We love ourselves some chicken fried rice here at Freezer Meal Frenzy, so we like to try as many different frozen versions of it as we can. Trader Joe’s has some particularly good chicken fried rice. But today, we’re not sampling yet another Trader Joe’s dish — no, today we’re trying one of PF Chang’s options, the PF Chang’s Home Menu Chicken Fried Rice.
This is easy enough to cook. Simply heat up a pan, toss in some oil and rice, and let it cook for a few minutes. The sauce is frozen into chunks that are mixed into the rice, so you won’t have to add anything while it’s cooking. There’s one thing we should point out, however: the cook time on the bag wasn’t quite long enough to get everything cooked properly, so we gave it a few extra minutes. (If you want to see the full cooking instructions, check out our package scans at the bottom of this review.)
The chunks of chicken are larger than we expected. And that’s a good thing, because we’re tempted to say the chicken is the best part of this dish. It’s rich and succulent, and it tastes great soaked in the sauce.
Speaking of sauce, this is a soy-based concoction. It actually has a chicken broth flavor to it, which we suppose shouldn’t be a surprise since it actually has chicken broth in it. All in all, it’s a good mix for this rice blend.
This also has some of the expected mix-ins, including carrots, edamame, and scrambled egg. The edamame ends up a little too dry for our preferences, but that’s really just a nitpick.
The biggest weakness of this, however, is the rice itself. We found it to have a soggy consistency that’s just not very appealing. Thankfully, the flavor of the sauce does wonders for the taste, but the consistency can’t be helped. Not even the extra cook time could reduce the sog factor of this rice.
PF Chang’s considers about a third of the package to be a serving. If you stick with that much rice, you’ll be consuming 260 calories and 500 mg of sodium, which isn’t too bad for a frozen Asian dish.
The PF Chang’s Home Menu Chicken Fried Rice is a pretty decent fried rice blend, though there are certainly superior fried rice dishes in the freezer aisle. If given the choice, we’d pick any of Trader Joe’s rice options over this one.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this PF Chang’s fried rice, check out our package scans below.
I had a different brand of frozen fried rice at my daughter’s house, which was OK. When I shopped at home the only brand available was P. J. Chang’s. I didn’t read the cooking instructions when I bought it, and do not use a microwave, so I tried to cook it in a skillet – as I had done before with the other brand. It was inedible; I threw it out and made an omelet.
The previous formulation was much better. This one has frozen chunks of soy sauce? and once cooked, the rice is soggy. You have to cook it longer than what is stated on the directions or else the rice is undercooked. Again, the prior formulation was MUCH better.
After reading about the mushy rice I it mine cooking on high heat and didn’t cover it.It was pretty good. I would buy again. Went great with Jack in the Box egg rolls ☺️