Park Street Deli Crab Rangoon Dip

One of the best things about getting a Chinese takeout meal is the variety of tasty side items you can get to go along with your meal, ranging from fried rice to egg rolls to potstickers. One of my family’s favorites is crab rangoon. Aldi sells boxes of frozen crab rangoon several times a year, but just before the biggest football game of the year, when Aldi is selling all kinds of appetizers, snacks, and dips to enhance everyone’s viewing enjoyment, they rolled out a twist on the takeout classic.

Park Street Deli Crab Rangoon Dip cost $3.29 for a 12-oz. container at the time of publication. It’s an ALDI Find (Special Buy), which means it is available for a short time, and once it’s gone, it’s gone. It’s exactly what it sounds like: small chunks of imitation crab in a creamy sauce, good for eating with crackers, fancy bread, veggies, or straight up with a spoon if you’re aiming for lower carbs. My husband and I thought it might work well as a dip for tortilla chips as well, perhaps even served nacho-style atop tortilla chips with melted cheese, diced tomatoes, green onions, etc.

Park Street Deli Crab Rangoon Dip nutrition info and ingredients. (Click to enlarge.)

One serving size is 1/3 of a cup, which nets you 200 calories, 13 grams of total fat (16% of your daily value), 8 grams of saturated fat (38% DV), 40 mg of cholesterol (14% DV), 440 mg of sodium (19% DV), 15 grams of total carbohydrates (6% DV), 1 gram of dietary fiber (3% DV), 8 grams of total sugars, 5 grams of added sugars (11% DV), and 5 grams of protein.

It’s a processed food product with a lengthy ingredients list, with surimi, also known as imitation crab, being the primary ingredient. Surimi is a processed food made from pollock. Other ingredients include mirin wine, natural crab flavor (swimming crab and snow crab), cream cheese spread (which contains guar gum, xanthan gum, carob bean gum, and natural flavor), sour cream, and a few preservatives.

A few thoughts about how this dip tastes:

One, this dip is a bit spicy. This is because the sauce includes red chili peppers. I’ve eaten my share of crab rangoon over the years, both from grocery stores and from restaurants. Never have I eaten spicy crab rangoon, so I’m not sure why someone decided it was a good idea to make this crab rangoon dip spicy. It means my kids, who love crab rangoon, don’t like this stuff.

Two, other than the mild spiciness, this dip is a good impersonation of crab rangoon filling. It has plenty of small flakes of imitation crab meat, probably more than what you’d find inside actual crab rangoon. The sauce is thinner than what you find inside crab rangoon, but that makes it so your crackers won’t break when you dip them.

Overall, even with the spicy flavor, this is not a bad dip.

The Verdict:

Park Street Deli Crab Rangoon Dip is what you might get if you took the filling out of crab rangoon and ate it as a dip. It is mildly spicy because the sauce includes red chili peppers, but otherwise it’s a solid impersonation of a Chinese-American takeout favorite.