Chinese food for dinner in 15-minutes or less!

This is a very quick and easy dinner we had after running a few errands. After deciding grabbing something out was not really on our idea of tasty, we opted to rather eat something at home … so eat something at home we did.  Since nothing was out and ready to cook, we went to the handy dandy freezer and grabbed a few items that could be cooked up and served.  This is totally an “on the fly” type of meal, but regardless it was tasty.

The greatest part was that the entire meal was super easy and quick to throw together.  Dinner was ready and served in 15 minutes or less … much quicker than the pizza delivery guy!  The rice and pork could be cooked in the microwave or on the stove top. After prepping the dish, I decided to use canned green and wax beans as our vegetable side.  The entire meal was 11 points plus.  Even with the added sodium from this being a frozen meal, it was filling, tasty and did the job!

I had 1 cup of InnovAsian Cuisine’s Caramelized Ginger Pork for 7 points plus.  I had 1 cup of Trader Joe’s Vegetable Fried Rice for 4 points plus and I had a little under 1 cup of canned green and wax beans.

The pork was surprisingly pretty good – I was a little hesitant thinking it was going to be chewy and tough, but it wasn’t.  The sauce was flavorful with a little zip in the background from the ginger.  The rice is delicious – it’s one of my favorites and is constantly a repurchase item from Trader Joe’s.  Overall, this meal got 2 thumbs up,.

Quick “Chinese” food at home!

 

I love Chinese food … but I don’t necessarily like the unnecessary amount of fat and calories that come with some of my favorite dishes. With this I’ve learned to make some of my favorite Chinese dishes at home, to my own liking and I’ve also found some frozen items at the grocery store that I like to have on hand when I’m looking for something different.  This is a dinner we whipped together in under 25 minutes (it took that long because the chicken had to bake in the oven).

Mandarin Orange Chicken is one of the dishes I would like to get at a local Chinese buffet so when I saw this bag at Aldi, I picked it up to store in the freezer.  We baked them off in the oven and when done covered it in the mandarin orange sauce.  It was quite delicious because the chicken was more along the lines of a chicken finger.  The mandarin orange bringing a nice citrusy sweetness to the dish.  I had a 3 ounce serving for 6 points plus values.

The Vegetable Fried Rice is a frozen vegan (don’t be scared!) rice I had picked up at Trader Joe’s.  I normally make my own fried rice, but that takes preparation because the rice has to be stored in the fridge overnight to make it nice and cold.  So with a frozen fried rice, I can stir fry it up and we’re good to go.  This particular rice had me use a tablespoon of olive oil and stir fry it up in a pan.  It was quite delicious and will definitely be something I repurchase. A 1 cup serving is 4 points plus – 5 points plus if you consider the olive oil used to fry it up.

Of course with any meal I added in some steamed frozen broccoli because no dinner is a dinner without some sort of a fresh vegetable.  11 point plus for it all – far less than it would have been if we went out and got this dish at a restaurant.

QUESTION:

Do you make quick “Chinese” food at home?