If you’re looking for the best low carb frozen meals, we have good news and bad news. The good news is there are a lot of options in the frozen aisle, including a whole line of Atkins frozen meals, which you can rest assured are low carb without having to stand with the cooler door open scanning the nutrition info on the box. The bad news? A lot of low carb frozen dinners have…quirks. You’re entering a realm of “crustless” pot pies, zucchini pasta, cauliflower “risotto,” and other things that probably shouldn’t have been attempted in the first place. When we sat down for this taste test, we had to kiss a lot of low carb frogs to find just three low carb princes.
In our taste test of low carb frozen meals, we tried offerings from four brands: Healthy Choice, Atkins, Life Cuisine (aka Lean Cuisine’s line of diet-specific meals), and Real Good Foods. Spoiler: Atkins frozen meals are the best by far. I guess being in the low-carb game for a few decades is paying off. We’ll try more brands and more meals in future taste tests, but for now, these are the three best low carb frozen meals—the only low carb frozen meals we could really recommend.
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- Atkins Crustless Chicken Pot Pie (6 grams of net carbs)
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Nothing sounds more depressing than a crustless pot pie. I mean, it’s not even really a pie anymore, it’s just creamy chicken soup. But once I got past the semantic shenanigans, I had to admit that this Atkins frozen meal is actually pretty good. It’s described as white meat chicken, broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, and carrots in a sherry and herb cream sauce. I couldn’t taste sherry or herbs in the sauce, but the veggies are nice and the chicken is surprisingly good for the format—firm and tasty rather than mushy or spongy. Sure, it’s pretty much just creamy chicken soup, but creamy chicken soup sounds pretty good, especially if you’re on a diet.
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- Atkins Chicken Margherita (7 grams of net carbs)
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This low carb frozen meal—grilled white meat chicken, spinach, tomatoes, and basil in a balsamic sauce with mozzarella cheese—is a little cheesy, very saucy, and full of spinach and chicken. It’s got some herbaceous notes, too—oregano and other pizza-leaning spices that make it taste like a pizza bowl, but less greasy and disgusting. We’ve had a few pizza bowl-style frozen meals in our taste tests, and they’re always SO OILY. This is a little oily, but it’s not totally dependent on cheese for flavor, so it’s much more edible. The chicken comes in little rectangular strips and it has a nice quality. The sauce is flavorful and you can kind of scrape cheese off the inside of the plastic container. It works! The sauce doesn’t taste like balsamic vinegar, but this is one of the best low carb frozen meals all the same.
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- Atkins Beef Merlot (6 grams of net carbs)
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I’ve complained a lot in recent rankings about beef and steak in frozen meals. Unless it’s ground, like a Salisbury steak, beef is typically really dreadful in frozen dinners—dry, chewy, and flavorless. I don’t know if this goes for all Atkins frozen meals, but the beef in this particular low carb frozen dinner is surprisingly good. This actually looks and eats like stew beef. Plus, this meal has a lot of broccoli, and the sauce is brown, savory, and tastes just a touch like cooking wine. This is not going to be the best thing you’ve ever eaten, but it’s downright gourmet compared to some of the other low carb frozen meals we tried.
Credit: Merc / Walmart
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Other products we tried: Healthy Choice Chicken & Broccoli Simply Seamers, Healthy Choice Power Bowls Greek Chicken, Healthy Choice Power Bowls Spicy Beef Teriyaki, Atkins Cheesy Chicken Risotto, Life CuIsine Meat Lovers Cauliflower Bowl, Real Good Foods Orange Chicken Bowl
