If memory serves, it was Freezer Meal Frenzy readers who turned us on to the Saffron Road brand. We’re thankful for this hot tip, as we ended up really enjoying the Chicken Biryani and the Chicken Tikka Masala.
Today, we’re excited to be diving deeper into this line, with the Saffron Road Beef Bulgogi with Brown Rice. We do try to avoid reading other reviews before we write our own, as we don’t want other people’s opinions to impact ours. However, we couldn’t help but notice that this one has an almost five-star user rating on the Saffron Road website. People seem to really love this meal, so we’re excited to be jumping into it today.
Of course, we must cook it first. Don’t sweat, heating this up is a breeze. Pop it into the microwave, give it a quick stir, then pop it back in. It’s nothing unusual for anyone who’s ever cooked a frozen meal, though the six-minute cook time seems a little bit long to us. You can also cook it in the oven, if you’d like, but that will take you almost an hour. (To read the full cooking instructions straight off the box, check out the package scans at the bottom of this review).
Unfortunately, this meal isn’t as good as the other Saffron Road meals we’ve tried. The sauce here is excellent, with sweet undertones (it includes pear juice concentrate, brown sugar, and ginger), and it has a satisfying spiciness to it. The problems start with the beef.
The beef here is gristly and kind of hard in places. The surface of the meat feels rough and grainy as well. It tastes pretty decent, and it soaks up the sauce like a champion, but the texture and consistency are both off. The portion size is also teensy tiny — there’s not a lot of beef here.
The beef section of the tray is stuffed with onions, giving the illusion that there’s more meat in here than what’s actually present. And the onions aren’t even that good — they have too potent a flavor, which undercuts the sweetness of the sauce. We think mushrooms or bell peppers would have been a much better choice here.
The brown rice is just kind of there. There’s nothing wrong with it, but it does feel like filler. You can try to scoop it into the sauce to give it a little more flavor, but that still doesn’t justify its presence.
This meal contains 340 calories, which isn’t bad at all. Even better, there is 540 mg of sodium here, which is below average for a frozen meal. Then again, the portion sizes here are kind of skimpy, meaning this meal won’t leave you feeling full for long.
The Saffron Road Beef Bulgogi with Brown Rice has some issues. The sauce is great, but everything else in the dish comes with a series of problems. The beef has texture issues, the onions feel out of place, and the brown rice is too bland to really add anything to this dish. While we’ve really enjoyed some of Saffron Road’s other dishes, this one feels like a miss to us.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this Saffron Road frozen meal, check out our package scans below.
