Hormel Compleats Beef Steak Tips with Mashed Potatoes - Surpringly Not Bad
Written: Nov 01 '09
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: decent taste, not bad levels of fat and calories, fairly filling
Cons: high sodium, too much gravy
The Bottom Line: If you are contemplating giving the Hormel Compleats line a try, this is an entree I'd recommend starting with.
|
|
|
| AliventiAsylum's Full Review: Hormel Compleats Beef Steak Tips |
The Hormel Compleats line of food are different than the usual pre-packaged entrees. These are fully cooked entrees that don’t have to be frozen and can be found on the grocery shelf near the canned pastas. These don’t have to be refrigerated and can be kept in a desk drawer at work. The idea is that it saves people the grief of keeping food in a community refrigerator or freezer where it can disappear.
The Beef Steak Tips with Mashed Potatoes looked quite good. The packaging shows chunks of beef coated with gravy over a bed of mashed potatoes. For the packaging, it's been taken out of the container it comes in and put on a plate with a wedge of cherry tomato and sprig of some herb as garnish. The entree looks quite appetizing.
The instructions are to put the entree in a microwave oven for a minute and a half. The packaging is much heavier than the usual frozen dinners. The bowl is made of a heavier plastic and the film covering it is also heavier than the usual thin film covering a frozen entree. This was sealed quite well to the plastic tray and made it difficult to open. After a struggle I did get it open, and without ending up with the whole thing flying out of my hands onto the floor, which is a fear I have with these entrees.
The first thing I noticed once Beef Steak Tips with Mashed Potatoes was opened was the gravy, which there was quite a bit of. I didn't see any pieces of beef, but there was what appeared to be an ice cream scoop sized ball of mashed potatoes submerged in the gravy.
The potatoes came apart easily and with the flavor of the gravy present I couldn't really tell what the potatoes tasted like. The consistency of them was pretty good - not to thin, not too sticky. I made a concerted effort to get a taste of the potatoes with as little gravy as possible and they seemed pretty tasty without having a real dry taste to them.
The beef was hidden down there beneath the gravy. Though not as nice as the pieces on the packaging, they were a decent sized. I liked how they stayed together in the dish while at the same time being tender to eat.
Nutritionally, this actually fares pretty well in terms of fat and calories. The entire 10 ounce entree contains 270 calories, 80 of which are from fat. That's 9g of fat or 14% of the recommended daily value. 4g of that amount is saturated fat, or 20% of the recommended daily value. Where this entree fails is in the sodium levels. These Hormel Compleats for the most part are way worse than frozen entrees in that regard. The Beef Steak Tips with Mashed Potatoes contains a whopping 950 mg of sodium or 40% of the recommended daily value.
With as much salt as is in this, I didn't feel that the taste of the salt dominated the flavor of the entree. Sure, it was present in the gravy, but it wasn't as obvious as other Hormel Compleat selections I've had. Overall, I thought that this was actually pretty good. The ten ounces of food was moderately filling and wasn’t loaded down with fat and calories. They could have done with less gravy as some of it was just waste in the end. This was definitely one of the better tasting entrees in this line, and I’d recommend it as a good place to try this food if you are contemplating it.
Ingredients: rehydrated potatoes (water, potatoes, mono- and diglycerides, sodium acid pyrophosphate, citric acid), water, cooked beef (beef, water, natural flavor, salt, dextrose, sodium phosphate), modified cornstarch, beef fat, potato starch, sugar, beef base (cooked beef with natural juices, salt, hydrolyzed corn soy wheat gluten protein, hydrolyzed corn soy protein, sugar, beef flavoring [hydrolyzed corn soy wheat gluten protein, autolyzed yeast extract, dextrose, partially hydrogenated cottonseed and soybean oils], maltodextrin, onion powder, hydrolyzed corn protein with disodium inosinate and disodium guanylate, autolyzed yeast extract, caramel color, natural flavorings), beef flavor [beef flavor (hydrolyzed soy, wheat and corn protein, yeast extract, beef fat and beef stock), maltodextrin, sugar, natural flavoring, caramel color, disodium inosinate, disodium guanylate), cream flavor (cream [from milk], whey [from milk], maltodextrin, propylene glycol, natural flavor, xanthan gum, sodium citrate, enzymes, cultures), salt, microcrystalline cellulose, teriyaki sauce powder (soy sauce [fermented soybeans, wheat, salt], maltodextrin, chicken extract, spices, caramel color, vitamin E), mushroom flavor (maltodextrin, Mushroom Extract, Salt), Vegetable Flavor (maltodextrin, Onion, Salt, sugar, yeast extract, corn salada oil, carrot, celery, spices, citric acid, onion powder, pepper, tomato powder, caramel color), sodium bisulfite, caramel color.
© 2009 Patti Aliventi
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
AliventiAsylum
|
 in Movies, Hotels & Travel |
 in Movies |
 - Top 50 |
|
Member: Patti Aliventi
Location: Mount Washington Valley, New Hampshire
Reviews written: 2102
Trusted by: 690 members
About Me:
Now writing reviews to pay for the "out of network" costs of our health insurance...
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.