Recently, Aldi had frozen sushi rolls in their ad. We had tried the avocado and shrimp version a while ago, and liked them, but then something else caught my eye: “fresh” sushi. As in, a kind that was refrigerated, rather than frozen. It looked just like the kind Trader Joe’s carried, which is some of the best sushi I’ve ever had, and was also a couple bucks cheaper, so I eagerly waited for those to arrive at our local Aldi. Either they never did, or they sold out in a day. We packed it up and went to the next-closest Aldi store, but they didn’t have any, either. So we settled on the frozen stuff once again, only this time, we opted for spicy crab.

Prepwork, which only consists of thawing, can be done in three ways, and all three are simple: leave out at room temperature for two hours; place on a plate and put in the microwave for twenty seconds, then fifteen second increments if not thawed after the initial burst; stick the whole plastic tray in a cold water bath for thirty minutes. We opted for the microwave, which took about two minutes, or so (in short bursts) to get them ready for eating; since our microwave is—shall we say, “vintage”–it thawed them very unevenly, but it got the job done.

The texture of these are pretty spot on, with the rice on the outside giving way to the crab filling in the middle. The crab flavor is decent, but pretty weak…I would have liked for it to be stronger, but that’s just my preference. It’s also pretty obvious that it’s “fake” (the ingredients cite “natural crab flavor”), if for no other reason than the $5 price point; using the real stuff would no doubt drive the cost up to the point that selling it for that price would be next to impossible. The spice comes through after a few seconds (be patient!) and offers a quick flash of heat that quickly dissipates. I thought it was a good amount of spiciness, but people that like their food really hot will probably be majorly disappointed. I also didn’t get a whole lot of flavor from the spice, so even with that included, it’s pretty weak.

I like that it comes with a packet of soy sauce, but the packet is very small—my wife is a huge fan of soy and it only lasted four pieces with her. Even using it sparingly, as I would do, I doubt I would be able to stretch it further past the halfway point. We didn’t use the wasabi this time, but we did use it last time, and it tasted like, well…wasabi. I also like the portions, which are fairly strong for the price: 15 pieces for $5; as can be expected, though, the pieces are much smaller than the average sushi roll, so this is probably somewhere in the vicinity of eight or nine regular pieces. Still, that’s pretty impressive for the price.

I like Aldi’s frozen sushi, and this one is no exception, but I’m really hoping they sell the fresh sushi again, because if they’re anything like the ones sold at Trader Joe’s (and, even though they’re technically separate companies, they do share products occasionally), those are some amazing rolls.

Overall: 6.5/10. It’s better than average, and worth the $5 asking price in terms of quantity. But it trips up in the “quality” department: it has no actual crab in it (the ingredients list “natural crab flavor”). I suppose that can be expected given the price, but what is kind of a letdown is how weak the taste is. There are some spices that deliver a delayed blast of “heat”, which is a kick of spice that quickly dissipates (chances are, unless you’re incredibly sensitive to spicy stuff, you won’t even need to drink anything cold to get it to go away), but even that doesn’t seem to add much in the way of flavor. If this had a stronger taste, I’d like this a lot more; even as it stands, there’s a good amount here for the price, so I’ll still recommend it to sushi fans.