When your pasta craving hits and cooking feels impossible, the best frozen pasta is a lifesaver. Lucky for you, we’ve tasted a ton of frozen pasta over the years, so we know which brands can bring you melty cheese, tender noodles, and rich, cozy sauces in minutes.
How we found the best frozen pasta brands
We pulled the best frozen pasta meals from our other rankings to put them in a neat little list here, for your convenience. You’re welcome. For all of our rankings, we prioritize including widely available brands from grocers like Walmart, Kroger, Costco, Amazon, and more. Not all of these are full meals—you’ll probably want to add some to the best frozen ravioli, right?—but they still save time and effort.
What we look for in the best frozen pasta
From frozen tortellini to baked lasagna and even the best pasta meals you can microwave, our judging criteria, across the board, is pretty simple: Does it taste good? For price and quality, is this the best version of the thing you can buy? Would we actually recommend it to strangers… and the people we know in real life? If the answer is yes, it earns a spot on our list of the best frozen pasta, plain and simple.
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You know them. You love them. Celentano Cheese Ravioli are nostalgic, comforting, and they come in a nice, big bag for the price. When you’re craving a simple, classic, buttery cheese-stuffed pasta dish, Celentano will always, without fail, come to the rescue. The pasta has a sturdy (but not too starchy or doughy) thickness that boils beautifully. The creamy, herby filling is super addictive. You could easily eat these plain. As a freezer staple, these are simply top notch.
Not to be repetitive, but yes, Celentano also makes our favorite frozen meat ravioli, too. (Sorry, not sorry?) These have a very distinct appearance—the “love children of pierogi and UFOs,” says contributor Jessica Block in one of my personal favorite descriptions of frozen food ever written. The pasta has such a strong homemade appeal, and every bite is bursting with cheesy, herby, savory beef flavor. When she crowned these the winner, she didn’t even realize that Celentano was our favorite frozen cheese ravioli, too. That’s how good this brand is, y’all. They set the standard. If you’re looking for the best frozen pasta to keep on retainer, buy Celentano.
“Good lord,” was the collective response the first time we pulled Giovanni Rana’s Meat Lasagna out of the office oven. This huge, perfectly layered, aggressively cheesy (with ricotta, mascarpone, fontina, and cheese sauce) lasagna doesn’t hold back, and it tastes as decadent as it looks. Somehow, this had one of the shortest cook times in the oven compared to other brands, too. It’s all-around delicious and convenient, making it one of the best frozen pasta meals to serve your whole fam.
If you’re looking for a meat-free lasagna, Stouffer’s Veggie Lovers Lasagna is the way to go. (It’s also one of the best frozen pasta bakes for sneaking veggies into a main course.) The creamy alfredo and gooey, stretchy cheese create a satisfying, craveable meal that layers in veggies like carrots and cauliflower without tasting much like those veggies at all. It’s rich, textured, and obscenely tasty.
Patti LaBelle’s frozen mac and cheese is as bold and buttery as you’d hope. Made with generous layers of cheddar and Monterey jack, it’s rich, cheesy, and outrageously indulgent. And while that would probably be good enough on its own, if there’s one thing Patti knows how to do, it’s season her food products. The garlic, paprika, onion, and other spices worked into this really makes the flavor stand out. If you spot this at Walmart: Do! Not! Hesitate!
Paradoxically, the best frozen pasta meal from Rao’s doesn’t have any Rao’s pasta sauce. That feels wrong, somehow, but we can’t help it—this creamy, extra cheesy pasta bake is like mac and cheese, but better. More complex, more flavorful, more sophisticated (a ridged cavatappi noodle will always elevate a creamy pasta… and you can quote me on that). We detected even a hint of something sweet and nutty, like nutmeg. Honestly, this little pasta bake is art, plain and simple. Buy it. You’ll love it.
Great Value’s Cheese Tortellini is a blank canvas. We’re pretty up-front about the fact that it’s not going to blow your mind, especially compared to other more flavorful tortellini options from the refrigerated section. But it’s still a simple classic done right—for a great price—and serves as a solid base for just about any pasta sauce you feel like smothering it in.
Bertolli frozen skillet meals are fast, easy, and they don’t leave you with a big pile of dishes to wash—but not all of them are bangers. In fact, their Shrimp Scampi & Linguine was one of the worst, so it surprised us that this other shrimp pasta was so dang good. The asparagus is salty and crunchy, the sauce is bright and fresh tasting, and the shrimp don’t have the fishy flavor frozen seafood can sometimes have. This is the best frozen pasta for a full meal on the fly.
Ariana Losch is a Sporked contributor, webcomic writer, java junkie, and bad TV enthusiast. She only ever feels at peace laying out on a beach like a kebab, roasting in the sun; sadly, she can never move back to Florida, her home state, because there simply isn’t enough good Mediterranean food. You can find her overstaying her welcome at just about every LA coffee shop, working on a screenplay and avoiding all eye contact. (She is embarrassed to be there, please leave her alone.)
Thoughts? Questions? Complete disagreement? Leave a comment!
Thoughts? Questions? Complete disagreement? Leave a comment!