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Tag: Trader Joe’s (Page 1 of 2)

Trader Joe’s Cheese Filled Fiocchetti with Pink Sauce Review

July 14, 2024 / / 0 Comments

It’s all about the sauce

Trader Joe’s frozen Cheese Filled Fiocchetti with Pink Sauce are little egg pasta sacks filled with cheese served in an extraordinary not-really-pink cream sauce. The fiocchetti themselves are OK. Heated per instructions in the microwave, they were a little al-dente, and the cheese inside them felt liked hard, grated cheese rather than melted one. But this dish is not about the pasta, it’s about the sauce. And oh, what a sauce it is.

The sauce is a combination of cream, tomato puree and butter, seasoned with garlic, lemon juice, basil, parsley and salt and pepper. It’s bright and light, slightly acidic and just vibrant. It’s a perfect summer sauce. There is too much sauce for the included pasta, and I literally licked the plate when I was done eating.

From a nutrition point of view, this dish is as bad as you’d imagine. The whole 1lb package has 870 calories, 51g of fat and 78g of carbs. It’s supposed to be three portions, but that’s unrealistic. At best, consider it could serve two for lunch when paired with a salad. All in all, I’d see it as an occasional indulgency.

Trader Joe’s also sells a jarred pink pasta sauce. It has different ingredients than this one – it lacks lemon juice, for one, which I feel is an essential ingredient -, but I will give it a try and see if it approximates the amazing flavor of the one here.

Trader Joe’s Beef Bulgogi Review

July 13, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Better than mine

I love beef bulgogi. It’s delicious, easy to make (if somewhat laborious if you cut your own beef), and quick to cook by sautéing it. BUT, I am in a cooking strike until I get a new kitchen, so I haven’t made it for a long time. I decided to give Trajeder Joe’s beef bulgogi a try for one reason only: I didn’t look at the price. At $12 for the 16-lb package, it’s far beyond what I’d have comfortably pay for a frozen meal. However, now that I try it, I’m pretty sure I’ll get it again.

The plastic tray comes with one thing only: beef bulgogi in its marinade/cooking sauce. No rice, no veggies. If you want them, you’ll have to add them. At 40 grams of carbs and 27 grams of sugar for the whole package (which is enough food for two people) this is not precisely low carb, however.

But, and here is the but, it’s just delicious. The tender (but not too tender) beef has a smoky flavor that elevates this dish to the stratosphere. It really made me realize what I’d been missing by sautéing my bulgogi instead of grilling them over a wood-chip smoking box (given that I have a gas grill). Of course, it’s possible you could achieve the same flavor with just a dash of liquid smoke – I might try that next time too. Liquid smoke is not listed on the ingredients, however, so I’ll assume the meat achieves its smokiness naturally.

Trader Joe’s Spaghetti Carbonara Review

July 11, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Just not worth the calories

Spaghetti carbonara is yet another of my favorite dishes. Made with butter, cream, egg, bacon and cheese, it’s heart attack inducing. For the calories, the carbs and the fat, it should be delicious. This one wasn’t.

The pasta and the sauce were good enough, the pasta was soft and the cheese sauce was smooth and flavorful. The pancetta, on the other hand, was horrible. It was fatty and it had a weird, off-putting taste. Fortunately, there wasn’t much of it. I know that pancetta is traditional, but this dish would have been far better with bacon. I would not get it again. Instead of getting it, make my recipe for carbonara.

This dish is easy to heat in the microwave. It’s made in Italy and currently sells for $4.30 at the Castro Valley Trader Joe’s. It’s supposed to serve three people, but only if you have a Lilliputian appetite or serve it as a side. The whole 16-oz package (which granted, it’s too much food for just one person) has 860 calories, 42 grams of fat and 78 grams of carbohydrates.

Trader Joe’s Chicken Tikka Masala Review

July 11, 2024 / / 0 Comments

As far as microwavable tikka masalas go, this isn’t bad.

I love chicken tikka masala, but I’m pretty particular about it. I haven’t found many commercial versions that I like. Trader Joe’s tikka masala sauce and frozen chicken tikka masala entree are OK, but just that. This refrigerated version was better, it wasn’t as acidic and tasted closer to what you get at a restaurant. But it wasn’t quite there. The sauce wasn’t very complex, the chicken didn’t really have the smoky tikka flavor and I didn’t find myself licking the bowl as I otherwise would. It’s better than the
Sukhi’s Chicken Tikka Masala you find at the supermarket – but that’s not saying much.

It’s also not a particularly great value . It’s $6.50 (at the Castro Valley Trader Joe’s) for the 16 oz package, but half of it is rice. The 15oz package of Sukhi’s chicken tikka masala is $11 at Safeway (and it goes on sale occasionally) but that’s all chicken. And you can get a far better chicken tikka masala at Shef, for $11.50 for a 16-oz container.

In all, I won’t be getting it again.

Trader Joe’s Chicken Marsala with Mashed Potatoes Review

July 11, 2024 / / 0 Comments

This refrigerated ready-to-heat meal is convenient, but not the best value.

