11 Frozen Ravioli, Ranked Worst To Best

I love Italian food. In the house I grew up in, buying prepared tomato sauce was out of the question — it was homemade or nothing. Frozen pasta that just needed a quick trip to the microwave to be ready for consumption? Yeah, no way.

Yet, here I am, tasting and ranking frozen ravioli. Maybe it's because I now know the value of convenience — especially when it comes to ravioli. It's one of the most comforting and homey ways to enjoy pasta, cheese, and sauce — and it's even better knowing that I can pop it in the microwave and have a meal on the table within minutes.

Still, I have standards (and high ones at that). So I'm not just going to enjoy any frozen ravioli. For my sake and yours, I have to find the best ones. For this article, I collected an assortment of ravioli brands to sample. Then, I ranked them based on flavor and consistency, among other factors, to find the meals worth eating.

This microwave meal really can't count as ravioli. As soon as I opened the box, I could tell that the "ravioli" were pretty much just an excuse for the sauce and outrageous toppings. Devour's meal is full of chicken nuggets chunks set over a bed of thick, doughy ravioli and smothered with a gelatinous sauce. 

The ravioli are more like dumplings than pasta. And thanks to the chicken and gravy-like sauce, the whole meal ended up tasting like the inside of a chicken pot pie. The ravioli filling had more of the non-discernible chicken nuggety flavor, and any cheese tasted artificial. Honestly, I took two bites before tossing it. If you value yourself or good ravioli, I would recommend avoiding this meal at all costs. Moreover, my Italian mother would probably lose a year of her life if I served this to her. Besides, you can always just add chicken nuggets to one of these other ravioli meals if you're craving ... that.

I'm a huge fan of Trader Joe's, and I have a lot of experience reviewing its products. Besides TJ's chocolates and candies, I've also sampled its Italian food products and pasta sauces. All of this to say, I know what the store is capable of when it comes to pastas and sauces. The frozen mushroom ravioli lowers my overall opinion of the brand considerably — at least when it comes to Italian food. 

This ravioli product is, in my opinion, bad. I'm not a huge fan of mushrooms, but I'll eat them — especially in a savory Italian dish. But unless you absolutely love mushrooms, you probably will not particularly enjoy this product. When I opened the bag, I was met with an extremely intense, earthy smell that was not at all appetizing. The ravioli are stuffed with pulverized mushrooms that didn't taste very cheesy. The worst part is the sauce. It came in little frozen chunks, and once warmed in the microwave, they became sludgy and just doubled down on that earthy, funky smell and subsequent taste. I'd steer clear of this product if I were you. 

Look, I'll just be honest here: I did not expect to rank a Lean Cuisine product very highly. Honestly, I'm surprised it isn't ranked lower — it's even above a Trader Joe's product! Wow! Granted, Lean Cuisine isn't exactly known for its high-quality, restaurant-worthy meals, and this product just goes to show why.

It's to be expected, but this meal is stingy with its portion sizes. There are six small-ish ravioli squares — and nothing else. Just six raviolis in some red sauce. Said sauce is flavorless, watery, salty, and sweet. I couldn't detect any complexity, even though I caught some small flecks of herbs in the sauce. Maybe they're just there for show. The cheese filling is awful, too; it reminded me of cream cheese. It wasn't offensive or repulsive (in the way the two lower-ranked items were), but I'd rather eat just about anything else. 

Now, we're getting to the tier of ravioli that aren't bad — but aren't good, either. The previous three were, yes, bad. I was on the fence about placing this meal from Healthy Choice in that "bad" tier, but realistically, it's mostly just boring. The packaging makes it looks like it's going to be bursting with honest, fresh vegetable flavor — but that would be a bit of a stretch. 

The ravioli themselves are fine, and not awful. They're as unmemorable as they are unimportant. They could have been penne, or rice, or mashed potatoes. The chicken, which resembles white, spongy cubes, has no flavor. Everything about this meal needs spices; even the spinach tastes sour and pungent. 

The tomato sauce is thin as soy sauce with none of the umami. Its overall taste is extremely light, but isn't exactly bright. I'd more likely call it "old" and "stale." After two bites, I had no intention of having another — but I wouldn't detest having to eat the rest of it. 

I thought I had a pretty good idea of how this Amy's cheese ravioli bowl would rank, seeing as I've tried (and liked) its other frozen pasta meals. But, it was odd that this product didn't measure up to the expectations left by its predecessor. These ravioli noodles are positively swimming in a thick, sweet sauce. It's not as savory as I would have preferred, but it wasn't awful. Overall, it certainly had more texture and flavor nuance to it than any of the lower-ranking meals did. 

The ravioli are thin, but wide in diameter. I found them bland and soft instead of chewy. They have a slightly mealy interior and disappointing lack of cheese. There's definitely no lack of sauce, though, so if you're a quantity-over-quality person when it comes to marinara, you'll be happy. I did think there was a slightly weird aftertaste, though. 

I prefer the spinach ravioli over the plain Amy's ravioli I tried for this review. And, I would prefer many of the other brands on this list to Amy's as a whole. 

I remember my Dad once brought home a can of Chef Boyardee's spaghetti rings and presented it to my homemade-Sunday-sauce Italian mother as a joke. Needless to say, my prejudice against poor hapless Chef Boyardee was cemented from that day forward.

Somehow, though, these frozen ravioli aren't actually that awful. I'd call them, basically, an AI-generated version of ravioli. They're incredibly basic and textbook, but perhaps tolerable with a little editing. All-in-all, it's not a bad jumping off point for this recipe.

