'A Family-Sized Disaster': Why We Ranked This Frozen Steak Dinner The Absolute Worst

Let's be real: A frozen steak dinner won't generally be as good as at a fancy restaurant, or even a freshly-cooked hunk of meat at a chain steakhouse (which we've ranked worst to best). But as one Chowhound reviewer found when reviewing and ranking eight frozen steak dinners, there's still a big gap between a good frozen steak dinner and a bad one. Case in point: Stouffer's Steak Queso and Rice, the meal that had the (dis)honor of last place on this ranking.

On paper, it sounds decent: grilled steak pieces with a colorful mix of onions, black beans, corn, and poblano peppers atop a base of rice and queso. But pop that bad boy out of its box, microwave it for 12 minutes, and the end product, according to our reviewer, is a "culinary nightmare."

The problems were myriad: a lack of steak (and what was there was unpleasantly chewy), and relatively few veggies, despite the promises on the packaging. The rice is undercooked, and is not at all rescued by the queso — the cheese sauce instead separated into gloopy curds and watery slop. This wasn't just a textural issue: The taste of that queso was oddly acidic, too, when one would probably expect a cheese-based sauce to be creamy. You'll pay just under $11 for the displeasure of eating it, so it's not even particularly cheap. That gets you a box that allegedly has 3.5 servings, but it's only 30 ounces in total, or under 9 ounces per serving, hardly a hearty meal.

Stouffer's has a lot of products on the market, and perhaps interestingly, the steak, queso, and rice dish doesn't seem to get reviewed a whole lot. It often gets ignored even in round-ups and reviews of multiple Stouffer's products at once. Whether that's a red flag or just an oversight, we can only guess, but it certainly seems that nobody is singing praises for this frozen meal from the rooftops.

The reviews that are out there about this Stouffer's dish are mixed. There are positive reviews, although they sometimes recommend adding extra components like salsa, avocado, or extra rice (the extra rice suggestion also proves that our reviewer's complaint about the dish being soupy is no isolated incident). Even fans of the dish would also agree that the "family size" claim on the box is misleading, too. Plus, at least on Walmart's website, an apparently positive score for the steak dinner is propped up by pages and pages of positive reviews collected as part of a promotion. Though they could be genuine opinions, it's something to keep in mind, as customers might feel obligated to be overly positive for an incentivized review.

Remove those and it seems like people generally find this dish unimpressive. Descriptors like "mush" and "awful" are easy to come by, and it's noted that the dish is often light on meat and veggies and heavy on low-grade cheese and rice. If you're looking for a steak dinner, perhaps consider the Boston Market Beef Steak and Pasta, which came in at the top of our ranking instead — or alternatively, there are other Stouffer's products out there with better reviews.