot be saved. First of all, there's a total lack of flavor here. These noodles basically taste like nothing, with the accompanying white sauce showing up on the palate just as bland. But honestly, with Michelina's frozen dinners, that's not exactly an anomaly. What really bothered me here was a strange metallic flavor I noticed in the dish. I could smell it as soon as I took it out of the microwave, and I could taste it after taking a bite.

To make matters worse, the texture of the pasta was not good either. Of course, it's pretty hard to achieve an al dente texture in the microwave, but I found this fettuccine to be even soggier than I could have expected. Add to that the fact that the sauce itself is incredibly thin, and it's clear to see why this is the worst-ranked dinner of the entire lineup.

When looking at all of the different frozen dinners I found from Michelina's at my local grocery store, there were a few that I thought actually might not be that bad. Michelina's Pop'n Chicken and Potato Wheels were among the most promising, in my mind. I don't necessarily think that this sounds like a really delicious dish, but its flavors are simple enough that it seems like it would be tricky to mess up. But once I heated it up and dried it for myself, I realized that it was unfortunately one of the worst frozen dinners I found. These chicken nuggets and potato "wheels" don't taste bad — they just don't taste like anything at all. I was actively shocked at how little they tasted like anything at all. And when you consider the serving size, it seems like a total waste of money. The chicken pieces are laughably small, and charging even $1.99 for this meal seems ridiculous to me.

My advice? If you can cover the upfront cost, seek out some good-quality frozen chicken nuggets and some frozen French fries or frozen tater tots. Then, you can recreate the same kind of meal at home that tastes a lot better than this version (and probably costs less per serving, too).

In the frozen section of my local grocery store, I found not one but two different versions of Michelina's fettuccine Alfredo. This version, though — the Fettuccine Alfredo with Chicken and Broccoli — is undoubtedly a step up from the plain version of the dish. That being said, it's still not particularly good. I picked up on the same strange, metallic aroma and flavor here, which ultimately made me throw away the remainder of this meal once I took a few taste-testing bites. But at least that strange flavor is broken up by the addition of (an unfortunately limited amount of) chicken and broccoli. The chicken doesn't taste like much, but at least it offers a different, meaty texture, and the broccoli provides a slight vegetal flavor that makes things slightly more interesting.

Again, unsurprisingly, the texture of the noodles isn't good here, and the sauce is once again too thin. If you're looking for a pasta option from Michelina's, I think there are better dishes you can opt for. However, this is at least a slightly less egregious take on a classic fettuccine Alfredo dish than the plain version.

There are a surprising number of prepared mac and cheese brands out there to try if you're craving the cheesy pasta dish but don't want to make it yourself. Unfortunately, though, Michelina's Macaroni and Cheese isn't among the best, if you ask me. This is yet another dish from the brand that doesn't seem to offer much flavor at all. Sure, mac and cheese can be kind of boring before you add any interesting additions, but you should at least be getting some sort of flavor from the cheese sauce. Instead, in this case, the thin (but creamy) cheese sauce doesn't seem to be giving anything more than a generic saltiness to the pasta. It's not even as flavorful as a standard slice of American cheese.

Predictably, the pasta here isn't amazing, since we are working with a microwaved meal. However, compared to the fettuccine, the macaroni seems to hold its shape a lot better. Although it's still kind of soggy (partially because the sauce just isn't thick enough), the pasta isn't immediately falling apart as soon as you take a bite. Personally, I wouldn't recommend this mac and cheese to anyone, especially when a standard cup of Kraft is better than this microwaved dish. But it's not the absolute worst of Michelina's lineup.

It's true that the "chicken bites" in Michelina's Munchsters Chicken Bites with Mac and Cheese are wildly disappointing. They're basically the same exact thing that you find in Pop'n Chicken and Potato Wheels — i.e., tiny, soggy, flavorless chicken nuggets. I only got four of them in this frozen dinner, which is practically no chicken at all. And the macaroni and cheese that appears in this dish is the same thing that you'll find in the standard Michelina's Macaroni and Cheese offering, with the slightly soggy pasta and the too-thin sauce that doesn't taste like much at all. Bringing these two unimpressive elements together does not exactly make for a groundbreaking meal.

That being said, since you're at least getting a bit more variety in every bite here, I think it's a step up from the basic mac and cheese. This is another product I'd never pick up for myself (or any child in my care, for that matter) from the grocery store, but there are, sadly, worse Michelina's options from which to choose, so this meal ranks higher than it might on other lists. This is another example of portion sizes that just don't give you much bang for your buck, though.

Before trying these frozen dinners from Michelina's, I sort of expected the Asian-inspired dishes to be among the worst. I was surprised to find, though, that they all belonged closer to the top of this ranking. Michelina's Orange Chicken, though, was the worst of all three. I think this dish's downfall is the fact that it contains the same nugget-like chicken bites that appear in the cheapest-tasting of all of these dinners. As I've already mentioned, they're basically completely flavorless, so the inclusion of chicken here doesn't really add that much to the dish.

But the rice in this frozen dinner isn't anything to get excited about, either. It's extremely soggy but somehow also dry on the inside at the same time. You also get shockingly little of it — this is far from the size of an actual meal any grown human would want to eat. To make matters worse, the sauce is too thin and also too sweet.

