National Frozen Food Month: Banquet Salisbury Steak

by Sarah J. Gim, Posted Mar 31st 2008 @ 10:25AM

Maybe it was nostalgia for elementary school. Maybe it was for the Daytona 500 offer on the front of the box. Maybe that's just how crazy I was after already ingesting a frozen bean and cheese burritos and two Lean Pockets! I did a TV dinner; and not just any TV dinner.

I did Banquet's Salisbury Steak Meal.

Now I won't comment at all on the concept of Salisbury Steak itself (and really, Salisbury Steak is nothing more than a "concept" to me because, well, what the hell is Salisbury Steak?), but I will let you all know that if it was, in fact, nostalgia that drove me to try this frozen food, I must have been culinarily abused as a child.

First of all, no one who actually plans to eat the "cooked" version of the meal should see it in its frozen state (see gallery). It's not pretty. In fact, it's pretty frightening. There was a strange set of icicles just under the plastic "film," with which I wasn't quite sure whether to remove or leave to rehydrate the rest of the food when it cooked. I left it.

Halfway through the heating process, you're supposed to stir the mashed potatoes. If the fully frozen version is scary, the half-cooked version is enough to turn you off from eating altogether for about three hours. I stirred the mashed potatoes with the hope that there was some sort of magic to happen in the last minute in the microwave.

There was no magic.

The corn was chewy, the mashed potatoes grainy, the "gravy" was a translucent brown gel that reminded me a little too much of days long gone with Dep, and the entire thing was so salty that I was sure I would be feeling the effects of sodium-bloat within minutes. I will give credit to Banquet for an exceptionally tender piece of meat.