We’ve been making our way through the Tai Pei line of frozen food lately, and while we wouldn’t say this is the best line of frozen Asian food we’ve tried, we’ve also found some tasty items here, and we’re interested in seeing what else the line has to offer.
So today we’re checking out the Tai Pei Chicken Chow Mein. While some of Tai Pei’s products are available in multiple sizes, this one only comes in the 10 oz. size, according to the Tai Pei website. So it’s the 10 oz. size we’re reviewing today.
This is simple enough to cook. Simply peel back the plastic seal, then pop the carton into the microwave for four and a half minutes. Let it sit for a couple minutes before you dig in. You can eat this straight out of the carton if you’d like, but we always dump the contents into a serving dish.
Tai Pei’s meals usually have the protein and vegetables sorted on top when you first open the carton. This usually makes the meal look like it has a lot more of those things than it really does. That’s not the case when it comes to the vegetables here. While the veggies are sorted at the top (and most of the sauce is sorted down to the bottom), there’s actually a pretty substantial amount of veggies in the dish, even after it’s all stirred together.
And sure, the chicken is scant here, but that’s actually a good thing. This chicken is terrible. It’s dry and hard and chalky, and the parts that aren’t dried-out are pure gristle. The less of it the better. Thankfully, the chicken portion is especially stingy. Despite how the image above makes it look, there really isn’t much chicken in this dish.
But the rest of this dish is actually pretty good. The noodles are lovely. They have a wonderful soft-yet-a-little-bit-firm consistency, and they’re covered in a sweetened soy-based sauce that really makes them pop.
The veggies are plentiful, and they’re pretty alright. They don’t taste super fresh or amazing, but this blend of bell peppers, carrots, and broccoli feels right at home in this dish. And, as we mentioned earlier, there are a lot of veggies here. In fact, we’d say that almost a quarter of this dish is vegetables.
The calorie count isn’t bad, with just 280 calories in this entire meal. Of course, it’s not super filling, and we would have definitely forgiven the folks at Tai Pei for kicking this up to 325 calories or so by adding some extra noodles. The noodles here are great, and we would have loved to eat more of them.
The Tai Pei Chicken Chow Mein isn’t a perfect dish by any means, but it’s pretty decent. In fact, without the terrible chicken (and maybe with a little bit more noodles), this would be more-than-pretty-decent. As is, we think it’s pretty okay, though we’re not expecting to run out and buy this stuff in bulk to satisfy our noodle cravings. It’s just a halfway decent option if you want some easy chow mein. So long as you temper your expectations, there’s really nothing wrong with that.
To learn more about the nutrition contents, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this frozen dish, check out our package scans below.
