5 Prepared Meals You Should Never Buy At Aldi & 5 To Buy Instead

Maybe the most important part of grocery shopping is knowing not to venture into that supermarket hungry. If you start walking up and down those aisles and your stomach gets to rumbling? Better guard your wallet. Rows and rows of beautiful-looking food stare back at you, or, if you're in the pre-packaged aisle, tempting and professional-looking pictures of beautiful food. Of all of the items in the grocery store, nothing depends on firsthand experience and word of mouth like prepared meals. Again, the picture on the packaging looks great. The allure of a quick meal is always appealing. But will the final product deliver on promised deliciousness?

Well, speaking of word of mouth, here's my take on some Aldi prepared meals to enjoy and others to skip. There's a veritable treasure trove of Aldi secrets you'll want to know; it's true. For this article, though, I'm going to focus on prepared meals and frozen foods. I've spent years shopping at Aldi as my primary grocery store. While I'm an avid cooker of my own food, I also love a meal where all the work is already done and all I have to do is add a heat source. Cooking your own food obviously gives you more control over taste, what kinds of fats you cook with, how much seasoning gets added, and all sorts of variables. Sometimes, a pre-packaged meal makes me forget all that nitpicky customization. Sometimes, a pre-packaged meal makes me wish I'd done the work myself.

Hopefully the last time you thought about ravioli wasn't having Chef Boyardee as a kid. No disrespect to those saucy cans — they'll fuel you through college, that's for sure. But if you want ravioli that tastes just a little closer to something that your grandma made with love one idyllic Sunday afternoon, go for the Priano Ravioli. Besides, it's basically the same amount of work — just boil and salt some water. No disrespect to your grandma and all the labor she put into crimping those individual ravioli.

Don't just take our word for it, though. Priano Ravioli won the 2024 Product Of The Year Award. That means that this is a certified award-winning ravioli, and it's an award-winning ravioli that lives up to the hype. There are both meaty and vegetarian options available: You can't go wrong with either the Italian sausage or the four cheese. It also works as the main course for dinner or as a side dish. Sauté some spinach or cook some chicken you can make a pan sauce with, pile all of that on top of the ravioli, and enjoy the kind of meal that makes your whole body smile.

First things first: We're not here to say that any kind of mac and cheese is anything less than tasty, per se. It's literally cheese, pasta, butter, salt — anyone who can read this paragraph without getting up to get a bowl is a master of self-control. If you're eating mac and cheese, you're having a great time. With that clause in mind, we must also point out that buttery, cheesy pasta isn't the healthiest thing to put in your body. Unfortunately, the Park Street Deli Macaroni & Cheese is one of the unhealthiest prepackaged meals at Aldi. Less than half of the container has 7 grams of saturated fat, or 35% of an adult's daily value. The sodium count rockets all the way up to 1,010 milligrams, or 44% of an adult's daily value. Sure, you might say, but it's mac and cheese. No one serves that dish up with healthy living in mind. Which brings us back to the point that if you're eating mac and cheese, make sure it's a good mac and cheese.

If it's not homemade mac and cheese, classic Kraft blue box, or restaurant-quality? In our experience, there's going to be something disappointing happening on the plate. This product is no exception. Park Street Deli Macaroni & Cheese gets a touch too chewy and its cheese is a little bland for our taste.

How to make the perfect sandwich is a question with many answers. It depends on cravings, dietary needs, and available ingredients. Let's focus on that last one: one of the greatest virtues a sandwich can have is that it does not take long to make. Plate, bottom bread, fillings and condiments, top bread. Well, if you need a quick, flavorful sandwich filling? Grab a spoon and dig into Park Street Deli Cranberry Almond Chicken Salad. The mayo-to-chicken ratio is just right. The dried cranberries provide just enough acid to counterbalance the creamy chicken and mayo combo. The crunch from the almonds is an extra treat.

All of that texture and flavor contrast is, frankly, above and beyond what we expect from a pre-made chicken salad sold at a grocery store known for its bare bones aesthetics. As one Redditor points out, it might be better to buy this product in cups — so as to avoid eating the entire tub in one sitting.

Okay, this one might have you wondering. Birria is delicious, birria is all the rage, birria is impossible to mess up. We're certainly not going to be the ones to discourage any consumption of slow-cooked beef in a flavorful consomé. We will acknowledge that cooking your own birria takes a long time. Ordering your own birria might be expensive. When you're hungrily stalking the shelves at your Aldi, it's easy to get enticed by the Bettr Bowl Birria Rice Bowl. This dish can scratch an itch, for sure.

In our experience, though, there isn't quite enough consomé or spice to make this birria sing (the way the name "birria" requires singing, from both food and consumer). Succulent, tender, slow-cooked meat — like birria — is a dish that should be the highlight of your week, not something you toss in the microwave after a long Wednesday at the office. If you want all the wonders birria provides, it's better to make it yourself or head over to your favorite taco spot.

Here is perhaps the most clutch item in the history of hungry grocery store runs: the take-and-bake pizza. It's a perfect reward for after your errands. All that running around, checking produce, crossing items off your list, standing in line at the checkout counter, bagging your own purchases, and then putting everything away in its proper place in the fridge or pantry? That's a lot, and you deserve a pizza afterwards.

