Costco Pulmuone Beef Stir Fry Noodles Review

I feel a little silly picking up a meal like this Pulmuone Beef Stir Fry Noodles from Costco when it’s really easy to whip up the same dish at home. However, this stir fry looked like a good alternative to making stir fry from scratch when I was extra short on time. The packaging makes it look like it’s full of vegetables and tender pieces of beef but looks can be deceiving.

Pulmuone is a South Korean company that carries a variety of authentic Korean inspired dishes at Costco. Other Pulmuone products I’ve previously reviewed are the Teriyaki Stir-Fry Udon, Kimchi & Vegetable Dumplings, Pad Thai and the Beef Japchae.

Location in Store

This can be found in the refrigerated meal section at Costco, near the fresh pasta, sausages and tofu. The item number is 1819157.

Taste

Like other Pulmuone dishes, they’re not very convenient to make. It’s not complicated, but there are a few steps. It also took me some time to get my noodles separated – definitely a lot more than the two minus the package listed for the initial stir frying of the noodles. I waited separated my noodles, then fried them for two minutes before adding the sauce. After that, it went pretty smoothly.

My noodles came out with just the right amount of chewiness, so I guess my interpretation of the instructions was close enough. The flavor of the noodles was alright. The standout feature is the sweetness, but I could taste soy sauce, sesame, onion and garlic too.

The beef isn’t very appetizing to look at when you take it out if the package. I’ve seen this type of beef in Pulmuone dishes before. It looks very dry. After cooking it in the stir fry, I found it tough and stringy with kind of a weird taste. It’s not horrible, but I don’t like it very much. It seems very processed. The quality of the meat is mediocre as best. I only ate two small pieces and found them both kind of gristly.

Cost

The 832 gram meal kit costs $19.79 Canadian regularly but I have seen it on sale for as low as $15.79. This seems really expensive for some noodles and inedible beef.

Convenience

The meal comes with noodles, sauce, a package of vegetable toppings and beef. It takes only a few minutes to prepare the beef stir fry in a pan. There are only cooking instructions for cooking the dish in a pan. The package has a big warning stating that the plastic tray inside the package is not heat proof and not to microwave it.

The dish needs to be kept refrigerated and the best before date is about a month from when I purchased it. There’s a recipe on the package for adding onion, carrot, sesame seeds and green onions but I feel like for the price the company should have included these ingredients in the meal.

I recommend adding extra vegetables to the stir fry and serving this with a side of green onion cakes, dumplings or potstickers or edamame.

Nutrition

Calories

One third of the package contains 530 calories, 10 grams of fat, 89 grams of carbohydrates, three grams of fibre, 17 grams of sugar, 22 grams of protein and 1520 milligrams of sodium. That’s so much sodium especially if you’re a really young kid or older person who’s watching their sodium intake.

The carbohydrates are high as well as the amount of sugar which makes sense because it’s noodles and a Korean barbecue bulgogi sauce.

Ingredients

The ingredients list is pretty typical for a processed noodle stir-fry like this. Some ingredients you may want to be aware of if you’re trying to eat very healthy are the canola oil, sugars and flavor.

The stir fry contains wheat, soy and sesame.

Scoring

Taste: 5/10

Cost: 4/10

Convenience: 9/10

Nutrition: 2/10

Overall

Walk on by!

I’ve tried quite a few of these Pulmuone dishes now and they’re all kind of the same. They look like they could be really good, but more often than not the ingredients seem super processed and they’re just not very good.

Have you tried the Pulmuone Beef Stir Fry Noodles? What did you think of it?

Please note that this review was not paid for or sponsored by any third party. This product was purchased by Costcuisine for the purpose of producing this review. The opinions in this review are strictly those of Costcuisine. Costcuisine is not affiliated with Costco or any of its suppliers. In the event that Costcuisine receives compensation for a post from the manufacturer of a product or some other third party, the arrangement will be clearly disclosed (including where the manufacturer of a product provides Costcuisine with a free sample of the product).