Meal One: Beef and Eggplant Stir Fry Over Ramen Noodles

Last night we made our first meal from week four. Beef and Eggplant Stir Fry Over Ramen Noodles. How did it go? Read on to find out…

We started out with our protein:

Beef

And our oil:

Canola Oil

We opened up the Odds and Ends package to find:

1 container Lime Juice

1 container Soy Sauce

1 bag Ramen Noodles

1 bag Ginger

1 bag Mint

1 bag Sugar

2 Hot Peppers

3 Eggplants

2 cloves Garlic

The mint, garlic and hot peppers were nice and fresh but the eggplants and ginger were only ok. A couple of the eggplants looked a little bashed up and one of them was covered in pockmarks. The ginger was a little translucent, which is not a sign of freshness, but once peeled was ok.

Ingredient Freshness: B

This recipe was quite involved. It required multiple batches of pan frying for 6 minutes at a time, which took a while. The pan frying required flipping the eggplant slices after 3 minutes, this was tedious work and my hand was really hurting afterwards. It also required several bowls, another pot and a bit of prep.

Ease of Cooking: A-

This recipe took a while. As I said there was a lot of pan frying (for the eggplant) which took a long time since three eggplants need to be fried and that is a lot of slices. Each pan full of eggplant slices took 6 minutes to cook and I had around 5 pans full. So after that half hour, the rest of the dish takes around 5-10 minutes longer.

Speed of Cooking: B

Once again, the recipe called for salt, but none was included in the kit. Also there was no instruction on whether to include the seeds and ribs from the peppers or not. Further, the lime juice was not listed in the instructions at all so we had no idea when it was supposed to be added.

Recipe Instruction: C

From here, I have to add an explanation. This is the first meal that I did not like. AT ALL. It was not because of the flavor profile or ingredients. It was because of the hot chili peppers which made this dish almost inedible. I ate it, because it was what I had for dinner, but afterwards I had to eat a LOT of sorbet to cool my burning mouth and throat and last night I had to have several TUMS due to the awful heart burn. It was really bad! There was no warning on the recipe and there was no warning when we ordered this meal. Anyone who cannot have spice, cannot eat this meal at all, I like spice and could barely get it down.

All of the yummy ingredients, which smelled so wonderful and I was so excited to eat were completely drowned out by the overpowering spice from the chili peppers.

Taste & Filling: F

I might try to make this dish again and completely omit the peppers.

Remake ability: B-