The pasta itself was better than expected and came out nicely al dente. The cheese filling is thin and melty, but not creamy, and there are no herbs or spices inside. Like other frozen ravioli offerings, the sauce was quite thin and watery. Amy's had the better sauce, sure, but Chef Boyardee had the better pasta, so it was a close contest. I could just better taste the pasta here, and I found that it had a better texture, so I placed it ahead in this ranking.

Wegmans products, from my experience, are almost always high-quality. I've had great experiences with its baked goods, produce, and, its prepared foods. There would be no reason to doubt that the store-bought frozen ravioli would be, at the very least, just fine.

It's important to know that, unlike every other frozen ravioli I tried for this ranking, Wegmans pastas come without any sauce — not even a little packet of watery red stuff masquerading as sauce. So, if you're planning your ravioli dinner, you're going to have to pick up a jar of sauce or the ingredients to make some yourself. That means that the Wegmans product isn't winning any awards for convenience. 

On the plus side, the dough tastes great; it's slightly eggy and not too tough, chewy, or soft. Plus, the ravioli have plenty of good cheese filling. Since there was no accompanying sauce, I had to rank these lower; if there was sauce, it may have moved up on this list. 

Birds Eye is a brand most known for its frozen vegetables. Before doing this ranking, I had no idea it even made pasta products, much less ravioli. So it was a nice surprise when it ended up being one of the best. Naturally, one of the biggest selling points for this ravioli was the vegetables that come with it. After all, that's what Birds Eye does best. 

At a base level, the sauce is just okay; it was a little salty for my taste. But the sauce also has chunks of onion, spinach, and roasted tomato in it. The addition of real, discernible vegetables adds so much flavor, texture, and freshness to a frozen meal. The pasta has a great cheesy flavor underneath the sauce, too. Since the meal had more character and interesting elements than the lower-ranked ravioli, I liked it a lot more. I would gladly have a bowl of this for dinner, especially if I dressed it up with some sausage and Parmesan cheese.

I expected absolutely nothing from Bertolli's ravioli. It's marketed as a "side," which didn't bode well. Secondly, I've tried Bertolli's frozen pasta before, and was not impressed. Plus, when I opened this package, I noticed that there was barely any sauce, it just had a garlicky glaze that looked like it would amount to nothing. I quickly realized that I was very, very wrong.

This ravioli was simple, but actually very good — and definitely was a better than it looked. The light garlic sauce is lovely; it provided an aromatic, but delicate, flavor that didn't overpower the ravioli. Instead, it elevated them and made them worth my while. The ravioli pockets have a great chew to them and I could clearly taste the cheese and spinach (even if said cheese tastes rather dull). Why does it have to be a side? In my opinion, even though it's fairly basic, it makes for a much better meal than plenty of the other frozen ravioli I tried.

Since I couldn't find a plain cheese ravioli from Evol, I decided to try its butternut squash iteration. Butternut squash is a naturally sweet, creamy squash that makes for an amazing addition to soups, sides, and, yes, pasta fillings, especially when it's paired with aromatic herbs. The brand's frozen foods are built on a foundation of wholesome ingredients, and it shows. 

These ravioli are great. They're thick and chewy, but still have plenty of velvety ricotta cheese filling. Both the squash center and accompanying sauce taste robust, warm, and comforting. I could smell and taste the sage and the garlic. It's not too cheesy, and toes the fine line between sweet and savory. I'd buy a jar of this sauce, which tastes slow-simmered and complex. I also loved the chunks of roasted vegetables in the sauce that brings it all together. Overall, this Evol ravioli tastes almost homemade and would be perfect for an autumn night when you don't feel like cooking.

I'm picky when it comes to Italian food — so it says a lot about a brand if I can put my full trust into it. Though a few of its products have been misses, Rao's is one of those brands that I can trust wholeheartedly. If I could only buy my pasta sauces from one brand, it would be Rao's. The same goes for its frozen pastas, like these ravioli. 

Rao's ravioli tastes superbly homemade. Each ravioli is pillowy and doughy, with a great mouthfeel, and each one is stuffed with a fresh-tasting, creamy ricotta and mozzarella filling. The ravioli are rich and satisfying, and a bit on the heavy side. They sit underneath an equally homemade-tasting sauce that's nuanced and savory with plenty of flavor. Rao's bypasses the imbalance of salty and sweet flavors that I noticed with many of the other brands' sauces. Altogether, Rao's makes, by far, the best frozen ravioli meals — and a product that I would buy again. My only caveat is that it's a little one-note, and would benefit from a bright, crunchy green salad alongside it (but then again, so would all of these raviolis). 

Even though all of these products are essentially the same, being ravioli, they have key differences that set them apart; it's these differences that allowed me to rank them above one another. Whenever possible, I tried to find and sample plain cheese ravioli, but sometimes, they weren't in stock or the brand simply didn't carry it. Thus, some have different sauces or fillings or have added meat and vegetables. To keep things fair, I judged and ranked the ravioli based on the whole meal, since that's what you're getting with your purchase, rather than just the dough and the filling. 

When considering the dish in its entirety, I factored in its overall taste, texture of both the pasta and any extra accompaniments, the meal's freshness, and its portion size (when relevant). For example, the portion size doesn't matter as much when it's a large bag of frozen pasta that one person would not consume in a single sitting. But when it's a microwave-ready meal, portion size matters a little more. As far as freshness, all meals are frozen, of course, but they should taste as close to a home-cooked meal as possible.