Trader Joe’s Sriracha Shrimp Bowl

I’m always on the hunt for quick and easy lunches I can prepare at work. As most of you loyal readers know, Trader Joe’s has a plethora of frozen meals you can microwave, and voila you have a quick and easy lunch. My wife is addicted to the vegetable lasagna and we have to buy them by the dozen so she can have lunch for a week or two in the freezer.  

The other day I was looping through the freezer section in my almost daily food run to Trader Joe’s (teenagers eat a lot!). Always on the hunt for something I can just pop in the microwave at work, I spied this Sriracha Shrimp Bowl in the freezer area. Eager to try something new cause I was getting sick and tired of the Chicken Fried Rice every damn day, I picked this up. 

This looks like it would hit on so many levels with your average Trader Joe’s customer. Many trendy ingredients. Not just brown rice, but RED rice, whatever that is, but it’s got to be better than white and brown because it’s RED for crying out loud.

Also because it’s super trendy just like cookie butter or cauliflower, the ever-present Sriracha hot sauce.  Then there is shrimp. Protein! But probably not a lot since this is so cheap and shrimp is expensive.

You really only have one choice in the way you heat it up. Microwave! (I guess you could put it in the oven like they suggest and the rice might actually cook better) Let’s Poke some holes in the plastic lid and microwave, stir then microwave again and let sit.

You have to be a little careful here because the shrimp is actually raw so you need to make sure it’s cooked all the way through. This wasn’t a problem. I actually went 30 seconds longer than recommended because I have a weak microwave.

The aromas coming out of the microwave smelled promising. Slightly fishy from the shrimp and then I could smell the hot sauce cooking. Eating it was a different story. It was a serviceable meal. Five small shrimp in a bowl of undercooked brown and red rice. It was plenty hot enough, just that the rice was a little chewier than I like from brown rice which is already much chewier than white rice.

The sriracha kind of overpowers everything and I think that’s really the only flavor I got off of it. This wasn’t my favorite thing from Trader Joe’s and I don’t think I’ll get it again. It wasn’t great but not completely bad. I’ll give it 5 bells!