It’s time to eat some more fried rice!
Like a lot of folks, we were introduced to the Scott & Jon’s line of frozen food via their shrimp-filled dishes. They offer a ton of takes on shrimp, and many of them are quite good, which is somewhat rare in the world of frozen dinners. But did you know their line runs much deeper than just shrimp-based bowls?
Take, for example, the Scott & Jon’s Chicken & Bacon Fried Rice, which we’re reviewing today. We love the idea of taking a chicken fried rice and tossing in some bacon. Because why not?
So let’s cook this sucker up and give it the ol’ Freezer Meal Frenzy try. This is super easy to heat; just remove the box, cut a slit in the plastic wrap, and pop it in the microwave for three and a half minutes. There’s nothing to it! (If you want to read the full cooking instructions straight off the box, check out the package scans at the bottom of this review.)
When we first pulled this out of the microwave it was looking a little pale. But then we gave it a quick little stir, and it was still looking a little pale, but not nearly as bad as before. That’s because while the rice is kind of pale in color (we typically expect fried rice to be a little darker than this), the bacon bits lend it some much-needed color.
And those bacon bits are actually way more flavorful than we were expecting. They have an almost-sweet-yet-also-salty flavor that we found to be a delightful addition to this otherwise underwhelming meal.
That’s right, we said it: This meal is kind of underwhelming.
The chicken isn’t great. While the portion size is a lot more generous than we were expecting, it’s kind of dry and chalky. And remember how we said the rice looks kind of pale? Well, it tastes exactly like you would expect it to. It somehow tastes “kind of pale.”
There are some carrots and peas mixed in, and both of them are surprisingly good. They don’t make up a huge portion of this dish, but they are prevalent enough to make a difference. They both have just a little bit of earthy sweetness to them, which contrasts well with the salty side of the bacon’s seasoning.
Like most of Scott & Jon’s offerings, this one is low in calories. With just 290 calories, this is definitely appropriate for dieters, though we should warn you that this also comes with 810 mg of sodium. That’s not egregiously high for a frozen meal, but it is a little high for anyone who’s trying to keep their sodium down. Eat cautiously.
The Scott & Jon’s Chicken & Bacon Fried Rice takes a mediocre rice and adds some also-mediocre chicken, but then it adds some fantastic bacon and veggies to redeem itself a bit. The end result is something that’s worth trying, though it certainly can’t compete with some of the better fried rice dishes we’ve tried. Even S&J’s own Shrimp Fried Rice is better than this. We do, however, admit that we found this to be an interesting experiment, and we’d love to see some heavily seasoned bacon added to a higher-quality fried rice.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this frozen rice bowl, check out our package scans below.
