Smart Made has a way of taking some tasty frozen foods and substantially reducing the calorie count while preserving the flavor. It doesn’t always work out, but when it does it feels like a true miracle. So we were curious to find out how the Smart Made Mexican-Style Pulled Pork Bowl tastes. It definitely has a lot of potential!
There’s not a lot of cook time here. Simply crack open the seal, toss it into the microwave for two minutes, stir it, then heat it for two more minutes. It’s as easy as that.
Now, we do want to point out that at the two-minute mark, we were a little worried that this might not cook thoroughly in just four minutes — it was still mostly frozen when we attempted to stir it. Thankfully, that second batch of two minutes really does wonders here. This comes out toasty hot and covered in melty cheese.
The pulled pork is not what we expected. Since this is a low-calorie meal, we expected something with a bit less flavor than your average frozen pork. We’re happy to report that we were wrong; this pork is delicious, and it’s nice and gristly as well. We should point out that if you grab a piece of pork that’s sitting on top the other ingredients, it might be a little dry, so we recommend mixing the pork into the bottom of the bowl where it can really soak up that lovely verde sauce.
Yes, the verde sauce really makes this dish. It tastes fantastic, and it lends a south-of-the-border flair to every ingredient in the dish.
This bowl is also filled with veggies. We found the corn to be the best of all of them, though this also includes red and green bell peppers, onions, and black beans. There’s some brown rice mixed in, but the portion size is small to make room for everything else in this dish — which proves to be a great choice here.
This dish weighs in at 320 calories (80 from fat), which is pretty low for a pork-based frozen meal. It does have 670 mg of sodium, which is a bit higher than we’d like, though it’s about on par with a lot of other frozen foods.
The Smart Made Mexican-Style Pulled Pork Bowl doesn’t taste like a low-calorie meal. It has so much flavor that it makes you feel like you’re cheating on your diet, even though you aren’t!
To learn more about the nutrition content or ingredients in this frozen pork bowl, check out our package scans below.
