We Have Beef with Trader Joe’s New Spaghetti Dinner

When I picked up a box of Trader Joe’s new Spaghetti with Meat & Sauce, I’ll be honest, the first thing I noticed was the weird phrasing. Trader Joe’s spaghetti with meat AND sauce. Most brands would go with “spaghetti and meat sauce,” right? Well, my mistake, Trader Joe’s. There’s a reason they added that ampersand to the mix. Dear reader, this isn’t sauce with a few chunks of meat in it. No. It really could be the other way around. It’s a whole lotta meat and a little bit of sauce. Trader Joe’s did not come to play around with this one.

New Product!

Trader Joe’s Spaghetti with Meat & Sauce

Trader Joe’s

Pros: Have you watched Dropout’s Gastronauts, the cooking show hosted by Sporked’s very own Jordan Myrick? Particularly the episode where Brennan Lee Mulligan fawns over foods that are heavy? Let’s just say Trader Joe’s may have finally made a food that could put Brennan’s eternal search for the heaviest food to rest. Is that a “pro”? Well…that heaviness does lead to two more concrete pros. There are 27 grams of protein in TJ’s new spaghetti dish and for a quick and easy microwave lunch, it really does fill you up. That can be hard to find when it comes to frozen meals.

Cons: Really looking back, there were a lot of warning signs about what was coming. The aforementioned protein count, the giant slab of sauced meat that was laid on top of the spaghetti noodles when I pulled the meal out of its box, and, of course, the seemingly foolish naming decision. There’s a lot of meat here. So much meat, and so little sauce, that the resulting “meat & sauce” is really just a paste that sticks to the noodles and your fork and ultimately your stomach. As you can guess by now, there’s no real redeeming quality here. The noodles are soft, there’s no real flavor beyond frozen ground meat—and you could make the same meal yourself for a third of the price.

Rating:

4/10

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