LET'S MAKE A MEAL.

When You Can't Start from Scratch 

Sometimes you just don't have the energy. Or the time. Or the interest. Or food in the fridge.

Admit it. There are evenings when cooking just isn't in the cards. Sure, you could always send out for pizza, get takeout, or make yourself a ham and cheese sandwich. But chances are, a healthy meal isn't in the cards either.

Now there's another option. A handful of companies sell (usually) frozen, (nearly) complete all-in-one meals. Most have vegetables and either pasta, rice, or potatoes. Some come with chicken, turkey, shrimp, or beef; others tell you to throw in your own. Most cook on top of the stove in less than ten minutes; others bake in the oven for 20.

From Chicken Santa Fe Skillet to Tofu Thai Stir Fry to Homestyle Turkey with Roasted Potatoes, you choose the cuisine. They may not taste quite like homemade, they cost more than the same dishes made from scratch, and the one-to-two-cup servings listed on most packages may not fill you up. But if you add a salad, more vegetables, or rice (depending on what your kit contains), you can end up with a good, satisfying meal.

One more catch: The sodium is often sky-high. Fortunately, some brands have a seasoning or sauce packet that you add yourself. Using half can slash the sodium without ruining the flavor.

We gave Best Bites to kits that had no more than three grams of saturated fat per serving if the chicken, beef, or shrimp was included, and no more than two grams if you have to supply your own. The supply-your-own meal kits tell you to add a tablespoon or two of oil to the skillet, but we used water or non-stick cooking spray and they tasted just fine. Even if you use a tablespoon of oil, the sat fat won't exceed around four grams per serving. That's still reasonable for a main dish or entree.

We limited sodium to 720 mg per serving--that's the government's (rather generous) limit for "healthy" main dishes. But a meal kit could have up to twice that much and still get an Honorable Mention as long as it had a flavor packet that you could cut in half. (Our chart shows numbers for the full packet.)

Chicken In

Open the bag, add water or oil, and heat. It doesn't get much easier.

Birds Eye Voila!, Chef's Choice, Stouffer's, Sea Cuisine, and Classic Cuisine have cooking instructions that even the most kitchen-challenged or time-strapped can handle. But there the similarity ends. Some taste much better than others.

Birds Eye uses its decades of experience in cooking frozen veggies in sauce to season its Voila! line. The Pesto Chicken was our hands-down favorite, but the Three Cheese Chicken and Garlic Chicken also hit the spot. And the Beef Sirloin Steak and Garlic Potatoes is a chance to get enough red meat to please your favorite carnivore's taste buds without tipping the sat-fat scales.

Chef's Choice must employ some top-notch chefs, too. Its three Stir-Frys--Shrimp, Chicken, and Teriyaki Beef--manage to make frozen vegetables taste like fresh. The kits contain no rice or pasta (you can add your own), so you get more vegetables. Even with half the sauce packet, they were delicious.

So were Chef's Choice's four Skillet Dinners. We loved the Chicken Santa Fe and the Chicken Marinara. The Skillet Dinners have rice or pasta included, so you'll need to add a salad, broccoli, peas, or whatever.

Stouffer's Skillet Sensations aren't objectionable, but they taste more like ... well ... Stouffer's frozen dinners. What's more, the sauce doesn't come in a packet, so you can't knock the sodium back down to earth.

Classic Cuisine's Cooking made Easy refrigerated line features chicken or beef with pasta or potatoes. They're called "family entrees," so don't count on them to give you any vegetables other than spuds. And don't count on them to give you a Best Bite or Honorable Mention, either.

Chicken Out

"Just Add Chicken or Beef," say the labels. You can also eat them as is, or with tofu or beans. We took the numbers for our chart from the packages. Like the packages, our numbers include added chicken or beef (or tofu for Cascadian Farm and Tree of Life). But we subtracted the added oil that the package numbers include.

Green Giant's Create A Meals! didn't wow us, but they might come alive with a tablespoon of oil. The best-tasting of the bunch: Mushroom Wine Chicken. Unfortunately, some varieties are too fatty. The Cheesy Pasta & Vegetable, for example, has ten grams of sat fat--about the same as a 12-ounce sirloin steak.

Birds Eye Easy Recipe Creations are also a mixed bag. The Basil Herb Primavera and Tortellini Parmigiana have too much cream, cheese, and butter. But we were impressed with the Sesame Ginger Teriyaki, the Oriental Lo Mein, and the Spicy Szechuan.

Tree of Life Easy Meals! and Cascadian Farm Quickstarts, on the other hand, were uniformly disappointing. Some had off-flavors, and most had an unappealing, mushy texture. Pity, since they're likely to contain brown rice and organic ingredients. The only exception: Cascadian Farm's delicious South Indian Curry.

Oven Roasted

Unlike the other meal kits, Green Giant's "Oven ' Roasted" Create a Meals!--which combine chicken with potatoes and vegetables--absolutely need the oil the packages call for. Without it they're dry and dull. (That's why we've included 1/2 tablespoon of oil in the numbers for each serving in our chart.)

Preparation and cooking time are a bit longer than for the skillet meal kits, but oven-roasted dishes like Barbecue, Lemon Pepper, or Parmesan Herb Chicken may satisfy potato-loving palates that like their vegetables baked.

Vegetarian

All six of Cascadian Farm Meals for a Small Planet met our Best Bite criteria and then some. Each is organic and is loaded with fiber, thanks to the lentils, chick peas, black beans, etc. Our taste buds ranked the Indian, Cajun, and Moroccan far above the Aztec, Mediterranean, and Szechuan.

Most Birds Eye Pasta Secrets just missed our saturated fat cutoff. And the Italian Pesto flavor--the only Best Bite--doesn't hold a candle to Birds Eye's own Chicken Voila! Pesto Chicken.

The information for this article was compiled by Heather Jones.