It’s always a good day for fried rice. While this versatile food can serve as bedding for a vast plethora of protein options, it’s also pretty great as a snack.
Today, we’re checking out the Ling Ling Japanese-Style Yakitori Chicken Fried Rice. We recently tried the Vegetable Fried Rice from Ling Ling, and our vegetarian staffers were pretty pleased with it. Our carnivorous staffers, on the other hand, were hoping to do something with a little bit of meat in it. This should be the ticket for meatier appetites!
You can cook this in a skillet if you’d like to get a crispier batch of rice. However, we’re in the middle of a heatwave here, and we’re not interested in standing over a hot stove, even if it’s just for a few minutes. We’re going to go with the microwave for this batch of rice. (If you want to read the full cooking instructions, check out the package scans at the bottom of this review.)
The biggest difference between this and the Vegetable Fried Rice is obviously the addition of chicken, so let’s talk about that first. We have to say, this chicken is fantastic. It’s singed around the edges, which gives it a lovely smoky flavor. This also has an ever-so-subtle sprinkling of yakisoba sauce, which elevates this from great to even greater.
One of our favorite components in the Vegetable Fried Rice was the corn, and that’s back here, though we noticed the portion size is a bit smaller, perhaps to make room for the other yellow veggie in the mix. We initially thought this other veggie was squash, but once we bit into it, we learned it’s actually yellow carrots. While carrots are alright, we would have gladly taken more corn here instead of more carrots.
This also contains a few pieces of edamame, some peas, and a stealth smattering of red bell pepper pieces. The edamame is great, with a perfect consistency and a fresh flavor. The peas are surprisingly good to, with buttery hints that really make these peas stand out. The bell peppers are pretty much just here for decoration, since there are hardly any of them. We had no issues with what’s here, though — there just wasn’t enough of it for us to really form a strong opinion.
The rice itself is a winner, with just enough soy sauce to enhance the flavor without going overboard. This is pretty much the perfect amount of soy, we think.
We have one gripe, and if you’ve read a lot of our reviews you could probably see this coming a mile away. Yes, we really wish there were scrambled eggs in this. Sure, we could add some, but like we mentioned earlier, we’re trying to keep cool during a heatwave, so there’s no way you’ll convince us to fire up a skillet — even if it means eating our rice eggless!
There are two bags in this box of fried rice, and a single bag is considered a serving (the contents of a single bag are shown in the image a few paragraphs above). If you’re planning on eating this as a side, a bag is more than enough. If you make a meal out of this, then a full bag is still going to be a pretty good serving size for you.
That said, one serving contains 530 calories (90 from fat) and 1,170 mg of sodium. This is definitely not designed for anyone who’s eating lean or avoiding sodium.
The Ling Ling Japanese-Style Yakitori Chicken Fried Rice is fantastic. While we do feel the lack of eggs a bit, everything that’s actually present here is great. We can definitely see ourselves coming back to this, especially when the weather cools off and we can start frying up some teriyaki chicken to throw on top of it!
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this frozen fried rice, check out our package scans below.
