I Tried Trader Joe’s New Spring Lineup—Here’s What to Buy

It’s spring at Trader Joe’s, which is more of a theme than a real season (you won’t find rhubarb or ramps here). You will, however, find other fleeting delights worth seeking out before they’re gone. There’s a great new wonton addition to the freezer aisle this season, decent vegan faux Cheez-Its, and an insulated tote bag so big you could curl up in it and take a nap. What else is new? Keep reading to find out.

The Winner

Jalapeño & Cream Cheese Crispy Wontons
This is easily the most important addition to the Trader Joe’s freezer this year. Crispy pouches of sorta-spicy cream cheese, nothing more, nothing less. You must provide your own dipping sauce (I’m always partial to spicy pepper jelly, of which Joe sells none). But it’s exactly the snacky treat that gleams at you from the freezer when you’re exhausted and desperate.

The Whatever

Hydrolyzed Collagen
This $8 bag of dust is supposed to make you imagine the squishy parts between your creaky joints becoming plump and supple as Jell-O. Speaking of Jell-O, fun fact, 4 ounces of unflavored gelatin is only $3 and has the same magic ingredient.* In a smoothie the collagen was undetectable to my taste buds but did wonders on my mental perception of health. If you fear aging and the inevitability of death, I suggest this collagen as a brief distraction from reality.

*Please consult your doctor or psychic before taking dietary advice from someone who reviews Trader Joe’s snacks.

All Those Baked Goods

Cinnamon Twist Danish
Love this groovy packaging. What we have is a tangle of dough interwoven with cinnamon-sugar butter, akin to a cinnamon roll. But because the twists are so thin, you never quite get that plush chew of a roll. There was something about it that reminded me of the smell of Ikea. However, I finished every last bite with coffee.

Sonoran-Style Flour Tortillas
A crime! Trader Joe’s, which is headquartered near some of the best Sonoran Mexican food in the country, has turned out a supposedly Sonoran-style tortilla that’s blemished with molasses (I’m guessing for color?), dry and doughy, and has a plasticky flavor. Sonoran-style tortillas are usually thin, heavy on the fat (ideally lard, but in this case, sunflower oil), and magnificently chewy. Order from Caramelo instead, and when it comes to TJ’s tortillas, stick to the Homemade Flour Tortillas.

Vanilla Cookie Thins
You’ve seen these “cookie thins” in the regular grocery store and passed them up a million times, but here they are catching your eye. Isn’t that how it goes? I remember the family I babysat for always had “ginger thins” in their house to pair with tea, and I thought that was the classiest thing (along with glass-bottled Pellegrino in the fridge). So I wish these were ginger, but you can’t always get what you want. The vague vanilla flavor is inoffensive and the crunch sublime. I had a stack of them with a mug of buckwheat tea after dinner. I especially love the crumbs they leave behind, which make me feel like a woodpecker.

Lemon Flower Cookies
Yum, glucose syrup. Seriously, all they had to do was fill these tender, soft cookies with actual lemon curd and I’d have lost my mind. But instead it’s this treacly, astringent lemon gloop that made me run for a tortilla chip chaser.

Brown Butter Salted Caramel Mini Biscotti
I never trust a cookie that’s good from April until December, per its plastic coffin. These butter-flavored biscotti, studded with caramel chips, are hard enough to build a log cabin around oneself and then eat your way out.

Brown Sugar Cardamom Buns
Lovely little buns. They have an asymmetrical distribution of gooey brown sugar filling, which doesn’t make them seem like they come from an industrial bakery, and I appreciate that. Heavy on the cardamom, they’re best after a quick six-minute refresh in the oven at 350°. (If you have a toaster oven, even better.)

Mini Chocolate Chip Croissant Swirls
It’s a cookie-size croissant and that’s a certain kind of happiness, isn’t it?

