If you’ve been in a Target store recently, you might have noticed that their Archer Farms brand has been disappearing, replaced with a new brand called Good & Gather. Yes, Good & Gather is Target’s latest store brand. Since we’d reviewed a bunch of Archer Farms products before they were discontinued, we decided to keep the trend alive and test out Good & Gather’s frozen offerings as well. (But definitely try to get some of the Archer Farms crème brûlée before they’re all gone!)
We recently tried the Good & Gather Pork Soup Dumplings and their Vegetable Spring Rolls, both of which were quite tasty. We hope that trend continues, because today we’re checking out the Good & Gather Pork Bao Buns.
We were a little bit surprised to learn that the only cooking instructions listed on the box were for the microwave. We expected something a little more complex (like a steamer). Thankfully, these are super easy to make. While you will need a damp paper towel, the cook time is only a minute for two pork buns, making these super fast to make as well. (You can read the full cooking instructions by checking out the package scans at the bottom of this review.)
When you take these out of the microwave, they’ll be pretty damp, so you might want to dry them off before you eat them. You don’t have to, but we actually prefer them a little bit dry.
As you can see in the image above, there’s actually not a ton of filling inside these. Don’t let that fool you; these are actually super flavorful.
Now, pork buns like this are usually sweet (though we’ve had exceptions), and these won’t disappoint in that department. Holy buckets, are these ever sweet! The filling includes a sweet BBQ sauce, which has a brown sugary taste that blends really well with the pork.
The texture of the buns here is really nice. Like we said earlier, we prefer them just a little dry, but once we dabbed them with a paper towel, they had the perfect amount of stickiness to the outside. These are also a joy to bite into.
The cooking instructions say you should cook two buns at a time, and two buns is also the recommended serving size. If you stick with a pair, you’ll end up consuming 160 calories and 230 mg of sodium. That’s not too bad, though these are definitely designed to be a snack rather than a full meal. If you end up eating the whole box in a sitting, then you’re up to 470 calories and 670 mg of sodium.
The Good & Gather Pork Bao Buns are everything we were hoping they’d be. While we haven’t tried a whole lot of frozen pork buns over the years, these are among the best we’ve had. In fact, we’d say these give the Trader Joe’s version a run for their money, and that’s some high praise!
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for these Target-brand pork buns, check out our package scans below.