These pizzas from Aldi's private label, Mama Cozzi's, are awesome. There's meat lover's, sausage or pepperoni. There's a veggie pizza with cauliflower crust. There are even cheesy breadsticks! The crust hits the exact midpoint between deep dish and cracker-thin, with a buttery flavor. The amount of cheese is the amount of cheese you want on a pizza. The sauce isn't too sweet, nor is it overpowering. Mama Cozzi's pizzas are so good you want to call anyone you live with from the store and tell them to preheat the oven. But hey! Don't just take our word for it. The Five Cheese Extra Large Pizza was listed as one of Aldi's 2024 Fan Favorites.

The premise here is simple enough: three small pizza crusts, a packet of sauce, and the rest is up to you. Add whatever toppings or cheese you want; add however much of those toppings or cheese you want. Then bake and enjoy. These mini pizza crusts are certainly a step up from Lunchables — you're not meant to eat them without cooking, for one. Despite all that, these are a skip. The crusts aren't merely thin; they're thin on flavor. The same can be said for the sauce.

We do have to acknowledge two caveats: One, if you are having some sort of party that requires a bunch of mini-pizzas with customizable toppings, like a children's birthday party? Go wild with Mama Cozzi's Mini Pizza Crusts With Sauce. It'll be fun for the kiddos. Two, if you have a child with insatiable pizza cravings who cannot wait for the weekend to order Domino's for dinner and needs an after-school snack. But grown-ups? Respect yourselves. Stick to the take and bakes.

Flavorful filling wrapped in a doughy package and then pan- or deep-fried is a tried and true treat in many cultures. Potstickers are one of the great examples of this formula working out beautifully. They're a two-bite finger food where dipping sauce is practically mandatory. More wondrously, if you have to ask what's the best way to prepare frozen potstickers? It's your lucky day. You can deep fry potstickers, pan-fry them, air-fry them, or steam them. You can even bake them if you get the frozen kind.

Enter Fusia Asian Inspirations, available at most of your friendly neighborhood Aldis. These potstickers make us grateful for the very existence of frozen food. Keep a bag of these in your freezer and, well, we can't legally guarantee that you'll never throw another bad party. But you'll have potstickers on hand to put on the stove, in the oven, or in the air fryer, and be satisfied either way. We can't even pick a favorite between the chicken and the pork. Both have their virtues.

Much like potstickers, egg rolls are a staple appetizer. The combination of filling, wonton wrapping, and dipping sauce works in concert to create a flavor explosion in each bite. Unlike potstickers, though, the preparation really matters. That wonton paper needs to be crispy, crunchy, and almost pointy after you bite into it. This, unfortunately, is where Park Street Deli's Egg Rolls don't quite hold up for us.

The filling is pretty good, whether you get pork or chicken. Park Street Deli knows how to season its food. Still, the rolls just aren't quite crispy enough for our taste. Unless, of course, you're willing to do the work of deep-frying them. One point in their favor: These egg-less egg rolls might be great for anyone with an egg allergy. But if you're looking for the same experience you'd get from a Chinese restaurant? Well, you might want to stick to ordering from a Chinese restaurant.

First of all, shout out to Park Street Deli for using chicken thighs — the juicier, more marvelous cut of chicken. Breast gets a lot of attention thanks to being a leaner cut, but "lean" also means "not quite as flavorful." If you've been using breast as your go-to cut of chicken, Park Street Deli Hawaiian Chicken from Aldi is a great way to dip your toes in the dark meat waters. The thighs are boneless and skinless and succulent.

That's not even getting into the sauce, which is a bright, flavorful mix of pineapple and teriyaki. There's a nice balance of not too spicy, not too sweet, but enough hints of both to excite your taste buds. The sauce and chunks of pineapple also mean this is a protein in search of a starch — something's gotta mop up all that gold left on your plate. Throw this chicken over some rice and broccoli, and you've got a delicious, easy dinner.

Yet another pre-packaged meal that isn't necessarily a choice you'll regret. It tastes like pulled pork in barbecue sauce. Slap it on a bun with some bread and butter pickles, or maybe coleslaw? Yeah, that's a nostalgic sandwich, maybe a stroll down memory lane to some bygone family reunion under a pavilion at a public park. This food product can take you on a pretty pleasant trip.

The problem is, you're not in a park. You're not smelling the smoke off of the smoker, you're not tasting those little burnt bits that get mixed in when the pork shreds. You remember what you're eating — which is perfectly acceptable, but it's not what you could be eating. For us, that feeling makes the whole ordeal not worth it. Park Street Deli Pulled Pork might be a quick and easy way to get a fix. But when compared to homemade or restaurant-quality pulled pork? The two dishes might as well be on different continents. If you want to escape piggy samsara and achieve porcine nirvana, learning how to smoke pork is a great way to get started with barbecue. Sure, it's basically the opposite of a pre-packaged meal, time-wise. But that's the heart of the matter: what do you have time for, and what do you want to taste?

As previously said, these are my opinions based on years of shopping at Aldi. When deciding which items to choose for this article, I wanted to make sure each product to buy or avoid was somewhat related — i.e., get this pizza option, but leave that one. 

Personally, I'm not really interested in which categories of food — whether homemade, pre-packaged, or ordered from a restaurant — are "better" or "worse." All have their joys and drawbacks. Any product marked as "avoid" in this article simply means I don't think that product does the same things as the homemade or restaurant version. Those factors include flavor, texture, and quality. For instance, I like a really crispy egg roll. You might think the Park Street Deli Hawaiian Chicken Thighs don't have enough tang for your taste. The only way to know for sure — lucky you — is to eat a lot of food.