Savory Stuff

Sous Vide Chicken Thighs
Look, $9 for a pound of perfectly cooked chicken thighs, puckered into a vacuum seal bag for your pleasure. And it was a pleasure! The thighs are broken up into nuggets, with a vague garlic-onion powder seasoning that leaves them a blank, juicy canvas for whatever you’ve got going on. Eat them cold in a salad, or reheat on the stove with a few handfuls of vegetables and call it dinner. (For the record, uncooked chicken thighs are only $2 a pound at Trader Joe’s, and you could just roast them in my favorite BA chicken recipe.)

Sous Vide Turkey Breast Tenderloins
Same story here. Sous vide cooked turkey, ready for action. I chopped up the turkey and heated it for a lunch wrap, and like all turkey, it was satisfying and a little dry, that righteous consequence of not being the beef my doctor told me to tone it down on. If you’re looking for quick, mostly unfucked-with protein, and would rather not turn a dial on your oven, this is for you.

Potato Salad
I make one hell of a classic Southern potato salad (key = chopped pickles), so it’s with some moderate pain that I admit this is pretty good, if heavy on the mayo. Some of the potatoes verge on foamy from being suspended in their gloopy atmosphere for so long, but c’est la vie! Don’t ask too much of your potato salad, and it won’t ask too much of you.

Savory Squares
Also known as gluten-free vegan Cheez-Its. There’s a subtle softness, but at least these crackers hold it together, unlike me when I realized I was five days behind deadline on these reviews. Flavorwise, they’re chaos. Nutritional yeast cheesiness competes with onion and garlic powders, toasty sesame seeds, and some “natural flavors” working overtime. I could see throwing these into a kid’s bento box and fooling them for decades, until the day they taste a real Cheez-It and life comes into Technicolor.

Sweet ’n’ Snacky

Brown Sugar Boba Mochi
Whatever you do, don’t leave these individually wrapped mochi snacks in the sun, because the rice flour coating melts into the brown mochi, which wrinkles, and appears like a cartoon poo—especially when you bite it in half and the brown sugar filling peeks out. But other than that, it’s fun. Soft and squishy, extremely toasty (almost as if the brown sugar burnt a little), this is the kind of treat that’s the whole reason we’re at this store in the first place.

Freeze Dried Raspberries
I’d never buy these astronaut berries if I didn’t have to because I love ~the real thing~ but hot damn if they aren’t sweet and candy-like. You’d think those delicate little berries wouldn’t stand a chance once dried and mummified, but they hold up, getting stuck in every crater of my molars for my tongue to discover later in the afternoon—joy.

Dried Australian Red Papaya
Uh-oh, Joe needs to discuss something with his supplier because this papaya has been dried to shoe leather. I struggled to chew a few pieces so badly that I had to spit them out. Stick with the mango.

Milk Chocolate Covered Honeycomb Candy
I had this type of chocolate at a quaint candy shop where they called it “seafoam,” and I prefer that branding. Maybe you’ve had this before—it’s bright ochre inside and the “honeycomb” sort of shreds against the teeth for a satisfying, airy, and loud crunch.

Pantry Staples

Organic Couscous
Tiny bits o’ wheat. I prefer the big, bulbous couscous for more textural adventure, but no one’s taking my order. I made this per package instructions, and it was ready in under 10 minutes, a cheap answer to the perpetual what’s-going-with-this dinner question. Add butter and tons of black pepper.

Cal Pressed Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Pretty ironic for TJ’s to tout this as special small-batch California olive oil and then not tell you what farm (or even region) it’s from due to their CIA-level private labeling programming. Like wine, olive oil’s place tells its story! Wherever in the Golden State this came from, it’s mild and buttery with an easy grassiness; it’s an unobtrusive salad dressing olive oil. I’ll use this up in no time.

Lavender Reusable Insulated Bag
I didn’t understand the viral hubbub about the mini Trader Joe’s tote (I mean, I did, because aw smol), but these poofy insulated bags deserve it more. Massive and gaudy—the purple pallor of Grimace—they’re cheap coolers for taking sandwiches to the beach, packing groceries when you’re headed on a road trip and the real cooler’s full, or transporting Jalapeño & Cream Cheese Crispy Wontons across state lines when there isn’t a TJ’s near you. It has purpose. It has vision. It’s $8.

Originally Appeared on Bon Appétit

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