This refrigerated ready-to-heat meal is convenient, but not the best value.
Chicken marsala is one of my favorite dishes. The dish of lightly breaded and sautéed chicken served with a Marsala wine cream sauce can be absolutely delicious, if you follow the right recipe. It’s not complicated to make, but many restaurants manage to get it wrong. Perhaps for that reason, none of the ready-to-eat meal services I’ve tried seem to have it.
Trader Joe’s version is OK, perhaps a tad better than I expected, though nothing to write home about. The chicken was tender and well seasoned and the mashed potatoes were generic, but this dish is all about the sauce. And the sauce was just OK. There needed a little bit more of everything: more mushrooms, more cream, more chicken base, more Marsala and longer reductions. The dish also needed more sauce, period. There was enough of it for the chicken, but not for the mashed potatoes.
It comes in a plastic tray and it only takes a couple of minutes to microwave, so at least it’s very convenient. It’s possible that if you reheated it on a pan and allowed the sauce to reduce some more, it might be better – but I don’t buy ready-to-eat meals because I want to take out my pans.
This meal is supposed to feed two people, but the whole dish is only a 17 oz, which makes it too small of a meal for anything but the lightest appetite (unless you add a salad or something else). However, it is too big of a portion for just one person. All in all, I think it’s a bit overpriced and not tasty enough to get it again.
It was $8.50 at my Trader Joe’s in Castro Valley – but I think it might be cheaper at Trader Joe’s in other locations.
I am so disappointed in this so-called chicken marsala. I think the mashed potatoes are watery and the chicken is rubbery and they were only two slices of mushrooms in the entire serving for two people. I won’t be buying it again.