Lean Cuisine – eat your heart out!

An eye of the round steak, mashed potatoes with green onions, green beans, asparagus, and a beef-and-tomato sauce – 500 calories.  It was maybe a 5 oz steak, small potato, a couple of green onions.  The potatoes had no added fat – just  a splash of non-fat milk.

I boiled down a cup of beef broth with a teaspoon of tomato paste.  I fried the steaks in a dry pan and added a splash of red wine after they were cooked, and reduced it.  I then added the reduced beef broth and thickened it with a pinch of cornstarch.

The veggies were blanched and then roasted with a drizzle of olive oil, salt, pepper, and a bit of garlic.

So just for grins and giggles I decided to see how this fared against a Lean Cuisine meal.  The only “Beef” meal I found on the website was “Steak Tips Dijon” which was roasted potatoes, green beans, and seasoned cooked beef product.  Not my words – theirs.  Seasoned cooked beef product.

Ingredients:

roasted potatoes, green beans, seasoned cooked beef product (beef, water, dextrose, soybean oil, modified cornstarch, potassium chloride, salt, potassium and sodium phosphates, caramel color, natural flavors), skim milk, red peppers, water, onions, brown sugar syrup, dijon mustard (vinegar, water, mustard seed, salt, white wine, citric acid, tartaric acid, spices), white wine, modified cornstarch, brown sauce flavor (maltodextrin, dehydrated tomato, salt, yeast extract, sugar, dehydrated beef, flavors (made from milk), soy sauce (soybeans, wheat, salt), xanthan gum, citric acid, caramel color, lactic acid), butterfat, garlic puree, spicy prepared mustard (vinegar, mustard seed, water, salt, spices, turmeric, natural flavor), soybean oil, salt, spices.

My 500 calories vs their 280.

Seasoned cooked beef product. I’m almost speechless.

It probably took as long to cook our entire meal as it would have taken to heat the lean cuisine-thing.  The absolute longest item was boiling the potatoes.  (They wre grown down the road by my friend, Elizabeth, as were the green beans.)  The steak was three minutes on one side, two minutes on the other. The veggies were blanch for 30 seconds and under the broiler for maybe three minutes.

Fast food – and infinitely better than seasoned cooked beef product.