Top Chef inspired Healthy Choice Café Steamers
The show Top Chef on BravoTV is one of my favorite television shows. Recently, I have seen numerous ads on TV for the Top Chef inspired Healthy Choice cafe steamers and was curious as to how they were. I’ve had Healthy Choice café steamers before and they were good . . . would the Top Chef inspiration and influence make them that much better? Costco had a coupon in their February mailer for these frozen dinner entrees so it made it even more tempting to get some and try them out.
Microwaving the Top Chef inspired Healthy Choice cafe steamer entree
To give a little background on the Top Chef inspired Healthy Choice options, Healthy Choice has been a sponsor of Top Chef and in between television seasons Healthy Choice and BravoTV hosted a competition between four former Top Chef contestants and fan favorites:
- Casey Thompson
- Sara Nguyen
- Ryan Scott
- Tre Wilcox
The winner of the Top Chef styled competition would get to help Healthy Choice launch the new Top Chef inspired line of café steamers. In the end, the winner was Ryan Scott who edged out Casey Thompson.
The steamer tray right out of the microwave and the plastic cover removed - all ingredients looking hot and delicious
I’m not sure of the specific market segmentation details for frozen foods / TV dinners but I am sure I probably fall into one of their consumer segments. In my grocery runs, I tend to get more fresh fruits, vegetables and meat to make my own food. However, I will mosey into the frozen foods section occasionally to peruse what’s new and/or on sale and stock up on a few things for those occasions that I’m too lazy, lacking ingredients, or lacking the time to make a proper meal.
To prepare the Healthy Choice entree, you remove the tray from the box, pop it in the microwave, and heat the tray (this is all done with the plastic covering still left on). Once the microwaving is done, the steamed ingredients are placed into the accompanying sauce in the larger outer tray while the inner steaming tray itself is discarded. The ingredients and sauce are mixed together and the final mixed product is then ready for consumption.
The steaming tray is removed and steamed items are then placed into the accompanying sauce in the bottom tray
Similar to other frozen dinner entrees, I found that the portion sizes are pretty small compared to what you might get in a restaurant. But, that may be a reflection of how large portion sizes at restaurants in the United States have become, or how voracious my appetite! Realistically, it is probably the way that frozen dinners limit the caloric intake. Don’t get me wrong though, the café steamer portion size wasn’t skimpy but I could probably eat two steamers in one sitting pretty easily.
The Top Chef inspired Healthy Choice café steamer final product after mixing the steamed ingredients in the accompanying sauce
So, how do the Top Chef inspired Café Steamers compare to the other Café Steamers in Healthy Choice’s lineup? Well, I did think the ingredients used were of very good quality. Being that the preparation method was steaming in the microwave , the ingredients looked very appetizing once microwaved retaining their bright fresh colors. The steamed broccoli also retained a little crispy texture as opposed to having that soggy texture that can easily occur with vegetables prepared from other frozen entrees. The color of the final mixed together product seemed a little more yellow than I would have thought it would be (I expected more of a reddish tint since it was marinara sauce), but the taste was really good and I did enjoy my entree. I don’t know that I would say right off the bat that the Top Chef inspired steamer was necessarily much much tastier than a regular Healthy Choice steamer but I do think it was a bit better and definitely one of the better TV dinners that I have had. I’ll admit though that I wasn’t completely scientific in my testing since I didn’t have a regular steamer in the same sitting as the Top Chef inspired one. I guess I have a few more replicates to go in order to get an adequate sample size, not to mention some other flavors to try :).
Overall, I enjoyed the Top Chef inspired Healthy Choice café steamer and if I’m at the grocery store again and looking for some dinner entrees in the frozen foods section, I’ll be sure to look at the Healthy Choice options again. Without a coupon discount, I might think twice compared to some other options, but if I’m not penny-pinching and deciding based on quality, taste, and presentation, then the Top Chef inspired Healthy Choice options it is.
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FYI, I have not been hired to promote the Healthy Choice Café Steamer meals so l am not writing this entry or advertising on their behalf. As with all of my posts, I’m just sharing my thoughts and opinions. Cheers!
The quest for the perfect pot roast
With my previous attempt at making a pot roast being relatively successful, I wanted to try to do better. On this second attempt to make the perfect pot roast with the newly acquired All-Clad slow cooker from Williams-Sonoma, I did do a few things differently. In this attempt, the modifications were:
1) switching up my protein and using a pork shoulder instead of beef. Although the truely scientific method would be to keep my protein the same for taste comparison purposes, Safeway had a nice special on pork shoulder, and I had seen some good recipes using pork shoulder so I decided to go with it for this attempt.
1) changing the positioning in which I placed some of the vegetables. In my last attempt, I found out that vegetable placement in the slow cooker was also important if one wants certain vegetables to be desired textures. That is, the celery and brussel sprouts that I had placed atop everything and thought might still be fairly green and crispy once cooked were not so.
2) adding more chicken stock. The last time I made a pot roast, I could tell I did not have enough liquid. Why do I say so? Well, once cooked the pot roast should be partly submerged in liquid to keep it moist and provide more flavor. However, I was a little too stingy with the amount of chicken stock that I added last time so my meat was sitting atop my liquid vegetable bed. This time I made sure to add enough liquid (deglaze + stock) so as to cover about half of the pot roast. As juices will come out from the meat, and veggies, you don’t want to fill up the slow cooker completely with liquid.
For this blog entry, I’ve decided to provide a photodocumentary so as not to bore you with all the specifics. Pictures speak a thousand words anyways so please enjoy!
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- Washed fresh vegetables
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- Chopped yellow onions
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- Olive oil for the aromatics
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- Sauteeing garlic cloves
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- Sauteeing chopped onions
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- Onions getting some color
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- Nicely browned onions
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- Empty slow cooker ceramic insert
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- A bed of onions
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- A layer of carrots
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- Interspersing celery
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- The massic pork shoulder cut
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- Pork shoulder side profile
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- Lightly seasoned pork shoulder
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- Olive oil to brown the pot roast
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- Sizzling pork shoulder closeup
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- Browning the pork shoulder
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- Turning to brown all sides
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- Browning all sides
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- Meat on layer of onions, carrots and celery
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- Potatoes on the side
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- Brussel sprouts on the side
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- Cherry tomatoes on the side
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- Deglazing the meat browning pan with chicken stock
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- Adding a can of diced tomatoes and some cajun/taco seasoning to top off the pot roast
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- All ingredients in the slow cooker and ready to go
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- Slow cooker set 8 hr cook time
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- After 4 hr of cooking
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- The completed pot roast after 8 hr of slow cooking
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- Cooked pot roast closeup
So, what were the results of this pot roast attempt? Compared to the previous attempt, this pot roast definitely turned out much better. With the meat still submerged in the juices once cooked, the pork shoulder remained nice and moist unlike my previous beef pot roast. The vegetables also turned out better.
However, the quest for the perfect roast is not complete and I shall continue attempting to perfect my pot roasts . . .
Foodie Forays 