Frozen noms: Char sao bao!

It is one of those days where I feel like having a quick dinner instead of cooking from scratch. I had a look in my fridge and saw that there is a pack of frozen char sao bao (barbecued pork buns), hereinafter referred to as "CSB", that I had bought earlier this week. 

I moved to Nagoya from Tokyo five years ago and have been living in Kasugai city since then. AEON mall is my usual go-to for grocery shopping as its supermarket offers a pretty comprehensive selection of ingredients and there is a also an adjacent outlet that sells imported foodstuff. Although I was never a fan of frozen food as it was never a mainstay in my mother's kitchen. However, there was a "World Dining" section that caught my eye and I decided to have a closer look. Basically as the name of the section suggests it offers popular frozen dishes from different countries. I am a huge fan of CSBs and meatbuns in Japan don't really suit my palate hence I was delighted by the find. The CSBs are a product of Taiwan.

Apparently today is a good day to try them out.

You get a pair of CSBs in the pack which can be steamed or re-heated in a microwave oven.

Of course I'd go for steaming. Hahaha. Once in the steamer it is a 17 minute wait.

I knew that these buns won't taste like the authentic once the moment I took the lid off the steamer. The smell of the buns suggest that the filling has been tweaked to be more agreeable to the local palate. 

The skin has the texture of a chinese meat bun and has a good consistency for frozen food. The filling is typical of a CSB filling but somehow has a "Japanese" taste to it. For BND5.50 they were pretty good and were just the right portion for one person. On my next trip to the supermarket I'll get a pack for H and see what he thinks of them.