Trader Joe’s Vegetable Fried Rice Review

Trader Joe's Vegetable Fried Rice

We love fried rice here at Freezer Meal Frenzy, and Trader Joe’s has been known to make some great frozen fried rice. For example, their Japanese Style Fried Rice is insanely good, and their Chicken Fried Rice is no slouch. Obviously, our vegetarian staffers have been waiting to get their mouths on the Vegetable Fried Rice for quite some time now.

Now, it’s always a bit weird writing a review for a fried rice, because it’s not really intended to be eaten on its own. It’s the sort of thing that you’ll pile some protein on, like the Mandarin Orange Chicken (or the vegetarian version, the Chicken-Less Mandarin Orange Morsels).

But today, we’re just going to eat the rice on its own and see how it is.

Trader Joe’s fried rice is very easy to cook, and if you decide to use the stovetop, you should be able to whip up a batch of rice in about five minutes. Normally, we fry our rice in an oiled-up pan, but today, as a fun little experiment, we thought we’d try the microwave.

Trader Joe's Vegetable Fried Rice

Obviously, the major difference here is that, when cooked in the microwave, this rice won’t develop that browned, slightly crisped quality that it gets on the stovetop. If that’s an essential part of the fried rice experience for you, then you’ll want to use the stovetop cooking method. But we didn’t think it came out all that bad in the microwave either — the rice was fluffy, and nothing seemed to be overly soggy.

There’s a bit of a soy flavor to the rice here, but it’s definitely less pronounced than it is in the Japanese Style Fried Rice, which has a ton of soy sauce in it.

This rice is, however, jam-packed with veggies. You’ll find the expected peas and carrots, but you might be surprised to also find red peppers, corn, edamame, and ring-shaped pieces of onion as well.

We have to admit that we do miss the scrambled egg, which you’ll find in the Chicken Fried Rice, but we understand that some vegetarians do not eat eggs. If you’re an egg-less vegetarian, this rice is safe to eat. We’re also told it’s vegan-friendly. (There are some enzymes in the rice wine that we weren’t 100% certain about, and the package does not say “vegan” on it. However, we’ve found several sources that refer to this as a vegan dish.)

One bag of this rice contains what Trader Joe’s thinks is three servings. One serving has 210 calories (only 15 of those are from fat), so that means a whole bag has 630 calories (and 45 from fat). Don’t eat a full bag in one sitting, is the moral of this story.

Trader Joe’s Vegetable Fried Rice is wonderful. Obviously, this is meant as a base for a greater meal, but even on its own it’s pretty darn tasty. If you haven’t tried a Trader Joe’s fried rice yet, you probably need to!

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

Trader Joe's Vegetable Fried Rice

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