Frozen Friday: Chili's - Cheesy Chicken Pasta Florentine

Chili's Cheesy Chicken Pasta Florentine frozen meal features grilled white chicken with pasta, black beans, red bell peppers, and corn in a jalapeno spinach sauce.

I bought a 10-oz box for $2 on sale.

As you might guess from the ingredients, this is basically an Italian and Southwest cuisine mash up. There's the creamy and spinach component of chicken Florentine pasta mixed with the corn, beans, red bell peppers, and jalapeno more common for a Southwest influence. It actually worked out, interestingly enough.

The jalapeno spinach sauce packed a good amount of heat for a moderate burn. There's actually a strong spinach flavor throughout that is sometimes overlooked in other frozen food meals. The jalapeno mostly provided heat rather than flavor though. It might have been overpowered by the parmesan of the creamy sauce and/or the spinach (there's also some melted cheddar but it didn't add much). The sauce had a nice thick consistency to it.

The chicken wasn't all that tender and was only lightly seasoned to better go with the sauce. There was a good amount of it.

The beans and corn add a novel flavor in the dish. Along with the bell peppers, they seem to be a staple of Chili's frozen meals.

The pasta was a little mushy and stuck together quite a bit but held the sauce very well.

Overall, Chili's Cheesy Chicken Pasta Florentine adds an interesting and novel twist to a classic dish that works out rather well. It still tasted like the base dish but the extra touches do well in setting it apart.

Nutritional Info - Chili's Cheesy Chicken Pasta Florentine frozen meal (284g)
Calories - 420 (from Fat - 140)
Fat - 15g (Saturated Fat - 7g)
Sodium - 810mg
Carbs - 42g (Sugar - 5g)
Protein - 27g