..that ready-to-cook package is convenient but can be disappointing. So brace yourself. Lol.

I’m learning to cook new things.. I find portioning a bit of a hassle. Imagine preparing for a recipe that calls for half onion. So you’re left with another half in the fridge, and then you forgot that you had them the next time you need onion, so you cut a new one, n left the old one to rot in the fridge. And repeat this for other ingredients! (Some of my carrots grew leaves 🤣)

So in an attempt to avoid such scenario (and also to better gauge/visualize/ get the feel of how much ingredients are necessary for x persons) i bought prepacked ready-to-cook packages from astro: paket masak rawon sapi (javanese black soup with beef) , beef bulgogi, es campur.

Apparently (why did i think otherwise. Duh) they’re frozen. So i thawed them. The first one i tried was es campur. And that’s how i learned that cincau, once frozen, thawed into a black, fried-tofu-like texture. 🤣 So far from its jelly-like origin! I tossed it to the bin after one bite. Another thing i learned: Pineapple seem to withstand freeze-thaw the best, apple lost its crunch, aaaand papaya is at the other end. Just.. don’t bother freezing easy-to-mash fruits.

Next, the beef bulgogi. It came out pretty good. In the package was 250gr beef slice, half an onion, 4 slices of capsicum (you read that right yea 4 slices), 1 pack of bulgogi sauce, 3 cloves of garlic and a sachet of beef stock powder (i skipped this coz whyyyy? We have the actual beef, why make it beefier?). Although the flavor was okay, the onion and capsicum definitely lost its crunch tho.. so freezing them is definitely not recommended.

Last in line: rawon sapi. It’s supposed to consist of some beef, galangale (but not in mine, hm, why), lime leaves, lemon grass and premixed spices. This one.. i don’t understand why, the premixed spices definitely didn’t taste nor look anything like rawon.. more like gulai. It doesn’t even have its signature black color. Did they label it wrong?? Idk. Anyway, I still have them on my stove. Will recook tomorrow using my all time favorite Bumbu Bamboe.