Dr. Gourmet's Food Reviews

Udi’s Gluten Free Chicken Apple Sausage Breakfast Burrito

Spicy Southwestern Veggie, Chicken Apple Sausage, and Sausage Breakfast Burrito

Generally speaking, we like Udi's products. Their gluten free breads have improved tremendously in the past few years and have set the standard in mass market, frozen gluten free baked goods. Their baguettes are good for sandwiches (as good a baguette as you are going to get from a frozen gluten free product) and their rolls are quite good with an honest whole wheat flavor.

I can't say that I was all that attracted to their breakfast burritos because I don't really understand the frozen breakfast food concept. Breakfast is so simple to make and takes only a few minutes, but people do like something quick so we decided to review these because I would rather that folks have something decent at breakfast rather than nothing at all.

We started with the Spicy Southwestern Veggie Breakfast Burrito. Instructions call for wrapping in a moist paper towel and cooking on high for one minute and thirty-five seconds (not 1:36 or 1:34 but 1:35). Coming out of the oven the burrito had an acrid aroma that it is distinctive for tomatillos, but checking the ingredients there are none. Strange.

The flour tortillas are good. A bit chewy, especially at the ends where the burrito folds over on itself. The filling is a bit non-descript and has a soft, bland texture. It is sort of spicy, sort of potatoey, and very salty, but not much underlying flavor of eggs or the veggies listed in the ingredient list. Meh.

The Chicken Apple Sausage version is not much better. It has the same tortillas with similar results, but they are a bit doughier, possibly because the filling is moister. There is a sausage flavor, but not a lot of it. In fact, if you tasted this without knowing that it was labeled Chicken Apple Sausage, you might not identify sausage as an ingredient. Overall there was too much spice and not enough herb. It just doesn't taste like sausage but more like sausage-scented mashed potato filling.

We approached the Sausage version with trepidation given that the previous two were so blah. The numbers on this are the worst of the three, coming in at 240 calories and 420 mg of sodium. Not that any of the Udi's burritos are all that great, with all of them being around 200 calories and over 400 mg of sodium.

The plain sausage does have a some identifiable sausage flavor, but it is still pretty bland. There is the slight taste of sausage, but the strong flavors of potato, green pepper and a bit of egg overwhelm whatever sausage flavor you might find (it says everything about how badly this product was conceived that that egg, potato, and green pepper can overwhelm the flavor of sausage). All in all, just plain boring. The only redeeming value of these is that they have a fair amount of fiber, with all three being 4 grams or higher. This is not enough to save them and Udi's might do well to stick to the bread business, where they get better and better over time.

In the same three and a half minutes that it takes to heat all three of these in the microwave you could make a piece of toast and scramble an egg. Add another 5 minutes or so and you can sauté some onions and mushrooms for your scrambled eggs and come in at about the same amount of calories and fiber, but less sodium, and best of all - a lot cheaper and far, far tastier.

First posted: December 5, 2014