This time I have an Asian inspired Aldi side dish. The packaging was pretty appetizing, and it was on sale for less than a dollar, so I thought I'd give it a try. I figured, at the very least, it'd be a really simple side dish to cook up during the work week.
When I opened the package I was a bit disappointed. All of the noodles were broken up into tiny little bits. I had expected them to be similar to instant Ramen, but this was more like a really long grain rice. Other than my noodle disappointment, the packet opened easily, and the instructions were very simple. I just had to boil some water, add the contents of the package, and simmer for 7-10 minutes.
I know this is a cheap side dish that was definitely not authentic Asian cuisine, but it looks nothing like the picture on the package. The noodles are all short and broken up, and the sauce-to-noodle ratio is way off. There was a LOT of sauce in the pot once I was done, and the entire pouch only required a cup and a half of water. Although it looks a bit off, it does smell quite nice.
The noodles smell sweet and tangy, very similar to bottled Teriyaki sauce that you can buy at Wegman's and most grocery stores. Again, this is in no way authentic, but for a cheap instant food item, it smells a lot better than it has any right to.
As far as the taste, these weren't half bad. The sauce was much sweeter than I expected, but there is an underlying soy sauce-y flavor that helped cut it. It's a bit hard to describe the taste with normal grocery store items, but it was on-par with instant Yakisoba, or it was kind of like eating a packet of Uncle Ben's rice that was drowned in bottled Teriyaki sauce. For less than .70 cents, the noodles were filling and cooked very quickly, but the flavoring was not ideal.
After eating a portion, my biggest complaint would have to be the noodle size. Why are these things so short? Instead of being longer, like most take-out noodles, these are really short and stubby. I felt like I was eating some kind of long grain rice, and it was really difficult for me to photograph them while holding a camera and chop sticks. (I'm right handed, so I operate my camera with my right and use my left hand to hold the food. So this is me using my non-dominant hand to pick up tiny noodles with chop sticks on the opposite side of my camera. I got skills.)
I can't really complain too much, after all it was super cheap, but I wouldn't buy it again. If you enjoy a lot of sweet sauce on your food items, you might like this, but it was a bit too sweet for my tastes.
© Maria Smith http://poison-and-antidote.net
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