The InnovAsian line of frozen food has been proving itself to be stubbornly unpredictable. Whenever we find something that we think is a guaranteed win, like the Sweet & Sour Chicken, it ends up disappointing us. And often when we expect to be let down, we discover something truly great, like the Teriyaki Chicken Rice Bowl. So when we picked up the InnovAsian Beef & Broccoli Rice Bowl, we had no idea what we should expect.
Well, that’s not completely true. While we couldn’t predict how this would taste, we did know we could expect a short, convenient cook time, which all of InnovAsian’s rice bowls have. Just pop this into the microwave for three and a half minutes, then let it cool for a minute. You’ll be ready to stuff your face with some rice and beef in no time.
This thing comes out smelling amazing. It will have you salivating like crazy.
The quality of the beef is quite high. If you look closely, you’ll notice grill marks, and they look authentic. It’s possible that InnovAsian has somehow cracked the secret of making convincing fake grill marks, but we’re willing to believe that this steak is really grilled. It doesn’t have those painted-on, perfectly straight grill lines; these have those uneven charred edges that you’d expect from something that actually spent time on a grill.
Of course, it tastes amazing too. It’s incredibly rich and juicy, and it soaks up the sauce so it has some sweet undertones. We did find one piece to be a bit too gristly, but overall this is some exceptional meat.
The sauce we mentioned earlier is what the package calls a ‘savory soy sauce,” though we definitely detect some sweetness here. It’s a great-tasting sauce that we really enjoy.
There are some veggies in this mix, specifically carrots and broccoli. The carrots are cooked perfectly, so they end up being firm enough to have a little bit of crunch left to them. They’re definitely not overcooked here. The broccoli holds up as well.
Of course, a majority of this meal is just rice. We’d say that in our dish, rice accounted for about 60% of the portion size. The picture we took of the meal when it first came out of the microwave is a little bit deceiving, as all the meat and veggies are carefully placed over the rice so it looks like there’s much more of it than there actually is.
This is a little disappointing considering how great all of the other components are. The rice isn’t bad, but it’s a little boring, and there’s not enough sauce to cover all of it. If you are determined to eat every last bite of this dish, you’ll definitely end up eating some plain white rice.
This rice bowl contains 350 calories, which isn’t too bad, and even better, only 30 of those calories are from fat. The sodium here is a bit high, however, at 890 mg. Of course, high sodium is to be expected in any Asian-inspired frozen food.
The InnovAsian Beef & Broccoli Rice Bowl is terrific. It’s a little too rice-heavy for our tastes, but everything in this dish that isn’t rice is astonishingly good.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this InnovAsian rice bowl, check out our package scan below.
