TV Dinners

History of TV Dinners

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10 Things You Never Knew About TV Dinners

The more things change, the more they stay the same. We now realize that those frozen meals don't really provide the best nutritional balance, yet still we crave the ease of a single tray that contains all of the components of a meal and can be re heated on the fly in the oven or microwave. So here are some tips for making your own TV dinners that will have you seated in front of the tube, chowing down while you binge watch the Twilight Zone marathon, in no time at all.

The first step in creating your own TV dinner is to make or buy a multi-compartment tray. Christina Deyo shares her instructions for making a foil TV tray, as well as offering recipes for lasagna roll-ups and meatballs that accompany frozen peas and pre-made brownie dough in the segmented dish. Her cooking partner, Janette Barber, gives healthy alternatives to portion off, including whole wheat lasagna roll-ups, meatless meatballs, and the dessert substitution of a baked peach half with a granola topping.

Blogger Adair Seldon of Lentil Breakdown also shares a healthy take on the beloved meatloaf and mashed potatoes TV dinner sans meat! But the downside to using foil is that you can't put it in the microwave.

Fear not—you can purchase compartmentalized plates made specifically for freezing and reheating multipart meals. You can also use these adorable lunch component trays that kids bring to school. Or, just go to the grocery store and buy plastic leftovers containers of a size large enough to fit a whole, individual meal, as suggested by David McElroy on his blog.

Though credit is widely given to the Swanson brothers, it took a combination of a stocking error at Swanson, a light bulb idea by Swanson company salesman Gerry Thomas after a visit to Pan American Airways in Pittsburgh and some smart marketing to give rise to the TV dinner. Some may credit Clarence Birdseye with inventing frozen meals. He developed a system of packing and flash-freezing fresh food back in By , Albert and Meyer Bernstein were selling frozen dinners on compartmentalized aluminum trays in the Pittsburgh area.

But it was Swanson's massive advertising campaign that sealed the deal on TV dinners for consumers. The first TV dinners produced by Swanson were in answer to a problem they had with Thanksgiving turkey leftovers. Not just a few Tupperware containers, either -- we're talking about tons metric tons of turkey leftovers. So they appealed to their workers to come up with ideas. Gerry Thomas had just seen the airplane -friendly compartmentalized aluminum trays used by Pan American Airways and introduced the idea to the Swanson brothers back home in Nebraska.

COLLECTIONS

They packaged turkey, corn bread stuffing, peas and sweet potatoes and hung their advertising campaign on the newest craze to hit the nation: That year, Swanson sold more than 25 million TV dinners to hungry Americans, at 98 cents per package. The original TV Dinner came in an aluminum tray and was heated in an oven. In the United States, the term is synonymous with any prepackaged meal or dish "dinner" purchased frozen in a supermarket and heated at home. Now, most frozen food trays are made of a microwaveable and disposable material, usually plastic.

TV Dinners (song)

Several smaller companies had conceived of frozen dinners earlier see Invention section below , but the first to achieve success was Swanson. The first Swanson-brand TV Dinner was produced in the United States and consisted of a Thanksgiving meal of turkey , cornbread dressing , frozen peas and sweet potatoes [3] packaged in a tray like those used at the time for airline food service.

Each item was placed in its own compartment.

The trays proved to be useful: The original TV Dinner sold for 98 cents, and had a production estimate of 5, dinners for the first year. The name "TV dinner" was coined by Gerry Thomas, its inventor.

At the time it was introduced, televisions were status symbols and a growing medium. Thomas thought the name "TV Dinner" sounded like the product was made for convenience which it was , and the Swanson executives agreed.

Much has changed since the first TV Dinners were marketed. For instance, a wider variety of main courses — such as fried chicken , spaghetti , Salisbury steak and Mexican combinations — have been introduced. Competitors such as Banquet and Morton began offering prepackaged frozen dinners at a lower price than Swanson.

Modern-day frozen dinners tend to come in microwave-safe containers. Product lines also tend to offer a larger variety of dinner types. These dinners, also known as microwave meals, can be purchased at most supermarkets.

They are stored frozen. To prepare them, the plastic cover is removed or vented, and the meal is heated in a microwave oven for a few minutes. They are convenient since they essentially require no preparation time other than the heating, although some frozen dinners may require the preparer to briefly carry out an intermediate step such as stirring mashed potatoes midway through the heating cycle to ensure adequate heating and uniform consistency of component items.

In the United Kingdom , prepared frozen meals first became widely available in the late s. Since then they have steadily grown in popularity with the increased ownership of home freezers and microwave ovens. Demographic trends such as the growth of smaller households have also influenced the sale of this and other types of convenience food.

Unfrozen pre-cooked ready meals, which are merely chilled and require less time to reheat, are also popular and are sold by most supermarkets.

Chilled ready meals are intended for immediate reheating and consumption. Although most can be frozen by the consumer after purchase, they can either be heated from frozen or may have to be fully defrosted before reheating. Many different varieties of frozen and chilled ready meals are now generally available in the UK, including " gourmet " recipes, organic and vegetarian dishes, traditional British and foreign cuisine, and smaller children's meals.

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