Trader Joe’s Thanksgiving What to Buy (and What to Skip)

I am, as has been well documented , quite a big fan of the slightly nifty grocery store known as Trader Joe’s. I love their inexpensive and well stocked cheese department. I love their convenient pre-cooked lentils and turkey chili jars. I love this damn magic shaker . So I was very excited to check out their Thanksgiving suggestions, hoping to find gems that would make the holiday easier and more delicious.

Unfortunately, this taste test event was not as enjoyable as I thought. After purchasing every Thanksgiving-related item I could find – with the exception of pumpkin pie and pumpkin pie derivatives because I’ve tried it all before – I went back to my apartment and began to methodically gobble up this mountain of turkey, pumpkin, and carbs. sage smell. Some were good, some were aggressively mediocre, and some were very, very bad. Let’s start with the good.

• Gourmet Sauteed Onion Slices: I didn’t think pre-sauteed onion slices were better than French ones, but they are really excellent. They just taste more onion than any other brand I’ve tried and have a great crunchy texture.
• Kettle-flavored turkey and minced potato chips : I love the new potato chips and they’re new. They are quite forward-thinking, with a good dose of what I would call Thanksgiving Ramen Powder if it really was. (They’re not, but maybe they should be.) I’m looking forward to eating them with a leftover sandwich for Thanksgiving.
• Turkey Bone Broth and Turkey Broth: It’s always a good idea to have a few extra boxes of broth on hand, and both are quite good. Bone broth is (as expected) fuller and more meaty, the broth takes on more flavor from the few vegetables, making it sweeter and more vibrant.
• Sweet Potato Marshmallow Pixie Pie Blend : I honestly had never heard of “pixie pie” before and was very skeptical about the marshmallow cream packet that came with the mix. This piece was very easy to glue, and it turned out to be a marshmallow whipped confection with a shiny top and a delicate crust. It was quite sweet, but less marshmallow can be added if desired.
• Pumpkin Pie Seasoning: Lemon zest and cardamom make this spice mix (and the tarts you put it in) a little bit special.
• Maple Pecan Shortbread Bread: After being extremely disappointed with TJ’s Pumpkin Pie – more on that in a moment – I was blown away by how damn delicious these bars were. The shortbread cookies were oily, crumbly, and slightly chewy, and the pecan filling fell into that perfect sweet but not sugary place to keep eating until it’s too late and you’ve eaten half the skillet.

The aforementioned products were an absolute pleasure to nibble on, but now we must turn to products that did not overload or disappoint me. The next set just … exploded.

• Cranberry Sauce: While the texture of this sauce gives it an unusual look, it tastes like sugary canned food without any acid (or funny lines on corrugated cans).
• Brined half of a turkey breast with bones and herbal garlic butter: this turkey was lovely. If you averaged every turkey you ever ate and turned it into a real turkey, that’s it. It was quite fragrant, but the skin did not crumble so well, and by the time it acquired some color, the meat was a little dry. However, it was very easy to make – although I burned my hand in the process – and became quite tasty when I covered it with the sauce I made from the juices of the frying pan. You could have achieved more, although it would have required much more effort on your part.
• Chocolate Pecan Pie : The crust is slightly burnt, but I didn’t hate this bar with pecans and chocolate filling. However, darker chocolate would be better; a little bitterness would make him really good.
• Pumpkin Marble Mousse Bar: This bar is very beautiful, but despite all its beautiful curls, the taste is rather modest. I imagined a dessert that featured hot cheesecake and warm pumpkin spice dancing on a chewy, rich brownie crust, but it was actually much more muted. The cheesecake and pumpkin seemed to neutralize each other, and the base was soft.
• Canned Organic Pumpkin: This pumpkin has as much flavor as you would expect from a pumpkin like this, but is much wetter than Libby, which affects the texture of your pie.
• Mix for gluten-free stuffing: this mixture for the filling is very decent. All the usual condiments are present and accounted for, and while it definitely doesn’t taste homemade, it wasn’t as salty as some of the other concoctions on the market .
• Pumpkin Pies (both fresh and frozen, not shown because I’ve eaten them before): The filling in a fresh pumpkin pie could be thought of as homemade – well, homemade from a tin can – but the crust on both pies is terribly soft. The frozen filling is creamier with an incredibly smooth texture, which I honestly liked.
• Pumpkin Cheesecake (not pictured because I’ve eaten it before): This is a very light and fluffy cheesecake with more pumpkin spice than pumpkin spice. I could have done a little more cream cheese flavor.

Basically, I wouldn’t be pissed off if someone served me these things for Thanksgiving, but I wouldn’t be proud to serve them myself. Next, we have products that put the name of Trader Joe to shame.

• Everything in the black plastic tray: Trader Joe’s has multiple Thanksgiving sides and everything I tried was just plain bad. The butternut squash gratin was soft and soft, the filling had no vegetable flavor and was too thyme-flavored, and the corn casserole had an inexplicable taste of shellfish. I guess the sweet potatoes weren’t particularly offensive, but they could have been fried a little more and a little salt.
• Turkey Sauce: The texture was good, but there was an unpleasant aftertaste that I still cannot determine. It looked like sage, but not sage, if that makes any sense.
• Turkey & Stuffing En Croute: I wanted it to work, but let’s be honest , it was doomed from the start. There was too much moisture between the turkey and the filling to flake the dough, especially without any hydrophobic layer (like ham in a rubber sole). In terms of taste, both the turkey and the filling felt like a very “TV dinner”.
• Portabella Condensed Mushroom Cream Soup: I think Trader Joe’s tried to offer a discreet and balanced alternative to classic Campbell’s, but they ended up with a soup that was bland and lacking in much coveted umami.
• Pecan Pie: Pecans are my favorite pie, so I might have judged this a little harshly, but it was just awful. The crust was a little overcooked again, but the real problem was the filling. It was super sweet, super jelly, and had no real depth of flavor except for the pecan halves floating on top. I haven’t even finished one piece, but it doesn’t seem right to me to throw away the pie, so it sits on my kitchen counter smugly taking up space.
• Frozen Pie Crust : As you can see in the ninth photo in our slideshow, the pie crust did not make it onto the pie plate as both crust – which had been thawed according to package instructions – crumbled when trying to unfold.
• Cornbread Filling Mix : This mixture definitely didn’t resemble any cornbread dressing I’ve ever tasted. It had a very unpleasant smell that was not – to me – the identifiable smell of food. I don’t even remember how it tasted, the smell was so overwhelming.

That’s all. While there were winners – I am obsessed with those fried onions – there were also many things that should have been avoided, or at least kindly ignored. If, however, you need a cheese plate before dinner or a snack to watch football, Trader Joe’s is still a good bet.

Update 11/15/2017: There has been some confusion with the mince mix and the gluten free mix has been wrongly defamed. Actually the bad smell was the cornbread mix, not the gluten free mix, which was decent. The article has been updated to reflect the truth.

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