Trader Joe's has had this frozen bibimbap bowl for a while, but I haven't tried it until now.
I've usually had bibimbap only at Korean restaurants, which comes in a warm bowl of rice with BBQ beef, fried egg, and vegetables with some red Gochujang sauce. My mom is Korean so I've also had different variations of leftover Korean food with rice mixed together.
The Trader Joe's bibimbap comes frozen with everything in it, and the frozen rice has a "styrofoam" look to it. The instructions were very easy -- just peel back the cover 1/2 an inch and microwave it for three minutes. The sauce is just thawed out under warm water.
I only added about half the sauce packet after the bowl was microwaved because I didn't want it to be too sweet. The red sauce had a sweet and spicy chili taste, and the beef had a sweet, Korean BBQ flavor. Combined, it did have an overall Korean bibimbap taste and feel. The beef was somewhat minimal - I counted about 8 small pieces of beef, maybe 10, if you include the broken bits. The bibimbap could have actually used some more of everything: more beef, spinach, carrots, egg and bean sprouts. But it was tasty, especially if you want a quick bibimbap and don't want to drive out to a Korean restaurant.
Unfortunately, my stomach was also hurting after eating this. Not sure if it was the sauce or something that came frozen in the bowl... it tasted fine, but I wasn't feeling so good afterward.
3 Comments
REVIEW – Trader Joe’s Bibimbap Bowl (Frozen)
This was basically a bowl of rice, with maybe two small pieces of meat. I buy a lot of Trader Joe’s stuff, but this is awful!
Bought for first time. One tablespoon of spinach, 4 , 1/4″ small bites of meat scant carrots. Nothing like the package photo. Was this some manufacturing error? Basically a bowl of rice with Korean BBQ sauce.
The problem of her stomach pain: possible is the monosodium glutemate use by Ajinomoto company.