It’s been a hot minute since we’ve tried something from InnovAsian. We’re not sure what happened; the brand just sort of fell off our radar shortly after we reviewed a bunch of their rice bowls. And that’s a shame, because we’ve found some frozen food by the company that we’ve really enjoyed.
So today is the day we stop slacking off and start diving back into the InnovAsian brand with the InnovAsian Crispy Kung Pao Chicken.
There are several ways you can cook this chicken: in the microwave, on the stovetop, or in the oven. Surprisingly, the oven is the preferred method (we would have expected the stovetop method to be the top choice for this), so we went with the ol’ tried-and-true oven when we cooked these. (You can see the full cooking instructions by checking out the package scans at the bottom of this article.)
Now, there’s actually a bit less chicken in this box than we were expecting. We like to think of these InnovAsian boxed foods as multi-serve meals, but this one could potential be a single-serve meal, as you can see in the image below. Of course, you could stretch this out by serving it over rice, which would make it more filling and allow you to get two meals out of a single box.
This also isn’t as crispy as we expected, since the meal does have the word crispy in the title and we used the oven to cook it, which should provide the crispiest chicken. These end up soft around the edges, and we can’t imagine what the microwave would do to this chicken — we’re expecting some serious sog factor.
The chicken itself is a breaded white-meat chicken, and it has a nice spongy texture which is perfect for kung pao chicken. It’s the sauce, of course, that provides the bulk of the flavor, and we really like it. It’s a tangy sauce with some subtle citrusy tones and just a hint of spice to it. It’s definitely the star of this kung-pao show!
The serving size issue that we mentioned earlier is going to be a problem once you dig into the nutritional content on the side of the box. One serving contains 350 calories (90 from fat) and 1,080 mg of sodium, and that’s only 1/3 of the box. If you eat a whole box in a sitting (we admit that we did), then you’re looking at 1,050 calories (270 from fat) and a whopping 3,240 mg of sodium. It looks like we’re going to have to go to the gym today to burn off all those calories!
The InnovAsian Crispy Kung Pao Chicken is delicious, though it’s loaded in calories and sodium. If you eat the recommended portion as a side dish and serve it with rice and perhaps an egg roll, you’ll probably be fine. However, if you scarf down the whole box like we did, you might end up regretting your decision!
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this frozen kung pao chicken, check out our package scans below.
