Our family doesn’t have much of a budget for dining out, but we sometimes compensate by purchasing more wallet-friendly restaurant-style appetizers from the frozen food aisle at Aldi. Most recently, we tried Aldi’s Appetitos Green Bean Fries with Zesty Wasabi Ranch Dipping Sauce. They seemed like a promising way to make green beans more exciting and get my kids to eat more veggies.
These green bean fries are described on the package as “whole string beans in a crisp, seasoned batter.” You get about three servings in one box.
You have a few options for preparing the fries, which are cooked from a frozen state. The package includes instructions for cooking them in a deeper fryer or baking them in a conventional oven. We don’t own a deep fryer, so we baked our fries for 12 minutes at 450 degrees, turning once during baking.
The wasabi ranch sauce packet sits unopened in a bowl of hot water while the fries bake. Before serving, open the packet and squeeze the sauce into a serving bowl. No need to heat the sauce in the microwave.
I’ve tried many of Aldi’s variations on French fries, including the Veggie Eggplant Fries (which are excellent, by the way) and sweet potato fries that sometimes show up as Special Buys. Compared to all those other fries, these green bean fries were simply okay. They weren’t as flavorful as I hoped, and my family nibbled on them but did not scarf them down.
The Verdict:
Appetitos Green Bean Fries with Zesty Wasabi Ranch Dipping Sauce are decent but slightly bland. The batter that coats the green beans could use more seasoning and flavor. Even the wasabi dipping sauce is pretty tame and lacks the clear-your-sinuses kick usually associated with wasabi. These green bean fries were okay but a little too mild for our tastes, and I probably won’t buy them again.
