Smart Ones™Tuna Noodle Gratin – Does it taste like homemade?
Written: Jun 01 '08
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Decent flavor, inexpensive, not too zesty.
Cons: Small amounts of ingredients (like tuna, peas, celery, mushrooms).
The Bottom Line: This is a decent meal for the price, but it doesn't have a lot of tuna, celery, mushrooms or peas. I would like more of these items!
|
|
|
| Magick1's Full Review: Smart Ones Tuna Noodle Gratin |
Well, another adventure down the Weight Watchers freezer section and another batch of items to test out. This one, actually, my spouse picked up for me while out shopping for items for me to take to lunch. I was pleasantly surprised, as I enjoy tuna and noodle items, but I had never seen them when I was shopping and wondered why they would not offer something like this! This meal is a part of Weight Watchers® “Classic Favorites” and not the “Fruit Inspirations” or their “Bistro” selections!
The Product
This is another microwave meal that is super easy to prepare. You pull it out of the freezer, pull back the plastic cover slightly and microwave it for only 4 minutes (depending on your microwave). It usually takes me a little less due to having this in my lunch bag for a few hours before preparing it. If you do need to know about conventional oven preparation, it takes 30 minutes on 350 degrees!
The meal registers 5 points on the Weight Watchers® points value system, if you are using these as a part of your daily meal planning sessions! The tuna noodle gratin has a decent flavor, but I don’t know that it truly tastes a lot like home made. It really will depend on the way that you are used to preparing this dish, as there are so many variations.
The meal is slightly filling. The initial appearance is a bit dismaying, as it was separated out in the dish. The bread crumbs were mostly on one side with a majority of the sauce and the noodles were on the other side. They show a delightful photo on the front (don’t they always) that truly does not represent the meal inside whatsoever. They show decent bread crumbs, bright green peas and a light sauce with noodles and celery and ample tuna pieces showing through. In the ingredients, they state there are mushrooms in this dish as well. I honestly don’t recall seeing any, so they are either cut up so tiny that you wouldn’t notice them or they just did not put many in the mix. The actual meal, while it tastes good, doesn’t look that appetizing when you prepare it. The meal seems more like sauce with a touch of peas, celery and if you look hard, bread crumbs.
The noodles used are linguini noodles. The sauce is a creamy sauce that has a mild flavor, without much seasoning to it all. I felt the most flavor came from the peas and the celery. I haven’t eaten tuna for a while and was surprised that this flavor did not jump out at me very much. That tells me that there was not a tremendous amount of tuna in the mixture at all. And, with the amount of sauce in this dish, you really could not see the tuna, as it was all covered up and the tuna pieces were not very large. So, if you like a small amount of tuna in a tuna noodle dish, this would be a great choice. If you like a lot of tuna, you might be a bit disappointed like I was. I will still purchase it on occasion, but it likely will be very infrequent! I like my own homemade version as I put a lot of tuna into my dish to really give a lot of flavor to the meal!
The Ingredients
Water, cooked enriched noodle product (water, enriched semolina [semolina, niacin, ferrous sulfate, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid,], eggs), tuna (white tuna, water, vegetable broth, salt, sodium pyrophosphate), celery, breadcrumbs (enriched flour [wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid], dextrose, salt, yeast, yellow corn flour, extractives of paprika and annatto [color], peas, nonfat milk, contains 2% or less of: mushrooms, parmesan cheese (cultured milk, salt, enzymes), modified cornstarch, potato maltodextrin, cheese flavor (corn maltodextrin, enzyme modified parmesan and cheddar cheese [milk, salt, enzymes, cultures], autolyzed yeast, soybean oil, flavorings), butter (cream, natural flavorings) cheese powder (parmesan cheese [milk, cheese cultures, salt, enzymes[, disodium phosphate, salt), shortening base (partially hydrogenated soybean oil, corn syrup solids, sodium caseinate [milk}, mono- and diglycerides), salt, sodium citrate, cheese flavor (water, lipolyzed cream, butterfat, salt, flavoring), flavor (hydrolyzed corn gluten, yeast extract), cheese flavor (enzyme modified cheddar cheese [milk, salt, enzymes}, autolyzed yeast, natural flavorings), granulated onion, xanthan gum, white pepper.
Contains Eggs, fish (tuna), milk, soybeans, wheat.
Nutritional Facts
Calories 250 Calories from Fat 40
Total Fat 4.5g or 7%
Saturated Fat 1.5g or 8%
Trans Fat 0g
Polyunsaturated Fat 0.5g
Monounsaturated Fat 1.5g
Cholesterol 45mg or 16%
Sodium 780mg or 33%
Total Carbohydrate 37g or 12%
Dietary Fiber 2g or 9%
Sugars 5g
Protein 14g
Vitamin A 0%
Calcium 15%
Vitamin C 0%
Iron 10%
This information is based upon 1 serving which is 1 box of the Tuna Noodle Gratin. And, this is based upon a standard 2,000 calorie daily intake.
Overall Impressions
If you like tuna and noodles, this is a decent dish. It might not be like the tuna noodles that you make or are used to eating. If you enjoy celery, peas, and mushrooms in your tuna dish, I think you will enjoy this very much for a quite, inexpensive lunch item. But, if you expect a tremendous flavor that will knock your socks off, this won’t be it!
For the price, it tides you over very nicely. The flavor is decent without much spice or strong flavors. You will pick up the peas, celery and a touch of tuna when eating this, but there really isn’t any other discernable flavor that will jump out at you (I am thinking of onion, garlic and the like).
Since the meal is quick to prepare, inexpensive and decent, it really should be one that you try (if you enjoy tuna dishes), as it has a decent flavor. As mentioned, I will likely purchase it once in a while for variety sake. If you try it, I hope you enjoy it!
A great big thank you to BRUGURU for adding this to the database.
~Thanks for spending time with me today!~
Beef
Sirloin Beef and Asian Style Vegetables
Salisbury Steak
Pineapple Beef Teriyaki
Swedish Meatballs
Meatloaf
Traditional Lasagna with meat sauce
Lasagna Florentine
Chicken
Chicken Fettucini
Chicken Carbonara
Creamy Rigatoni with Chicken and Broccoli
Creamy Parmesan Chicken
Teriyaki Chicken Vegetable
Chicken Oriental
Orange Sesame Chicken
Honey Mango Barbeque Chicken
Turkey
Stuffed Turkey Breast
Roast Turkey Medallions
Spicy
Pepperoni Pizza
Four Cheese Pizza
Pepperoni Pizza Smartwich™
Calzone Italiano
Three Cheese Ziti Marinara
Fish
Dragon Shrimp Lo Mein
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.