8 Hungry Man Frozen Dinners, Ranked Worst To Absolute Best

As a kid, the only time my family had frozen meals was when my sister and I were spending the evening with a babysitter. Those little Kid Cuisine dinners are some of my favorite old-school '90s meals that I still remember very clearly. Today, I use frozen dinners as a convenient way to grab a quick meal with low prep and minimal cleanup during those especially busy days. I've tried plenty of different frozen meal brands, but one I haven't sampled before is Hungry-Man.

The frozen dinners brand Swanson unleashed the Hungry-Man brand of meals in the early 1970s for customers with big appetites. It sits alongside many other brands of frozen meals on grocery store shelves and is certainly among the dollar-store frozen meals that can get overlooked by shoppers. I gathered as many of these frozen dinners as I could find and ranked them to help you find the best flavors for your freezer.

Fried chicken is one of those meals where many people have strong opinions on preparation and seasoning methods. I highly doubt the Hungry-Man classic fried chicken is going to align with anyone's opinion of how the dish should taste and feel.

The very first thing I noticed after removing the chicken from the microwave was that the meal consisted of actual pieces of chicken with bones in them. Of course, the meal claimed to be a classic fried chicken, so perhaps this shouldn't have been surprising, but given that everything else was just so boneless and lackluster in texture, this was promising.

Sadly, my hopes were quickly dashed when I realized that the fried chicken was more spongy than crispy, with no seasoning in sight. The mashed potatoes had that distinctly boxed mashed-potato feel that isn't going to win over any potato lovers, and without any gravy, they were just pasty and sad. This was easily my least favorite of the Hungry-Man meals I tried due to poor texture, lack of flavor, and general blandness.

While the bar was set low for the fried chicken after my last meal, I was optimistic that the boneless version would be better. What I didn't expect was for the chicken patties to look more like little fish patties or giant chicken nuggets than anything else. The exterior of the chicken showed no signs of the crispy breading offered by the previous fried chicken. While that was certainly disappointing in terms of flavor and texture, the boneless fried chicken was definitely better than the bone-in chicken.

Like the fried chicken meal counterpart, the mashed potatoes tasted like they were from a box with no flavor or texture. For dessert, many of the Hungry-Man meals come with a brownie. Unfortunately, this brownie is identical from meal to meal. This supposed brownie felt more like a piece of chocolate cake in texture, though it did taste like a chocolate brownie.

All told, the boneless fried chicken was the kind of meal you eat strictly to get some food in your stomach ASAP, not because you're looking for anything flavorful. I can imagine picking this up in a hotel lobby freezer case and bringing it up to my room to heat up in a fit of desperation, but I can't imagine willingly picking it up off a grocery store shelf and planning to eat it for a meal.

When I first saw the barbecue pieces in this meal, my immediate thought was that it reminded me of McDonald's legendary fan-favorite McRib. I haven't had many McRibs in my life, but I've had enough to know that it is superior to this rib-looking patty.

Interestingly, most of the Hungry-Man meals revolved around one protein, but this meal has a chicken patty and a pork patty. Both seem to be cut out using some kind of cookie-cutter situation to get a defined shape. The chicken was weirdly spongy and even a little bit difficult to get through with my fork. That said, it was more clearly chicken in texture than the nugget-adjacent boneless chicken. The "boneless rib-shaped pork patty," as it was described in the ingredients list, tasted like pork, but it didn't feel like ribs. 

The barbecue sauce was on the sweeter and tangier side and certainly did much of the heavy lifting flavor-wise. The potatoes were the same boxed potatoes I had with the other meals. Happily, the corn actually tasted like normal sweet corn. As expected, the brownie was the same as many of the other meals, and though I always appreciate a bite of chocolate, calling it a rich, fudgy brownie felt like overkill. I think this meal could've been improved by sticking to the pork and layering the pork patty over the potatoes like some of the other meals. The flavor and texture were fine, but other Hungry-Man meals were better.

This meatloaf meal had the same mashed potatoes as the boneless chicken. The difference is that this time, it had gravy, which was a vast improvement to the otherwise boring mashed potatoes. Now, the gravy wasn't exceptional, but it definitely added a little more flavor to the otherwise very dull side dish. Texture-wise, the meatloaf was rubbery with only slightly flavored meat, like the kind you would find in an elementary school cafeteria in the '90s.

I'll admit that the bite of mashed potatoes and meatloaf together wasn't bad and definitely had some homestyle feel to it, but it wasn't a culinary masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination. Oddly, the vegetables were completely tasteless. They all tasted exactly the same with no distinguishable difference between a carrot and a green bean. I think my favorite part of the meal was the gravy, which added a lot of flavor to the experience. This meal was about as basic as it gets, and while Hungry-Man makes better meals, this one fell toward the middle of my ranking, thanks in large part to the gravy.

