Gochujang, a spicy paste made from fermented red chilies, is a favorite in the Freezer Meal Frenzy offices. It’s a key ingredient in one of our favorite dishes, bibimbap. While we’ve had many a bowl of bibimbap, we’ve never thought to pair gochujang with faux chicken. Thankfully, Gardein is more creative than we are. The Gardein Spicy Gochujang Style Chick’n Wings are an easy way to enjoy this spicy sauce and meatless protein at the same time.
Like many Gardein dishes, the sauce for these chick’n wings is packaged separately. You’ll want to toss the sauce in a bowl of hot water so that it can defrost while you’re heating up your wings. We threw our sauce packet in a bowl and forgot about it until we were done cooking the faux meat. The sauce was at the perfect temperature when it was time to add it to our bowl.
Gardein offered a few different ways to heat these wings. After some debating, we decided the best way to cook them was over the stovetop. We tossed a little oil in a pan and cooked our chick’n up, turning it regularly so that it cooked evenly. Once the wings were fully cooked, we added the sauce to the pan, mixed everything up, and let them cook for another minute before we threw the wings in a bowl.
As you can see in the image below, which shows the contents of a full bag, there’s not a lot of wings in a package. To Gardein’s credit, the package says that there’s only one serving per container. Still, it’s disappointing that there aren’t more wings here, especially when you consider the price per bag.
So how do they taste? Like most of Gardein’s non-breaded meat products, these aren’t going to be convincing enough to fool meat-eaters. The flavor is fine, especially when they’re slathered in sauce, but they have a chewy, almost rubbery texture that’s distinctly different from that of real chicken. Thankfully, if you’re not expecting actual meat, there’s a lot to like here. The wings have a bit of juiciness to them, and that’s only enhanced by the sauce.
The sauce definitely has some heat to it, but the spice level isn’t going to impress anyone that’s had gochujang at an authentic Korean restaurant. This is a solidly medium spice level. We still thought the sauce was tasty, but if you’re a big fan of hot foods, this might disappoint you. There’s actually a slight sweetness to the sauce, which we suspect comes from the cane sugar that’s a part of the sauce.
Gardein Spicy Gochujang Style Chick’n Wings is pretty tasty, but it’s hard to recommend. It doesn’t really deliver the spicy gochujang flavor we were hoping for, and the portion size is pretty abysmal. If you want to enjoy a meatless gochujang dish, we’d recommend passing on this, heading over to your favorite Korean place, and ordering bibimbap with tofu.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for these vegetarian chick’n wings, check out our package scans below.
