These Are The 5 Things We Had To Try At Trader Joe’s This Week

To us, every day is a good day to stop at Trader Joe’s. But especially during the fall and winter months, it is truly a joy. Before becoming a regular shopper at Trader Joe’s, grocery shopping felt like a far more mundane and boring experience. But something about the environment in the store and the products available makes it a place we wanna be.

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As a result of our frequent shopping at Trader Joe’s, it’s needless to say that we try a lot of their products. When we walk out of the store, we have a clear idea of which items we are most eager to try out, so we like to bring you, dear readers, along for the ride too. Of everything we picked up at Trader Joe’s this week, these are the things that we simply couldn’t leave the store without and what we thought about them.

Pumpkin Pie Chardonnay

I took our Trader Joe’s a long time to finally stock the viral Pumpkin Pie Chardonnay, but when they did we knew we’d have to try it out for you guys to let you know how accurate these reviews on social media really are. Fortunately for us, it lived up to the hype. It really wasn’t overly sweetened, so it actually had a very balanced flavor between the crisp, refreshing white wine and the pumpkin pie spices themselves.

And, we were very fearful that the pumpkin pie flavor would be artificial, to which is was not. It tasted like the real, warm spices that we associate with the dessert and none of the candle-like ickiness. I wouldn’t say that the wine itself is significantly impressive, but there’s nothing that makes it notably bad either. Not that I think wine snobs are necessarily buying this bottle, but they might want to look onto the next if they were considering it.

Cheese Tortellini

Generally, I would say we here at Sporked try a lot of different filled pastas. From what’s on rotation at Costco to all of the seasonal items at Trader Joe’s, anytime we see a new flavor hit the shelves we tend to pick it up. But this week when we are cruising the aisles of Trader Joe’s, we realized that we had never actually tried the regular Cheese Tortellini that they have on offer. In the end, though, it was just okay. The flavor of the cheese was honestly pretty absent in a way that was disappointing. And, the value for money wasn’t great either. On its own, this was far from impressive, and we’ll be sticking to other brands.

Just Like Your Grandma’s Stuffing Chicken Sausage

As big fans of breakfast sausages, this was an exciting product to see stocked at Trader Joe’s. Not only is it perfectly seasonally appropriate, but it just sounds like it would be delicious too — and it was. I would say that it has a more mellow flavor than we are anticipating, but it definitely has that very herbaceous, slightly vegetal flavor that you want from stuffing. We wouldn’t necessarily rush to repurchase this, but we happily finished the package over the span of a week.

Beef Mini Tacos

As always, one of the standout experiences of shopping at Trader Joe’s is a stroll down the frozen foods aisle. And, this week we decided to pick up some simple and easy meals that we could turn to on lazy nights. As for these beef tacos, they were good, but not great. Honestly, I think this would be a great base for other flavors and ingredients, but on their own they’re incredibly bland as they really just are a corn tortilla shell with seasoned beef inside. A really good sauce, some queso fresco, and some kind of herb or veggie would really turn these around.

Spicy Pork Kimbap

We’ve been regularly enjoying the tofu and vegetable version of the kimbap at Trader Joe’s for some time now, but when we saw that they were introducing a gochujang pork version, we were intrigued to say the least. Not only is the flavor of the pork great, but the sauce is really what makes the roll itself more enjoyable to eat due to the moisture that it provides. No longer does it feel like this roll needs additional sauces or flavoring agents to feel really powerful on its own. Now it’s more of a complete feeling dish that genuinely impressed us.