Bertolli does it all. They’ve got olive oils, vinegars, pasta sauces, and, most importantly for our purposes here today, frozen skillet meals—basically, all the food groups. But as someone who doesn’t typically turn to the frozen aisle for my pasta and sauce (I’m more of a jar sauce and box pasta girl, myself), I wondered if any of the bagged dishes in the lineup of Bertolli frozen meals would be as good as pasta, sauce, veggies, and protein you threw into a pan yourself. Are even the best Bertolli frozen meals worth the time and dishes you’ll save? To find out, we took a strolli through the frozen aisle and picked up all seven of the Bertolli skillet meals we could find.
Really quick before we get started: If you were wondering how these frozen meals are packaged (I know I was wondering this), they come loose in a bag. No tray, no nonsense, just a bag full of cooked-but-frozen pasta, little ice cubes made of pasta sauce, and frozen veggies and a protein. You dump the contents of the bag into a skillet and cook it for 8 to 12 minutes, depending on the specific instructions for that Bertolli frozen meal. Then it’s ready to go. Very simple, very easy, and watching the sauce cubes melt down is, in fact, one of the most satisfying things I have done so far in 2025. Alright, now back to the best Bertollis!
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- Bertolli Chicken Broccoli Fettuccine Alfredo
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Of all the Bertolli frozen meals we tried, this was the weakest of the Bertolli Bunch. The sauce is a little watery, so even though the pasta and broccoli have a nice consistency, the whole thing kind of tastes like diluted alfredo sauce and steamed broccoli without much other flavor. It’s just meh, and a homemade version (or even a version made with the best jarred alfredo) would be worth another ten minutes and some extra dishes.
Credit: Merc / Instacart
- Bertolli Shrimp Scampi & Linguine
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This meal is a bit bland, but it isn’t bad by any means. My main problems with this Bertolli frozen meal are that the shrimp tasted a bit fish and the garlic slices were a strange mashed potato-like consistency, likely because they were frozen then pan thawed. Also, there are, inexplicably, red bell pepper chunks in this one, which don’t strike me as particularly scampi-like, but hey, who am I to judge? (Sound off in the comments, Italy!) The sauce has a subtle “white wine cooked out in a pan” sort of flavor that’s pretty pleasant. This certainly isn’t one of the best Bertolli frozen meals, but this also isn’t a dish I would likely make from scratch, so I suppose it’s nice that a bagged option exists.
- Bertolli Chicken Florentine & Farfalle
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If you enjoy the funk of Pecorino Romano, you’ll like the sauce in this Bertolli frozen meal. The spinach definitely tastes a bit like frozen spinach and comes in shreds, but the grilled chicken is a good consistency. Overall, the flavor reminds me of deconstructed spinach and cheese ravioli with some chicken in the mix. Like the shrimp scampi, it’s good but not great. There are better Bertolli frozen meals on this list.
Credit: Merc / Instacart
- Bertolli Italian Sausage & Rigatoni
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If you’re simply craving pasta with red sauce, this is the best of the Bertolli frozen meals to buy. The Italian sausage is actually super solid—it has fennel and other spices you usually find in sausage from an Italian restaurant. The rigatoni cooks up nicely—it actually has bite—although the red sauce is a bit bland. All in all, it just isn’t quite as good as sausage pasta you’d make yourself. We know Bertolli makes some good sauces (we particularly like their d’Italia marinara sauce), but the sauce in this meal needs some garlic or basil or something, because it truly just tastes like tomatoes. Hey, maybe that sort of simplicity appeals to some people, but it fell a little flat for me.
Credit: Merc / Safeway
- Bertolli Chicken Parmigiana & Penne
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Ah yes, the chicken parmesan. Chicky chicky parm parm for short. Chicken parmigiana for long. This Bertolli frozen meal has a tastier, saltier, more basil-forward tomato sauce than the penne and sausage. The chicken comes in nugget form, and the nuggets taste good. (Of course, we recognize that it is, in fact, fried chicken in sauce, so the chances of it tasting bad were pretty low). The breading on the nuggets does get pretty soggy when the sauce thaws in the pan, but there isn’t really a solve for that. Honestly, the bits of breading that end up in the sauce kind of taste good. There’s also some mozzarella that melts into the sauce and adds a nice richness. And the sauce has chunks of tomato that are very sweet and make the sauce taste almost homemade. Worth noting too that most people aren’t crafting chicky ckicky parm parm from scratch on a weeknight, so this is the best Bertolli frozen meal if you are in the mood and want a good version of it in ten minutes flat.
Credit: Merc / Instacart
- Bertolli Chicken Carbonara
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Admittedly, this isn’t a whole lot like chicken carbonara, which is traditionally made with egg yolks, rendered bacon fat, and parm. This is more like pasta and chicken in alfredo sauce with bacon—but don’t let that scare you away, because this stuff is good. Hands down, this is the best Bertolli skillet meal if you’re looking for a flavorful sauce. It’s smoky and salty, creamy and rich, and there are peas thrown in there, too, which is a fun touch. The pasta comes frozen in little nests, which is so fun if you want to pretend the peas are tiny birds (I don’t know your level of kitchen whimsy), and while the bacon bits are slightly tough, we didn’t really mind. This one is a winner.
Credit: Liv Averett / Instacart
- Bertolli Shrimp Penne & Asparagus
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If you had asked me before doing this taste test which of these I thought was going to win, let me tell ya, it would not have been this guy. But here we are, and here you are, and here is this dark horse made of shrimp, penne, asparagus, and bell peppers in a “creamy tomato basil sauce.” I’m compelled to point out that the sauce isn’t really creamy, per se. It’s more like the consistency of a fresh, homemade tomato and olive oil sauce. But that’s just the thing—of all of the Bertolli frozen meals we tried, this one tastes the most like a homemade dish. The asparagus is salty and crunchy, and unlike the scampi, the shrimp isn’t fishy at all. The sauce tastes like fresh tomatoes, olive oil, dried basil, and cheese. It’s just so much like a homemade 30-minute pasta dinner, but it comes together in just ten minutes. I would actually buy this one for myself if I wanted to have a quick, low effort, and not-too-bad-for-me pasta dinner on hand after a long workday.
Credit: Merc / Instacart
Bertolli!
Bertolli!
Bertolli!
Bertolli!
Bertolli!
Bertolli!
Bertolli!
Thoughts? Questions? Complete disagreement? Leave a comment!