[Convenience Store Adventure] "Would You Like a Hot Stew?"... Soup Lunchboxes for Cold Weather

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As the weather suddenly turned cold, I visited a convenience store after hearing that soup lunch boxes are gaining popularity. Currently, Seven Eleven sells over 30 types of soup lunch boxes and ready meals, with options like One Meal Sundae Soup Lunch Box, Pork Kimchi Stew, and Jeil Matjip Rice Cake Dumpling Soup ranking high within this category.

The Sundae Soup Lunch Box comes in a soup bowl reminiscent of a earthenware pot and contains 5 pieces of sundae (Korean blood sausage), head meat, chili seasoning sauce, perilla seed powder, green onions, and Cheongyang chili peppers. The rice portion is generous, while the side dishes are relatively simple, including stir-fried radish kimchi, Cheongyang chili peppers with garlic and ssamjang, and seasoned perilla leaves. The pork bone broth concentrate sauce is provided separately and can be added according to taste. After pouring hot water up to the indicated line and microwaving for 2 minutes and 10 seconds, the aroma of sundae soup filled the air. The spicy broth was as flavorful as that of a decent restaurant, and I ate it while sweating profusely.

The Pork Kimchi Stew uses a gelatin method to contain the broth in a jelly-like form. After microwaving for 2 minutes and 50 seconds, a warm broth was ready. The portion was suitable for one person as a side dish with rice, and it had a stronger, thicker stew-like taste rather than a typical kimchi stew, making the seasoning quite strong. The side dishes included soy sauce pork bulgogi, pan-fried tofu, rolled omelet, and stir-fried fish cake. Since there was stew, the side dishes felt a bit lacking; the pan-fried tofu was bland and disappointing, and the stir-fried fish cake had only 2 pieces of fish cake and 7 garlic scapes, making the main and side ingredients feel reversed, which was disappointing.

Jeil Matjip Rice Cake Dumpling Soup contains rice cake slices, 2 large dumplings and 3 small dumplings, a thick sauce, meat, egg garnish, and green onions. After pouring hot water and microwaving, crushed seaweed flakes were added. The rice cakes were chewy and tasty, and the plentiful egg garnish added a good texture. However, the broth itself was salty and had a slightly artificial beef bone broth flavor, so I stopped eating after one spoonful. While it might be worth trying once to welcome the New Year, I probably won’t repurchase it.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.