In China, kung pao sauce is typically made with fiery Sichuan peppercorn, making it incredibly spicy. The western version of the sauce is much milder, but it can still be pretty tasty in the right dish. If you’re in the mood for kung pao, and you don’t want to eat an entire stir-fry, the PF Chang’s Kung Pao Cauliflower is a good snack or side dish.
When you open up the box, you’ll find plenty of frozen battered cauliflower, but you’ll also find a package of kung pao sauce. As you might expect, this sauce is also frozen, which means you’ll have to thaw it out in hot water while the cauliflower cooks. Thankfully, since this meal takes 25 minutes to prepare, your sauce should be completely ready by the time the rest of the dish is done.
The time listed in the cooking instructions seems pretty accurate to us. After 25 minutes, our cauliflower was crispy, hot, and ready to eat. We tossed the sauce in a bowl with the cauliflower and mixed it well so that everything was completely coated in sauce.
PF Chang’s says that this is “Sized to Share,” but there isn’t quite as much cauliflower in this box as you might think. While the box is a good size, a lot of that is just packaging. The picture below shows the contents of an entire box. Since there’s only one packet of sauce, you’ll want to cook this all at once. There’s no easy way to cook up half the box.
The coating of the cauliflower is nice and crispy, but the cauliflower inside is a little mushy. The mix of textures is actually kind of appealing, but if you’re looking for a substitute for kung pao chicken, you might want to look elsewhere. If you’ve had PF Chang’s kung pao sauce, you know what to expect here. The sauce is on the milder side, but it is tasty, and there’s plenty of sauce in the package.
As mentioned above, there isn’t a ton of cauliflower in the package, and the cooked cauliflower is pretty light, which means you could easily polish off a box of this on your own. However, we’d strongly advise against doing that. Two pieces of cauliflower weighs in at around 130 calories, so these numbers can add up pretty quickly. Furthermore, eating too much cauliflower at once could leave you with a sick stomach.
PF Chang’s Kung Pao Cauliflower is a pretty good snack, but you should definitely be wary of eating too much at once. We’d suggest having a few pieces with your favorite fried rice or using it as a filling for lettuce wraps. Kung pao sauce can be addictive, but these snacks should be eaten in moderation.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this frozen appetizer, check out our package scans below.