Hungry-Man meals have multistep instructions. Typically, you need to remove the film from the brownie area, slit the protein compartment, cook it, remove the brownie, stir the potatoes if there are any, and cook the dish again. If there are layered pieces of protein atop the potatoes, you'll also be instructed to rearrange the meat. For the Salisbury Steak, I was surprised to see that the directions instructed me to stir the potatoes and then rearrange the steak slices even though they were not in the same part of the container.

In any case, like with the meatloaf, the gravy was perhaps the best part of this meal. The steak pieces looked like two oblong burger patties that distinctly reminded me of cafeteria or hospital food. Perhaps this isn't surprising given that Salisbury steak is made of gravy and ground beef. The Salisbury steak wasn't the worst of the bunch, earning it a middling ranking overall. In the end, there was nothing necessarily offensive about this meal, and the green beans even tasted like actual green beans. Yes, that seems like a low bar, but other items I had tried from Hungry-Man certainly did not taste like vegetables. The brownie was the same cake-rather-than-brownie inclusion, and though it wasn't horrible, there are so many better desserts to include than this one.

The photo on the box was doing some seriously heavy lifting on these beef enchiladas, overpromising at every turn. Diving right in, the refried beans were a textureless bite with very little flavor. I would've liked a little bit more seasoning, as they were just very bland. The enchiladas were actually reasonably tasty, though they were exceptionally soft. They reminded me of the kind of enchiladas you might find in a (say it with me) cafeteria. It seems like a common theme with Hungry-Man meals.

The box suggested a rather impressive helping of rice, but said rice was actually pretty minimal in comparison and only consisted of a small layer underneath the enchiladas. Like many Hungry-Man meals, this one came with a dessert, but (gasp) it wasn't a brownie. I've never had cocada before, but I was actually impressed with how this portion tasted. It tasted quite a bit like coconut, and it was a welcome change from the brownie.

The Carved White Meat Roasted Turkey meal was obviously Hungry-Man's attempt to create a holiday-esque meal option. Unlike some of the other meals, the vegetables in this one actually tasted like the vegetables they claimed to be, rather than an unflavored collection of vegetable-looking foods. The stuffing, gravy, and mashed potatoes had an enjoyable flavor together, but the stuffing took on something of a spongy and crusty texture on the sides of the pan.

That said, I really enjoyed the dessert in this one. It was an apple cranberry crumble that nailed the texture and taste. I'm a total sucker for anything baked apple, and the small sweet treat included here absolutely delivered. My only complaint is that there wasn't more of it.

Unfortunately, the meal wasn't all wins. The slices of turkey were rather on the thin side and very rubbery. For taste and texture, they reminded me more of dry lunch meat than freshly carved holiday turkey. I'm putting this one toward the top of my list because I enjoyed most of the meal. With some improvements to the turkey, this one could be a real winner.

Before diving into these taste tests, this was easily the option I was most looking forward to sampling. I actually really love chicken Alfredo, so I had high hopes. Then, I opened the package and saw the absolutely massive brownie, and it was a little bit of a letdown. Most of the other meals had brownies in them too, and since they weren't that enjoyable, seeing so much brownie with this meal felt like a sheer waste of space. Not to mention, when I went to remove the brownie from the enclosure as the directions recommended, I noticed it had a piece of penne stuck in it. Several of my meals had random bits in other compartments, which really showed that Hungry-Man needs to put more work into making sure its meals are sealed better into the individual containers.

In addition to the chicken pieces within the Alfredo, there were little bits of broccoli, which added a nice green touch to the mixture. The Alfredo sauce was very basic, but it was exactly what I was expecting from this meal. The pieces of chicken were much smaller than the box suggested, and more bite-sized pieces than the strips that appear on the box.

Still, it wasn't all bad news. Flavor-wise, this was easily my favorite meal of the bunch. The pasta's texture was a little unfortunate as it was closer to a sponge than actual pasta. Impressively, the massive brownie had a better texture and fudginess level than the other meals' brownies. Because of the sheer amount in the compartment, it definitely cooked up better. In the end, this was an easy winner — though, admittedly, I've still had better frozen dinners that actually use high-quality ingredients from plenty of other grocery store brands.

To get the full experience, I sourced as many Hungry-Man meals as I could find, with most of them coming from Walmart. Publix was the only store nearby that had the Hungry-Man Chicken Alfredo, so it proved a little harder to track down than expected.

Having purchased my collection, I got to tasting. For each meal, I followed the package instructions for preparation in the microwave and gave each item a bite. I created my ranking largely based on taste and texture. The best of the bunch would have a texture that best represents the given meal and be enjoyable to eat. In the end, my favorite needed to be a meal I would actually enjoy eating.