InnovAsian Chicken Fried Rice Review

We have great love for fried rice here at Freezer Meal Frenzy, and when it comes to frozen fried rice, few brands do it better than InnovAsian. Their Vegetable Fried Rice is among the best frozen fried rice dishes we’ve ever had. So we went into the InnovAsian Chicken Fried Rice with very high expectations.

Now, one thing that threw us off a bit is that the rice has kind of a sickly color to it on the packaging. We were definitely anxious to get some of this into our bellies and assuage our nervousness, so we got right on it.

This rice is very easy to make, and that’s a huge plus for us. It comes in a bag, and you’ll simply toss that bag into the microwave, cook it for two minutes, flip the bag, and cook it for four more. That’s all there is to it.

Now, this comes out of the microwave smelling distinctly of soy sauce. Just take a whiff of the bag when you crack it open and you’ll see what we mean. And there is definitely some soy sauce in this dish — we confirmed our suspicions by looking over the ingredients list. However, that doesn’t end up translating to flavor. We didn’t think this rice tasted like soy sauce at all. (If you’re looking for a fried rice that does have a strong soy sauce flavor to it, check out Trader Joe’s Japanese Style Fried Rice.)

Of course, this is designed as a side, so you might want to consider a protein to mix into it. Though there are chunks of chicken in this dish (as the name implies), they’re not a substantial portion of this meal. Of course, the chicken pieces were often larger than we expected, but unfortunately, we didn’t care for that part of the dish that much. This is where the vegetarian version of this dish has a leg up on this one — the Veggie Fried Rice have exactly zero ingredients that we didn’t care for, and this Chicken Fried Rice has at least one.

We also found the taste of the rice to be pretty subtle. It’s not bad; it’s just not as flavorful as some of the other fried rice dishes we’ve tried in the past.

Mixed in, you’ll find some peas and carrots, as well as some red bell peppers, but we think it’s the onions that make the biggest impact on the flavor of this dish. Since there’s not much flavor to begin with, the onions — which tend to have a ton of flavor — really stand out.

Then, of course, are the scrambled eggs. In our opinion, no fried rice is complete without them, and this rice dish has a pretty good amount. They’re yellow and fluffy, but we found them to be just a tad on the dry side.

According to the box, there are three servings inside. We have to agree with that portion size, especially if you add a protein. This is a pretty good amount of rice. One serving contains 240 calories (30 from fat), so a whole box has 720 (90 from fat). Since we doubt you’ll eat the whole box, that sounds pretty reasonable. Of course, as this is an Asian frozen food, the sodium level is really high — 800 mg in a serving and 2,400 in a box.

The InnovAsian Chicken Fried Rice is definitely not as good as we would have liked it to be. We found the Veggie Fried Rice to be the superior InnovAsian fried rice variety.

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