Park Street Deli Fettuccine with Alfredo Sauce & Grilled Chicken Meal Kit

We all have times when we need quick and easy dinner options. For our family, this is especially the case when the kids are involved in after-school activities. Some evenings are a juggling act between taxiing kids around and getting a meal on the table in a timely manner. The slow cooker is our friend on these nights. A pot full of homemade chili or chicken tortilla soup can be just the ticket. Less often, we’ll make dinner in the microwave.

Aldi sells several microwavable meals as part of their everyday selection, including pork carnitas, Korean style BBQ chicken, and Thai coconut chicken. They’re part of the Park Street Deli line, which is an Aldi private label that encompasses refrigerated, ready-to-serve or ready-to-heat foods and deli-style items.

Aldi recently advertised a microwavable chicken fettuccine alfredo meal kit under the Park Street Deli brand. With several pasta fans in the house, I dropped a kit in my shopping cart during my weekly Aldi run.

The Park Street Deli Fettuccine with Alfredo Sauce & Grilled Chicken Meal Kit is an Aldi Find at the time of publication. That means it’s only in stores for a short time. Each store gets one shipment, and after that sells out, it’s gone unless Aldi decides to bring it back at some point. Aldi does not offer online ordering for products that are not in stock at your local store. When this meal kit is in stock, you’ll find it in the refrigerator aisle near the deli foods. It should be kept refrigerated until ready to heat.

The meal kit cost $11.99 for 39 ounces at the time of writing. With abut six servings per container, that comes out to about $2 per serving.

The package states this features “chef-crafted alfredo with fresh heavy cream, aged parmesan cheese & a perfect balance of onions, garlic & spices.” The package also states this is ready in “3 easy steps.” Just mix, heat, and serve.

If you’re looking out for allergens, this contains wheat, milk, and eggs.

Glancing at the rest of the ingredients list, this isn’t too bad for a ready-to-serve meal. With the exception of a few items such as natural flavor, the ingredients are mostly whole, easily recognizable things. This meal does have plenty of calories, fat, sodium, and carbs, though.

As mentioned above, one package contains about six 1-cup servings. One serving has 290 calories, 12 grams of total fat (15% DV), 7 grams of saturated fat (35% DV), 65 mg of cholesterol (22% DV), 710 mg of sodium (31% DV), 29 grams of total carbohydrates (11% DV), 2 grams of dietary fiber (7% DV), 2 grams of total sugars, no added sugars, and 15 grams of protein.

The package has directions only for heating this in the microwave.

Open the pouch of pasta and spread it evenly in the black disposable microwavable tray that is included in the kit. Shake the included pouch of sauce for approximately 10 seconds, open the pouch, and pour the contents evenly over the pasta. Open the included pouch of chicken and arrange it over the pasta and sauce in a single layer.

Cover the tray loosely with a double layer of paper towels and place the tray in the microwave. Microwave on the high setting for approximately 8 minutes. Product temperature should reach 165 degrees for food safety. Remove the tray from the microwave and let it set for 2 minutes while still covered with paper towels. Be careful as the tray and food will be very hot when you remove it from the microwave.

If you don’t like putting plastic in the microwave, you could probably put this all in a microwave-safe dish and heat it that way instead of using the included plastic tray. Just be aware you might have to adjust your cooking time.

Also, if you don’t have a microwave or prefer not to use the microwave, I’m sure you could put this in an oven-safe dish to heat, although you’d have to estimate oven temperature and heating time. You might also be able to put it in a saucepan and heat it all on the stovetop, being careful not to overcook the pasta or let the pasta stick to the pan.

I heated this in the included plastic tray and followed the microwave instructions. While the directions do not say to stir this before microwaving, I recommend stirring it a bit so the noodles are fully coated with sauce and don’t dry out during heating.

I served this alongside some roasted asparagus for a complete meal. My family, which includes a couple of people who love pasta dishes, thought this meal was okay but not great.

For starters, the noodles have a somewhat dry or hard texture that isn’t quite al dente.

Also, the sauce doesn’t quite hit the right notes for an alfredo sauce. It tastes fairly salty, for one thing. We also thought it might be too garlicky (even though we love garlic), or maybe a little too oniony. It was hard to pinpoint what exactly seemed different about it compared to other alfredo sauces we’ve had. Some of us also thought the sauce was on the thin side. I made sure to pour sauce over all the noodles prior to heating, but as it cooked, it dribbled down into the bottom of the plastic tray, leaving the top noodles uncovered.

In addition, the chicken — which tastes like the quick-heat frozen seasoned grilled chicken breast strips we sometimes buy in the freezer aisle — seemed to dry out some while heating in the microwave.

This was just okay when we ate it for dinner. However, the leftovers were better. I took some of the leftover pasta in a thermos for lunch the next day, and I also tossed some of my leftover asparagus into the same thermos for a serving of veggies. I’m not sure if I was just really hungry or if the flavors had melded overnight, or if it was the addition of the asparagus, but this actually tasted better the next day. The noodles and chicken were less dry because they’d had time to soak in the sauce, and some of the stronger flavors had mellowed so the dish tasted less salty and garlicky and more like a traditional alfredo.

Overall, I can probably make a better chicken fettuccine alfredo by making sauce from scratch or by purchasing jarred sauce at the store. This meal kit wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good enough that I’d buy it again.

The Verdict:

Park Street Deli Fettuccine with Alfredo Sauce & Grilled Chicken Meal Kit is a refrigerated, quick-heating meal. Simply dump the pouches of noodles, sauce, and chicken into the included plastic tray, cover loosely with a paper towel, and microwave for 8 minutes.

While a lot of us like pasta, we thought this was merely okay. The noodles can be a bit dry, and the sauce is fairly thin, salty, and maybe a bit heavy on the garlic. We thought the leftovers the next day tasted better, so allowing the sauce to soak in and the flavors to meld overnight in the fridge might improve this dish.