We’re very excited to be checking out the Bibigo Chicken & Vegetable Korean Style Steamed Dumplings today. We’re big fans of Korean food, and these look pretty incredible. Plus, we’ve actually never tried the Bibigo brand before, so we’re having a new experience today. This is gonna be wild!
These steamed dumplings actually come with a microwavable tray. Honestly, when we picked these up, we were fully expecting to pan fry them, so the fact that they’re microwavable saves us some time and effort.
The box says to cut open the corner of the wrapper, then stick the tray in the microwave for a minute and 45 seconds. That didn’t seem like enough time, so we put ours back in for another 30 seconds. The extra cook time seems to have done the trick.
Oh, and there’s also a sauce packet, that you’ll want to thaw in a cup of warm water. Ours wasn’t super frozen when we pulled it out of the freezer, but warming it up just a little bit will do a world of good. (If you want to read the full cooking instructions straight off the box, check out the package scans at the bottom of this review.)
We recommend eating these directly out of the tray with a spoon. They’re filled with broth, and if you serve these on a plate, they might break open and cause the broth to spill out. That would be tragic. Plus, the included tray has little dents in it designed for pouring the sauce into, though admittedly they’re not really big enough to hold all of the sauce that comes with this.
Now, let’s actually talk about that sauce for a minute. It’s a soy/vinegar combo that we think works really well with these. It has some saltiness from the soy and a little bit of that tangy, slightly sweet vinegar flavor. It’s maybe not an essential part of enjoying these dumplings, but we do think it enhances them.
As for the dumplings themselves, what’s here is pretty tasty. It’s delightfully satisfying to bite into one and have the broth spill out into your mouth. The shells for us were a little bit underdone, though, even with the extra cook time, which meant they were slightly dry with a little bit of a crunch to them. Ideally, these would be softer.
The filling, aside from the chicken soup broth, is made from chicken, cabbage, onion, soybeans, and tofu. It fulfills both the “chicken” and “vegetable” promises of the title. While it’s not amazing, it’s definitely good enough to make these an enjoyable snack. The chicken is ground, and we’d be really curious to see how these would be with pulled chicken. It would have a completely different texture, but we think it could work really well.
The box considers all six dumplings to be a single serving. That puts you at 250 calories and 570 mg of sodium for the dumplings alone, and the sauce adds 50 calories and 370 mg of sodium. The calories aren’t bad at all, but if you’re trying to reduce your sodium intake, we suggest skipping the sauce. Of course, these aren’t super filling, so they’re more of a snack or appetizer than a full meal.
The Bibigo Chicken & Vegetable Korean Style Steamed Dumplings are sufficiently competent. These are pretty comparable to the Trader Joe’s Chicken Soup Dumplings, though we’d say TJ’s are a bit higher in quality (TJ’s also skips the sauce). Even so, we’ll be happy to continue to delve deeper into the Bibigo line to see what else they offer.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for these frozen steamed dumplings, check out our package scans below.
