Here in the Freezer Meal Frenzy offices, we’ve been slowly making our way through the PF Chang’s Home Menu line of frozen foods. If you’re unfamiliar, this is the famous restaurant chain’s supplementary line of frozen food. So far, we haven’t found anything that’s quite up to the quality you’d expect from a PF Chang’s restaurant, but we do think this frozen food line features some pretty tasty stuff. The Shrimp Lo Mein, for example, is fantastic.
Today we’re digging into the PF Chang’s Home Menu Dan Dan Noodles, and we’re pretty excited to get started!
First off, this isn’t much work to cook at all. Simply pop it into the microwave for five minutes. No need to stir halfway through or even remove the plastic seal from the top of the bowl. Four easy steps: pop it in, heat it up, pull it out, scarf it down.
One thing we should point out is that this does look a little packed down and pale when it first comes out of the microwave. Thankfully, you can just give it a quick stir and it transforms from the dish in the picture above to the one in the image below.
The main portion of this dish is a serving of lo mein noodles covered in what the box refers to as “a savory brown sauce.” That’s an interesting description, because while we don’t necessarily disagree with it, we do think this has some sweetness that the box is downplaying. It’s a subtle sweetness, for sure, but it’s definitely sweeter than we’d expect from a word like savory. It’s also just a little bit spicy. We wouldn’t say it’s a mouth-tingler, but our sinuses started clearing out while we were eating this.
There are also big chunks of shiitake mushroom. We love mushrooms, so this made us really happy. Of course, we also would have been even happier with more of them — the mushroom portion is a little scant.
The pork has more of a ground beef texture, which we’re not really into. We like our pork stringy, not gravelly. This, of course, is a personal preference, but we really try to step away from beef-like dishes when we choose something with pork in it. It tastes great; we just don’t like the texture much.
This is not a meal for dieters. With 510 calories and 1,080 mg of sodium, this is well outside the diet-friendly range. What we’re saying is this: if you’re watching your weight, or if you have any sort of sodium restriction, this noodle bowl isn’t for you.
The PF Chang’s Home Menu Dan Dan Noodles bowl has a few flaws, but we think it’s a tasty meal despite those. We’d be more than happy to eat this again sometime.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for these PF Chang’s noodles, check out our package scans below.
