If you’re looking for a delicious stir fry that you can make easily at home, you might want to try Gourmet Dining brand Beef Stir Fry. It is a complete skillet meal with beef, lo mein noodles, vegetables and gourmet teriyaki sauce.
The bag says it can go from “freezer to fork in minutes.” It takes about 8-10 minutes to heat it up in a skillet or wok. You just put in the beef for 1-2 minutes, followed by the vegetables and noodles for another 5-6 minutes and finally you stir in the sauce. The sauce needs to be thawed in warm running water beforehand.
You literally just dump it in a pan and stir. I’ve made stir fry before myself and it takes a lot longer, especially if the chicken or beef is frozen. So much time and effort is spent cutting the meat into smaller pieces and chopping vegetables. This was so much easier.
As for the taste, I thought it was very good. The vegetables were fresh and tender yet crisp. The vegetables included broccoli, Sugar Snap peas, carrots, onions, red peppers, mushrooms and water chestnuts. The noodles were just right. The beef might have been slightly fatty, but it had the right amount of spices added to it. The sauce also had the right amount of spices and wasn’t too strong. I don’t like when the sauce overpowers the rest of the food; this was a mild sauce.
Nutrition-wise, this is a very healthy meal. It is 97% fat free, with less than 2 grams of fat per 8-ounce serving. It has 11 grams of protein, 4 grams of dietary fiber and 29 grams of carbohydrates. It also contains 70% of your daily requirement of Vitamin A, 60% vitamin C, 6% calcium and 15% Iron.
One drawback is the high amount of sodium-41% of what you should have in a day. If you’re like me, you’ll eat two servings, so you will almost reach your daily limit in one meal. Probably most of the sodium is in the sauce, though, so if you have to watch your sodium intake, you can use less sauce.
This 32-ounce bag cost around $6 at the local Community Market and fed two people. If you go out to a Chinese restaurant and order a meal, it would probably cost that much for one person. We were stuffed after we ate it, but like most meals of this kind, we were hungry again about 2-3 hours later. Maybe it would help to add some egg roles or something.
I would buy this again and wouldn’t mind trying other options. On their website, http://www.gourmetdining.net/, they show all their other products and include nutrition information and ingredients for each of them.
Don’t just take my word that it’s good, though. The bag says that the American Culinary Chefs Best honored Gourmet Dining with the Best Taste Award for the 5th consecutive year in a row in 2006. The Chefs Best Taste Award is awarded to the brand rated highest overall among leading brands by independent personal chefs.
