Alpha Foods Plant-Based Mexicali Burrito Review

We’re back!

Regular readers of Freezer Meal Frenzy have probably noticed that we’ve been pretty quiet for the past couple weeks. No, we’re not going anywhere; we just took our first site-wide break in four years. We took a week off, but that week was bookended by two weekends, and there was an administrative catch-up day upon our return. Because of this, we ended up not posting content for about ten days. If you’ve been missing us, you can now rest easy. Today we’re returning to our regular (and ambitious) schedule of publishing at least one food review every single day.

Another thing that regular readers might be aware of is the fact that Freezer Meal Frenzy grew out of an experiment in which we tested out a whole bunch of frozen burritos and made notes about which ones we liked and why. So it only seems fitting that we return from our sabbatical with a frozen burrito review. In fact, the burrito we’re reviewing today comes from the Alpha Foods brand, which we’ve not explored before today.

So today we’re excited to return from our (much-needed and much-appreciated) break by reviewing the Plant-Based Mexicali Burrito by Alpha Foods. We’d actually been looking for this particular burrito for a while now, as every time we try to purchase it we find that it’s sold out. We finally got lucky and managed to get our hands on one (there’s also a pizza burrito that we’re trying to get, but we’ve had no such luck on that one yet). Oh, and this burrito is indeed vegan-friendly, in case you’re wondering about that.

Before we dig in, we should talk about cooking. While this burrito’s packaging offers microwave instructions, we decided to test out the oven instructions instead. Yes, it seems we’re feeling ambitious after having taken so much time off! We preheated our oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit, wrapped the burrito in aluminum foil, and placed it on a baking sheet. We stuck the thing in the oven and let it cook for about 25 minutes, flipping it over at about the halfway point. Of course, it was still cold in the middle when we pulled it out, so we popped it back in for 10 more minutes, and that seemed to do the trick. (If you want to read the full cooking instructions, check out the package scans at the bottom of this review.)

The first thing we noticed when we cut this open is just how much shell there is. You can see in the image above just how shell-heavy this burrito is — we suspect this might actually be double-wrapped. With so much shell, there’s less room for filling, which means the shell is going to contribute much more to the flavor profile than is normal for a frozen burrito. Because we cooked ours in the oven, our shell ended up a bit crispy and almost cracker-tasting. It’s not ideal for a frozen burrito (perhaps we should have just microwaved it and saved ourselves the hassle).

That said, we were surprised by how pleasantly sweet the filling is here. This has a brown-sugary sweetness to it that we think adds to the flavor profile in a really satisfying way.

The main protein here comes in the form of vegan-friendly faux-beef crumbles. They won’t trick any non-vegans into thinking it’s real beef — it’s a lot more rubbery than genuine beef crumbles. The cheese won’t fool anyone either, as it’s mushy rather than stretchy. Aside from the consistency issues, though, both of these things end up tasting perfectly fine. In fact, the overall flavor here is very good, all things considered.

So is this spicy? Well, yes and no. There is a little bit of a spice factor here, though it’s not going to satisfy anyone looking for a real spice rush. We wouldn’t exactly call this a mild spice level — it’s one that sort of hits the back of your throat rather than your tongue — but it’s sort of there and then gone right away. The spiciness fades fast.

This burrito contains 300 calories and 550 mg of sodium. While neither of those numbers is super concerning for a frozen meal, this is not a full meal. This burrito is pretty small, and we think a grown adult human could eat two of these in a serving without breaking a sweat. So the low numbers we pointed out earlier might be a little deceiving. This burrito is vegan-friendly, however (which we mentioned earlier).

The Alpha Foods Plant-Based Mexicali Burrito is a pretty respectable attempt at a vegan-friendly beef-and-cheese burrito. The sugary sweetness really helps this stand out, we think, and we can definitely see ourselves eating this again sometime. If we were vegan (we have no vegans on staff), we suspect we’d end up making this a regular part of our diet. It satisfies the spicy-yet-sweet craving (though way more on the side of “sweet” than of “spicy”) without containing any animal products. That sounds like a win to us.

To learn more about the nutrition contents, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this frozen burrito, check out our package scans below.