Product Review - Tai Pei General Tso's Chicken

Tai Pei General Tso's Chicken Carton

Tai Pei - Asian Gardens - Spicy General Tso’s Chicken

This is an impromptu product evaluation. It all started when I was going to make a small batch of fried rice to use up some leftover chicken. A bit before the wife said she was going to have some other left over for dinner just to clean out the fridge. When she found out I was going to make fried rice she decided that she wanted fried rice too. Fried rice is popular at our house. It is a great catch-all for leftovers and it tastes really good not to mention that it is quite simple to make in its simplest form. When I plan to make it ahead of time as a main dish it can be quite elaborate; seasoned rice, lots of fresh chopped vegetables and loads of the selected meat, be it chicken, beef, pork or shrimp.

This batch of fried rice was not going to be as elaborate. I was missing a few of the veggies I like to use, notably scallions but I was going to use chives fresh from the garden instead. There was just a small dab of chicken so I only cooked a cup of rice ahead of time. That would have made an adequate dish for one but when I found out it was being split two ways I knew someone was going to be really hungry after dinner, mainly me.  



Serving 1 - The yellow rice in the back is the fried rice.

I was thinking it would be a good time to go to the local Chinese take-out and pick up a side dish to go with the rice. It was a bit early to start preparing dinner and we needed a few things from the store. So we decided instead to get something from the frozen food section to go along with the rice. Some time back we had picked up a box of General Tso’s Chicken at the local Sam’s Club. It was typical a typical Sam’s Club mega-pack with bags of breaded and fried chicken morsels and packs of sauce. That particular offering was just the meat and sauce, no vegetables, not a hint of broccoli. But they did taste good; a nice spicy sauce over large pieces of mostly white chicken meat. The memory of a good experience with that product prompted us to seek out a similar one at the local super market.

It was slim pickings at the super market. There was a large bag with vegetables and sauce mix (you add your own chicken) that would have made a main dish all by itself for almost $9 not counting the chicken. I kept looking for something smaller, less elaborate, something tasty and easy to share…  About the only other thing I could find in the oriental vein was a line of Tai Pei products in various flavors including General Tso’s chicken. It was pint-sized container of General Tso’s Chicken with some vegetables and sauce over rice. At almost $4 it was only slightly less expensive as a pint of take out from the local Chinese place. I wasn’t too happy about the rice that was included but it was getting close to dinner time and we took home our prize.

Serving 2 - 1/2 of the  carton. The yellow rice in the background is fried rice

I suppose if I had read the label including all of the very fine print I would have known better. And, what I wanted and expected was not the product that Tai Pei provided. What I expected was a pint serving of General Tso’s Chicken with some rice added; an entrée dish. The instructions were to microwave for several minutes without removing or puncturing the plastic wrap – apparently to trap steam. After it was cooked I open the package and looked inside, deep, way down inside. It is amazing how deep the inside of a pint container can seem when there is little content at the bottom. It didn’t look too bad, perhaps a bit “oversteamed,”it had a nice aroma and it tasted good. At first I was concerned that I perhaps had gotten a defective, under-filled package. Looking at the container I saw the words that I should have heeded at the supermarket. There is a small illustration showing the levels as frozen and after cooking; from three quarters to one half and the caveat, “Settling may occur.” It also said that the contents were sold by weight and not by volume. The 11 ounce by weight contents fall way short of filling the 16 fluid ounce container. As for the settling after cooking, it was all there hiding in the bottom third of the container, a serving spoon dollop apiece was our share.

In the future I will stock up on a couple of the Sam’s Club offerings to have in the freezer for the wisp of the moment, conger up something good to eat moments. And, if I ever need to augment again, I will stop in at the local Chinese take-out. Compared to the Tai Pei offering, a third of a carton of cooked food, at $4, for $5or even $6 at the local take-out they will provide me with a full pint container of good tasting food, hot and ready to serve; three times the food for only a dollar or two more.

Read the label before you buy.

As I mentioned, if I had been more careful in reading the menu at the super market I would have probably passed on this product.   It wasn’t what I really wanted. I wanted a pint of Chinese take-out from the grocer’s freezer. That is not what it is. It is a snack-sized portion of Chinese style food in an oversized Chinese take-out container. If a snack-sized serving is what you want, available in just 5 minutes from the freezer, either at home or work, this may be just right for you. Although the cooking directions seem to result in a bit of over-cooking , it doesn’t look too bad, has a nice aroma and tastes very good. It is mostly rice with some vegetables and a bit of chicken. I just have trouble getting past the large amount of empty space and rice I purchased at the same rate as a full, real Chinese take-out.