Spring Home Char Siew Buns - frozen char siu bao from NTUC Fairprice

Frozen Spring Home Char Siew Chicken Buns were one of some frozen food alternatives that we experimented with during this COVID circuit breaker period. Available from NTUC Fairprice, char siew bao is a popular food for young and old alike. The main question on our mind was : does frozen Spring Home Char Siew Buns taste like the real thing?

The frozen Spring Home Char Siew Buns are available from NTUC Fairprice stores and online at $3.60 for a pack of 8 mini buns. I noticed from the website that there is currently a promotional offer of 2 packs for $5.95 (until 1 June 2020). The frozen char siu bao has quite a long shelf life. The ones we bought had an expiry date in 2022 – almost 2 years!

The Spring Home Char Siew Buns

Each pack of Spring Home frozen buns contains a tray of 8 pieces. This sounds like a lot, but each mini bun is very small in size. More like a large siew mai, rather than the char siu buns that we are used to seeing in restaurants.

The instructions to cook the frozen buns were straight-forward. Just take them out of the freezer and steam for 6 minutes. No need to defrost.

We used up the two packs of Spring Home char siew baos and used the steaming tray of our medium sized electric rice cooker. The buns are so small, all 16 of them could fit in the steaming tray. This is a picture of the frozen buns in the tray.

To ensure they were thoroughly steamed, we steamed them for 8 minutes. The frozen buns had opened up to reveal a nice fluffy pile of char siew baos. They look quite nice, similar to restaurant standard buns, only smaller. In fact the lightness of the pastry is better than some restaurants. The filling has a nice char siew gravy taste, but the meat content was very low.

Each of the buns can be eaten in two bites. They are easy to prepare and are useful as light dim sum snacks. We were very happy with the buns generally but disappointed with the lack of substance inside the fluffy buns. One solution could be to insert some chopped char siew pork purchased from a nearby char siew rice stall. Then these frozen Char Siew Buns from NTUC Fairprice would be perfect.