Trader Joe’s Japanese Style Fried Rice Review

Trader Joe's Japanese Style Fried Rice

Sometimes, a simple fried rice can be just the thing to hit the spot. We were in one of those fried rice moods when we picked up Trader Joe’s Japanese Style Fried Rice, so obviously we were pretty excited to take it home and try it out.

Thankfully, this doesn’t take a lot of time to cook no matter how you decide to heat it up. You can cook it in a pan, which only takes about five minutes or so, or you can use the microwave, which is faster, but only slightly. We went with the microwave option this time. The microwave worked out really well for the InnovAsian Vegetable Fried Rice, so we figured it would be fine here as well.

Now, this comes out with a slightly fishy smell to it, which we assume is due to the addition of seaweed. If you love sushi — like many Freezer Meal Frenzy staffers do — you’ll probably really enjoy this. If you can’t stand anything even remotely fishy, this fried rice just isn’t’ for you.

Trader Joe's Japanese Style Fried Rice

Obviously, this is intended to be part of a greater meal, and we think it makes a good base for a protein, like a nice General Tso’s Chicken. However, this rice is loaded with flavor, so you really don’t need to add anything to it. It has a huge portion of soy sauce in it — soy sauce is one of the first ingredients listed on the package — and that’s where a lot of this flavor comes from.

You’ll notice there’s plenty of edamame in the mix, which our vegetarian staffers were over the moon about, and there’s some carrot bits as well. The package claims there’s tofu mixed in, but we really didn’t notice it. We’re guessing it must have been mashed up pretty small.

One serving of this rice only contains 250 calories (80 from fat). However, there are 3.5 servings per bag, meaning a single serving is actually quite small. That might be fine if you’re planning on adding some chicken or something to it, but if you just want to chow down on this all by its lonesome, you’re definitely going to eat more than a single serving. We think two servings is probably a more realistic portion size.

The sodium level is also pretty low, at 450 mg, but keep in mind that you’ll probably be doubling up on the serving size, which makes the sodium level much less attractive, at 900 mg.

Trader Joe’s Japanese Style Fried Rice is excellent. it makes a great foundations to stack some protein on top of, but that’s really not necessary — this tastes just fine on its own. This is vegetarian-friendly, so even your vegetarian friends can enjoy it, but we think meat-eaters will love this too.

To learn more about the nutrition content or ingredients in this Trader Joe’s fried rice, check out our package scans below.

Trader Joe's Japanese Style Fried Rice

Trader Joe's Japanese Style Fried Rice

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Jessica
Jessica
8 months ago

As someone who loves Japanese (and Chinese!) food, I think the suggestion to mix this with something like General Tso’s is a mistake, to put it mildly.

This is fully of mellow, mushroomy koji umami; all of the TJ Chinese dishes I’ve tried mimic takeout, with strong sweet soy goo for sauce. That’s not to say the latter are necessarily bad, but they’re entirely different from this.

Just my two cents: don’t combine these! quelle horreur!

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