Here’s some things about me: I am a man and, sometimes, I am hungry. So that must mean I devour Hungry-Man frozen TV dinners at all hours of the day, right? Sorry to disappoint you dear reader, but I haven’t regularly enjoyed TV dinners since I was watching Are You Afraid of the Dark? when it originally aired. And, since then, I haven’t been particularly impressed by any.
That’s not to say I haven’t had some decent frozen dinner options before. I think frozen mac and cheese can be particularly good and tastes far better than the kind that comes from a box. However, I think most frozen dinners feel like an uncanny version of what they are trying to replicate; they almost get it right, but they are just slightly off enough to make your skin crawl.
The new Hungry-Man Dinner Combos are intriguing; they offer you two different dinner options in one pack. That way, if one isn’t so great, then maybe the other one is more your taste. I’ve tried a few Hungry-Man dinners before and, after seeing Rhett & Link choose the turkey dinner as the best Thanksgiving option, I went into this taste test with a little bit of optimism, a feeling that was quickly dashed upon the rocks.
A caveat: I microwaved all of these instead of using the oven. Not only am I a hungry man, I’m also impatient. I figured zapping these dinners is the most common way people would eat them, but I recognize that the results may vary if warmed up in the oven.
- Hungry-Man Combo Dinner Orange Chicken and Teriyaki Chicken
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I was excited about this new Hungry-Man dinner. It actually makes sense to pair these two dishes together. It replicates the experience of a Chinese buffet. Hungry-Man has this to say: “Enjoy tempura white meat chicken with rice and orange sauce alongside a delicious chicken breast with lo mein noodles and teriyaki sauce.” The accompanying picture on the box looks as delectable as the description.
Pros: The rice is fine.
Cons: The orange chicken is basically chicken nuggets and, instead of being slathered in orange sauce, is completely dry. The sauce is frozen separate from the meat, so as the microwave does its work, it seeps into the rice instead of coating the meat. The teriyaki chicken is no better. The “delicious chicken breast” advertised in the description is small cubes of indistinguishable meat; they could have been tofu. The teriyaki sauce is so runny it might as well be soup. The flavor is predominantly soy and nothing else.
Credit: Liv Averett / Ralphs
- Hungry-Man Combo Dinner Meatloaf and BBQ Sauced Chicken
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Meatloaf and BBQ chicken are two classic frozen TV dinner options, so you have to try really hard to screw them up. Let’s start with the good.
Pros: The BBQ chicken comes with roasted potatoes, which were actually good. They are comparable to potatoes made in an air fryer, just not quite as crispy. The BBQ sauce is a little sweet for my liking, but totally palatable. The chicken breast is pretty standard, but compared to what I had in the chicken teriyaki, it may as well have come from a high-end BBQ joint. And I actually like the meatloaf and gravy—even if it doesn’t hold a candle to what my mom would make the family for dinner, which was incredible.
Cons: The most egregious error is the mashed potatoes. Frozen mashed potatoes can be good. But the mashed potatoes in this Hungry-Man Combo Dinner are not. As the meal heated up, the gravy and potatoes melted into some kind of weird slush that is a far cry from the fluffy mashed potatoes you might expect. It’s a shame, really, because if they were even slightly better, this would be decent overall.
Credit: Liv Averett / Ralphs
- Hungry-Man Combo Dinner Fried Chicken and Salisbury Steak
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I think by this point, we are seeing the flaw in the overall concept of the Hungry-Man Combo Dinner: While the two Chinese food options make sense, both of the chicken/beef combos seem kind of pointless. I’d happily forego having two mediocre options in place of just nailing one of these. That said, this Hungry-Man Combo is the one to pick, should you really want to try one.
Pros: The fried chicken option is the best of the bunch, thanks to the mac and cheese, which is made extremely well. It doesn’t succumb to the watery fate of the mashed potatoes and, when combined with a bite of fried chicken, is about as close as you’re going to get to the real thing.
Cons: The Salisbury steak has the same issues as the meatloaf: It’s a slab of meat in a pool of mashed potato sludge. It is only slightly better because the gravy has more of an onion flavor.
Credit: Liv Averett / Ralphs
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