Rao’s Homemade isn’t just the brand of pasta sauce that Ina Garten always has in her pantry, but it also came in second place in our ranking of 15 different sauce brands. Now, this beloved brand has expanded its store-bought offerings to include frozen meals. We ranked all of Rao’s frozen entrees according to flavor and consistency. While many of the meals tasted delicious, the worst Rao’s frozen entree, according to our taste test, is the chicken alfredo pasta.
Chicken alfredo is a classic meal served at most Italian-American restaurants, usually atop a bed of fettuccine. Rao’s opts for a unique choice with cavatappi, but a fun type of pasta doesn’t compensate for the disappointingly bland flavor and texture. Alfredo sauce is famously rich and cheesy and should provide a nice salty and tangy complement to the savory gaminess of chicken. Unfortunately for Rao’s chicken alfredo, the sauce was boring at best. It lacked any cheesiness whatsoever and was completely overwhelmed by the dairy.
The heaviness of the sauce and its lack of taste likewise masked the flavor of the chicken. There’s definitely such a thing as too rich when it comes to alfredo sauce, and this frozen meal was a prime example. It ended up being a chore to swallow more than a few bites of this meal that was at once flavorless and overpowering.
More negative reviews from customers
We aren’t the only ones who aren’t fans of Rao’s chicken alfredo frozen dinner. Customers on Rao’s website, as well as reviews on YouTube and Reddit, agree with our last-place ranking and have even more complaints to add. Customers on Rao’s website called the meal “awful” and the sauce watery and tasteless. There were complaints about the chicken being rubbery, chewy, and cardboard-flavored. In addition to poor taste and texture, nearly every negative review bemoaned the functionality of the frozen meal. Despite following the directions for microwaving the frozen dinner printed on the box, the sauce would either ooze out or explode and splatter half the contents onto the microwave walls. A YouTube video demonstrated with a visual just how watery the sauce is, which explains why it was prone to exploding in the microwave.
It’s safe to say that you should leave this frozen dinner on the shelf. If you’re set on alfredo pasta, you should invest in Rao’s homemade sauces. The company offers three different alfredo sauces, with the four-cheese alfredo sauce making our top five ranking out of 14 Rao’s Homemade jarred pasta sauces. The company even offers a line of dried pasta to make your meal complete.