Despite this dinner's flaws, though, with those few vegetables in the mix, this still feels like a slightly more appealing option than some. They, along with the too-sweet orange sauce, provide some flavor to the meal, which is, unfortunately, a big step up from some of the other options here. This may be the worst orange chicken I've ever had, but it's still not the worst that Michelina's has to offer.

Out of all of the more Italian-style frozen dinners I tried from Michelina's, the brand's Five Cheese Ziti was the least offensive of them all. Is it a good example of a ziti dish? No. Does it even taste that cheesy? Also no. But for a microwaved pasta meal, it could be a lot worse. I found that I actually got a decent amount of pasta here. I still don't think it's enough to make for a whole meal for most adults, but it seems to be more substantial than, say, the fettuccine. The pasta is extremely soggy, but since the noodles themselves are small, they seem to hold up relatively well to the sauce.

Flavor-wise, it's not really delivering much, but the tomato base at least provides a touch of acidity that you won't find in most of Michelina's other products. There's some cheese in there, too, although I'd hoped it would be a lot more prominent since that's essentially the selling point of the entire dish. I think you can make a much better pasta dish with the most basic and inexpensive ingredients if you have access to a pot, but if you're really in a pinch, this ziti meal probably isn't the worst you can do.

By the time I'd tried Michelina's Chicken Fried Rice, I had already tasted over half of the other frozen dinners on this list. I hadn't especially liked what I'd tried, so I assumed that this dinner was going to be just as bad as the worst examples on this list. However, I was surprised to find that it actually wasn't that bad, considering its very low price point. Blessedly, this meal is absent of those sad, breaded, and flavorless chicken bites, and you instead get little chunks of plain chicken. They're still pretty bland, but they arguably do pack more flavor than the breaded variety. Plus, you get at least a few vegetables in the rice blend, which makes this meal slightly more satisfying.

Even though the rice is soggy and wet in this dinner, I found the seasoning to be pretty solid. It definitely tastes like fried rice that's been microwaved — not fried — but the salty and savory flavors I picked up in the rice weren't bad. I wouldn't suggest this dish over similar frozen options from other brands, since I think you're still getting a pretty low level of quality here. But for Michelina's, this meal definitely isn't that bad.

Even better than Michelina's Chicken Fried Rice is the brand's Chicken Lo Mein. I felt like this was one of the more generous portion sizes out of the dinners I tried, although I still would've liked there to be more in the box. The quality of the noodles doesn't seem that bad, and even though they're slightly soggy, they hold their shape better than any of the other noodle varieties I tried in these dinners. You don't get very much chicken in this dish, but that's pretty unsurprising considering how much it costs. At least the chicken you do get has some flavor to it (none of the weird breaded chicken here). Add in those veggies, and you have a frozen dinner that tastes more like a functional meal than most of the other options I tried.

What makes this dish stand out, though, is the sesame garlic sauce. While many of these dinners are lacking flavor almost entirely, this one still packs a decent amount of flavor that you don't have to enhance with additional seasonings or sauces. If you're looking for a frozen pasta dish with an exceptionally small budget, this Michelina's option is worth considering.

Now, Michelina's Pizza Snack Rolls Pepperoni doesn't rank as highly as it does because I think you're getting an exceptionally good deal here. In fact, the snack rolls seem to be mostly full of air, and I honestly didn't taste any pepperoni at all in mine. Compared to other, similar snack rolls on the market, I feel like this version is kind of a rip-off. That being said, it's one of the few Michelina's frozen dinners that I actually wanted to finish. You get a surprisingly crispy exterior along with an actually flavorful red sauce filling in each roll. It's definitely not enough food to constitute an entire meal, but it's not terrible as a snack.

Pizza rolls are one of the easiest possible snacks to prepare for yourself, and you can definitely find a better quality product than what Michelina's has to offer. But comparatively, I think this product offers more flavor than most of the others I tried for this ranking.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of them all in this taste test is Michelina's Beef and Peppers. Based on the picture on the product's box, I wasn't very excited to try this dish. It just looks like a random mashup of ingredients that doesn't necessarily belong together. So imagine my surprise when I discovered that this is indisputably the best frozen meal on this list. The rice is kind of soggy, sure, but that seems to pair well with the red, veggie-forward sauce that gives this dish a surprising amount of flavor. It's quite salty, with a nice acidity that keeps things fresh. Plus, I found that there's actually a pretty solid amount of vegetables in this frozen dinner.

The little beef patty crumbles included in this meal, though, are responsible for most of the flavor. I'm surprised at just how good they are considering that the chicken from this brand seems so bland. But those beefy bits did a lot of heavy lifting on the flavor front. Again, this is a really cheap product, so you shouldn't expect anything close to homemade quality. For an ultra-budget option, though, you can do much worse.

I picked up every Michelina's frozen dinner I could find at my nearest local grocery store for this article. When I got them home, I microwaved the meals according to the package instructions, trying each of them while they were still hot. I did not add any seasonings, sauces, or other enhancements to any of the meals to ensure I was tasting them in their most basic form.

I ranked frozen dinners that packed a perceptible amount of flavor higher than the blandest options on this list, as many of the products I tasted were rather flavorless. I also sought a natural, balanced flavor when applicable. On the texture front, I prioritized meals that I found less soggy or watery.