The Best Things We Ate This Week (March 20-24)

Every week, the Sporked team sidles up to the tasting table and sets out to find the absolute best of the best packaged foods, the gold hidden in the grocery aisles. Each week we’ll bring you five standouts that truly rocked our taste buds and changed our lives—or at least our buying habits. Here are the best things we ate this week.

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Simpler Times Lager: If you’ve had one domestic lager, you’ve had them all, right? Not the case! This canned lager from Trader Joe’s was so much more flavorful than we expected—a little sweet and super complex. This tastes like a doted-over craft beer, but a 12-pack only costs around 7 bucks. Bonus: It has an ABV of 6.2%, which is much higher than the Buds of the world.
Great Value Naturally Hickory Smoked Lower Sodium Bacon: Hear me out: All bacon should be lower sodium bacon. Seriously, if you’re not eating it alongside full sodium bacon, there’s literally no way you’d know the difference, especially if you’re eating this Great Value hickory smoked bacon. It’s pretty much perfect—smoky and plenty salty. There’s no breakfast or BLT this won’t improve.
Herr’s Baby Back Ribs Potato Chips: Sure, baby back rib-flavored chips sound fun, but we assumed they’d just taste like glorified BBQ chips. We were wrong and, frankly, we should have given Herr’s more credit (because Herr’s generally rules). These actually taste smoky and porky like a slab of ribs slathered in sauce. Plus, now we have an excuse to watch to this a few hundred more times.
Trader Joe’s Cinnamon Roll Drizzled Granola: If you’re looking for a granola that’ll make a hearty, healthy breakfast, this probably isn’t the way to go. But if you’re looking for a granola that’s super indulgent and desserty and will tempt you to house an entire bag in one sitting, buy this. Immediately. It’s composed of big, buttery, spiced morsels of granola that are drenched in frosting. Each one really channels the flavor of a cinnamon roll. This is not health food, but we’re convinced it’s a slightly better way to satisfy a craving for cinnamon rolls.
Trader Joe’s 4 Chocolate Croissants: Given that you have to proof the dough over night, these chocolate croissants from Trader Joe’s are a little bit of a commitment, but they’re worth it. They’re flaky. They’re buttery. They’re chocolatey. They’re bakery quality croissants at home (that are better than Starbucks), and we’ll absolutely be making them again.

About the Author

Howdy! I’m Gwynedd, Sporked’s managing editor. I live in Los Angeles and have access to the best tacos the U.S. has to offer—but I’m a sucker for a crunchy Old El Paso taco night every now and then. I’ve been at Sporked since 2022 and I’m still searching frozen mozzarella sticks that can hold a candle to restaurant sticks. Why you should trust me: I’ve been a journalist for 20 years (yikes), a consumer of food for 40-plus years, and I’m truly hard pressed to think of foods I don’t like (or that I can’t tolerate at the very least). Oh and one time I cooked my way through Guy Fieri’s cookbook and wrote about the journey through Flavortown. What I buy every week: Trader Joe’s Original Savory Thins. Fat free plain yogurt (usually Fage or Nancy’s). Honeycrisp apples. Sweet cream coffee creamer for my at-home Americanos. A frozen cauliflower crust pizza and some jarred mushrooms to top it with. Old El Paso Stand ‘N Stuff taco shells and Gardein Ground Be’f, even though I think “be’f” is a nightmarish contraction. Favorite ranking: Stouffer’s frozen dinners. I don’t own a microwave (I get my cancers the old fashioned way!), so I love taste testing things that I don’t really buy to eat at home. Least favorite ranking: Soy sauce. Don’t get me wrong, I love soy sauce—but consuming that much sodium in one sitting is probably illegal in some countries. Our frozen enchilada taste test was a close second; the smell of microwaved corn tortillas still haunts me.