Chicken marsala is one of my favorite dishes. The dish of lightly breaded and sautéed chicken served with a Marsala wine cream sauce can be absolutely delicious, if you follow the right recipe. It’s not complicated to make, but many restaurants manage to get it wrong. Perhaps for that reason, none of the ready-to-eat meal services I’ve tried seem to have it.

Trader Joe’s version is OK, perhaps a tad better than I expected, though nothing to write home about. The chicken was tender and well seasoned and the mashed potatoes were generic, but this dish is all about the sauce. And the sauce was just OK. There needed a little bit more of everything: more mushrooms, more cream, more chicken base, more Marsala and longer reductions. The dish also needed more sauce, period. There was enough of it for the chicken, but not for the mashed potatoes.

It comes in a plastic tray and it only takes a couple of minutes to microwave, so at least it’s very convenient. It’s possible that if you reheated it on a pan and allowed the sauce to reduce some more, it might be better – but I don’t buy ready-to-eat meals because I want to take out my pans.

This meal is supposed to feed two people, but the whole dish is only a 17 oz, which makes it too small of a meal for anything but the lightest appetite (unless you add a salad or something else). However, it is too big of a portion for just one person. All in all, I think it’s a bit overpriced and not tasty enough to get it again.

It was $8.50 at my Trader Joe’s in Castro Valley – but I think it might be cheaper at Trader Joe’s in other locations.

Trader Joe’s Frozen Foods

March 2, 2015 / / 0 Comments

We did a major Trader Joe’s shopping trip yesterday, and I got quite a lot of frozen items to try. I haven’t been into cooking for months now, and I don’t see the muse hitting me any time soon. So frozen food it is.  I thought I’d share my opinions of what I’ve gotten.  I’ll be adding them here as they go.

tjtrufflebread

Mushroom & Black Truffle Flatbread with Mozarella Cheese

This had a real truffle flavor.  If you like truffles, this is the flatbread for you.  I do, so I’ll be buying more. I think it was $3.

tjpadthai

Vegetable Pad Thai

Mika complained that it was spicy and didn’t taste like pad-thai, but she did eat it.

Trader Joe’s Classic Lemon Bars

December 29, 2013 / / 1 Comment

Lemon-BarsI got these to serve as the last course of my 13-course Xmas Eve dinner and they were perfect.  Indeed, these were very good lemon bars overall. They come frozen, and the curd is perhaps more cream-like and less sticky than that of a regular lemon bar, but it had the right degree of balance between sweetness and sourness, and they were the perfect size for an after dinner bite.  All in all very satisfying for anyone who likes lemon bars.

2012 Xmas Eve Cheese Course: Thanks Trader Joe’s!

December 27, 2012 / / 0 Comments

My oldest daughter has fallen in love with cheese, so she insisted that we have a cheese course as part of our Xmas Eve dinner this year.  I don’t think I’ve ever done one before, but boy am I glad I did.  The cheeses were wonderful, and for a couple of my guests (including my husband) the best part of the dinner.  Those guests won’t be invited back 🙂

I did my cheese shopping at Trader Joe’s, as it made it easy, so I was able to research TJ cheese recommendations before.  The day I went shopping, TJ was offering samples of one of their cheeses and it  may very well be my favorite cheese of all times – my daughter also loved it.  This is what I ended up serving, in addition to sliced french bread and sliced apples (I also had jams but they proved less popular).  Remember that the key to a good cheese course is that the cheeses be close to room temperature, cold cheeses are less flavorful cheeses.

– Le Délice de Bourgogne, a triple cream softened ripened cheese from France.  It’s similar to a brie, though even creamier than the triple cream brie they have at TJ, but with a stronger, richer flavor. It’s really delicious.

– Castello Blue, a triple cream soft blue veined cheese from Denmark.  This is a real winner, and a real competitor to TJ’s stilton.  I think we all liked it, and was one of my 10-yo’s favorites.

– Double Cream Gouda, from Holland.  Another all around winner, but not as spectacular as the other two.

– Cotswold Double Gloucester with Onion & Chives, from England.  This is the cheese that they were offering tastings of and that blew us away.  It has an intense flavor, it’s super cheesy and slightly bitter, and just delicious.

– Arla Dill Havarti, from the US.  I got this at Grocery Outlet and my daughter liked it, but it was mild and boring in comparison with the other cheeses.

Marga’s 2012 Xmas Eve Dinner

Trader Joe’s Harvest Grains Blend

February 15, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Trader Joe’s Harvest Grain Blend is a blend of Israeli couscous, orso, baby garbanzo beans and tiny red quinoa grains. Israeli couscous predominates. I don’t remember how much it cost, but it was cheaper than the bags of pure Israeli couscous. Most importantly, my kids love it, and I think it’s probably marginally more nutritious than the Israeli couscous by itself.

Though the instructions say to cook it with 1 Tbsp of butter ( I guess to make it more buttery), I always omit it without any adverse effects. I do the same with regular couscous and other grains, why have added fat if it’s not needed? Once you have the water boiling, it cooks in 10 minutes. So it’s a great and easy side for stews.

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