Buy This Aldi Frozen Veggie Blend And You'll Be In For Disappointment

Aldi is beloved for a lot of things, but fresh produce is not one of them. Apparently, frozen produce isn't Aldi's forte either. While we found plenty of frozen foods to buy at Aldi, the Season's Choice steamed Asian-seasoned veggie medley is one to avoid.

The box displays a vibrant mix of sugar snap peas, broccoli, carrots, and baby corn, and it comes with a packet of saucy seasoning to drizzle over the veggies as they steam. But what came out of the box wasn't anything like its depiction. The vegetables were nearly all carrots with a few measly pieces of corn, sugar snap peas, and broccoli haphazardly scattered throughout. 

If we were disappointed by false advertising, the taste and texture of the veggies and seasonings did nothing to redeem them. Steamed frozen vegetables are fairly bland to begin with, so a seasoning sauce is a welcome addition to bring some Asian flavor. The seasoning packet states that it contains garlic and ginger, but these ingredients were far down the list behind soybean oil, maltodextrin, and sugar. We couldn't taste any aromatics, and without sesame oil or soy sauce, there was no trace of Asian flavors at all. In fact, sugar was the only thing we could taste. Sickly sweet vegetables are not a side dish we recommend.

Aldi customers were equally unimpressed with the Season's Choice Asian-seasoned vegetable medley. In agreement with our assessment of ingredient imbalances, one Redditor wrote that the veggie medley "always [ends] up being 90% carrots." But even a bag full of steamed carrots should be edible. According to another Redditor, "The vegetables were brownish in color, the baby corn inedible, [and] everything was mushy." Yet another Redditor complained that the bag "hardly had any sauce in it," to which others noted a decline in quality over the past year or two. Since we think the sauce itself made the veggies even more inedible, other customers opt not to use the sauce packet at all. Instead, suggests one customer, "I usually use the Aldi general tso's simmer sauce[,] which I doctor up with some extra spices and add-ins for maximum flavor."

To that effect, there are other ways to upgrade frozen vegetables instead of eating them out of the steambag. Stir-frying them in a wok over high heat with sesame oil and a dash of soy sauce is one way to give frozen vegetables some char while also instilling Asian flavors. You could add the veggies to leftover rice and a few scrambled eggs for an easy fried rice dinner. Or, you can throw them in a soup with a miso or mushroom-based broth with plenty of aromatic ginger and garlic.