product: Asia Specialties Chicken Potsickers

Asia Specialties Chicken Potsicker
purchased at: aldi's
price: $1.19
net weight: 10 oz
calories: 450
daily price: $5.29
# of product: "9 potstickers" (no bonus)


story: as with my previous post, chinese food is a food that i love yet know little about. for example, previous to buying these, i had no idea what a 'potsticker' was. i'd heard about them, but never had them. although i suppose greeting a new food through the lens of an aldi's purchase probably isn't the best way to become acquainted with it, i threw caution to the wind and bought these babies anyway; mostly out of curiousity but also because i will buy pretty much anything that is frozen and near a dollar in price.

judgement: based on the packaging and box description, i was assuming that these would have a filling like a wonton or something with some preservative-laden saucy matrix keeping the chicken and vegetables in place. instead, what i got could best be described as 'egg rolls crammed into a pierogie piece'. i hate egg rolls (probably because i hate cabbage), but i had to plod on.

prep-work for these fell painfully outside the realm of microwave cookery, so i was forced to boil them in water for 9 minutes, also not unlike pierogies. however, completely unlike pierogies, i was given a brown 'sauce' for these by the good people at Asia Specialties, although i'm not sure something qualifies as a sauce if it has less viscocity than water. this stuff was seriously so thin it was almost a gas . i bet it's boiling point is like three degrees above room temperature.

anyway, considering all of this, these were suprisingly good. the sauce kind of tasted like soy sauce, although not much of it ever stayed on any of the potstickers. the potstickers themselves tasted good and were somewhat filling.

bottom line: i cautiously recommend these. if you want fake high-class asian cuisine for less than a $1.50, you can't go wrong with these. they taste fine, but sometimes i'm wondering if i like all of this food only because my subconscious figures out how cheap the food is and sends messages to my taste buds to like this stuff so much. failing that, though, the sauce could provide a cheap science experiment about phases or something.

next time: Asia Specialties Cream Cheese Wontons