Trader Joe’s has a frozen Mushroom Risotto that is imported from Italy. I love mushrooms and am a big fan of risotto so this was an obvious product for me to bring home and try.
The risotto is made with two types of mushrooms (Champignons and Porcini), along with wine and cream I had high expectations for lots of wonderful flavors!
Nutrition and Ingredients
Let’s take a closer look at what you get with this frozen meal.
Mushroom Risotto Nutrition Facts
You get one pound of risotto per bag. One cup of cooked risotto is considered a single serving and you get about three servings per bag.
The nutritional facts for a single serving are:
- Calories: 160
- Fat: 5g (6% DV)
- Cholesterol: <5mg (1% DV)
- Sodium: 460mg (20% DV)
- Carbohydrates: 26g (9% DV)
- Protein: 3g
I was surprised by the carbs in this dish. One cup of cooked white rice has about 53g carbs but this risotto only has 26g per cup. I guess this means that the composition of the risotto is about 1/2 rice and 1/2 mushroom sauce
Ingredient List
The Mushroom Risotto has the following ingredients:
- Par cooked rice
- Champignons mushrooms
- Porcini mushrooms
- Water
- Milk
- Cream
- Sunflower seed oil
- Wheat flower
- Olive oil
- White wine
- Parsley
- Onion
- Salt
- Garlic
- Porcini mushroom extract
- White pepper
- Bay leaf
- Nutmeg
There are no preservatives or artificial colors/flavors in this meal.
Traditional mushroom risotto always uses the highly flavorful porcini mushrooms, which this product has. It will also incorporate other mushrooms to offset the cost of porcinis and add more layers of mushroom flavors.
Apparently the one mushroom that you would never want is a mushroom risotto is a white button mushroom as they have so little flavor. It turns out the fancy sounding “Champignons Mushrooms” are the same thing as white button mushrooms.
Heating and Serving
Here is how I heated the dish before my daughter and I shared it for lunch:
- Pour the frozen risotto into a microwave safe bowl.
- Microwave on High for four minutes.
- Vigorously stir.
- Microwave on High for two minutes.
- Vigorously stir.
- Serve.
The appearance of the product out of the package was interesting. The product has frozen shards of the mushroom sauce and piles of par-cooked rice. You have to cook the entire package at once as there is no way to create portions of the frozen product.
The presence of the frozen shards of mushroom is why you need to vigorously stir the meal in the middle of microwaving.
The risotto was a bit watery when it came out of the microwave but thickened up and became creamier after standing for a few minutes.
Taste
The mushroom risotto is okay but not great.
My daughter appreciated that the risotto had plenty of mushroom flavor but none of the chewy texture that she associates with mushrooms.
The rice was extremely tender. I enjoy tender rice put some people prefer the rice in their risotto to be al dente.
I thought the risotto tasted a bit “thin”. I expect a risotto to be able to be a stand alone meal but this really seemed to be more of a side dish. It just didn’t have enough “presence”.
My risotto was crying out for freshly grated Parmesan cheese which, once applied, greatly improved the flavor of the meal.
There isn’t any single thing that I can say is wrong with the risotto but there isn’t anything that got me excited either. Overall I am pretty neutral on the product.
This meal cost $3.29 which is about right considering the main ingredients are white rice and button mushrooms.
I might buy this again just to have it in my freezer as a side dish option.
