Here at Club Trader Joe’s the family loves all things related to Thai food. I am not sure how this came to be, but maybe it’s the zing of the limes or the heat from the chilis, but most Thai food has a freshness and lightness that works well with our diets.
The kids love Thai restaurants and we seem to go a couple of times a month. Trader Joe’s has had their share of Thai food, especially in the frozen section. I think they have even had a jar of green curry simmer sauce at one time (maybe they still do).
As it says right on the packaging, it’s “Authentic Thai” which just means it’s manufactured in Thailand. The dish comes in the frozen section. There are two sections to the packaging when you pull it out of the box.
The curry and the rice. Not sure why they split them up since so many other frozen Thai and Indian dishes are all piled together. But whatever… you stick it in the microwave for a few minutes and voila you have a piping hot Thai curry dish.
The problem is when you try to eat it. The packaging doesn’t assist you with eating. There are two sides with a divider in the middle so you have to lift and mix it from one side to the other. If you took this to work, you might not have a bowl to eat it out of. You could spoon the curry into the rice section and eat it from there.
If you have a bowl it’s kind of awkward spooning the rice into a bowl and then pouring the curry onto the rice. Sounds simple but it was more difficult than it needed to be.
Once I got everything in the bowl, it looks like some really nice curry. The aromas coming out of the bowl were incredible. Smelled just like a Thai restaurant.
You can see the sheets of tofu as they look like sliced chicken and to be honest, I couldn’t tell. That’s what makes this vegan dish so interesting. The tofu strips were just like chicken. The texture was like chicken. I could probably serve this to my kids and tell them it was chicken and nobody would know.
The only downside of this dish is that seems to be more tofu strips and sauce than anything else. I think you can count the five carrot cubes and two eggplant chunks.
Then there is the spice level. I like my Thai food medium spicy. I do not like to have my palate blown out by overly spiced food. I would say that this borders from hot to very hot.
If you like your Thai food very spicy then this is for you, but I had a hard time making it through it. That was a shame because I really liked the flavors. That fact that it was vegan was just icing on the cake so to speak.
I would give this 6 bells mainly because of the spice but if heat is your thing, then this might be 8 or 9 Bells.
Ingredients: cooked jasmine rice (water, jasmine rice), coconut milk, tofu sheets (soybean, water), carrot, coconut cream (coconut, water), water, eggplant, green curry paste (green chili, lemongrass garlic, salt, galangal, coriander seed, lime peel, white pepper, cumin, turmeric), sugar, red chili, soybean oil, sweet basil, vegetable powder blend (onion, cabbage, carrot, spring onion, maltodextrin, salt), cumin seed, coriander seed.
Contains soy and coconut
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