Trader Jose’s (Trader Joe’s) Chicken Asada
Posted: February 20, 2014 Filed under: Chicken, Meat | Tags: chicken asada, pollo asado, Trader Joe's Brand 2 Comments
No, I did not use this in time. Please don’t judge me.
Trader Joe’s Chicken Asada with Peppers and Onions is a twist within a twist. The classic asada, the asada we’re most likely to meet out in the world, is of course carne asada – a beef dish. Trader Joe’s confounds these classical notions with a chicken dish of pollo asado and, not content to simply flip the script once, flips it again by marinating the chicken in a pineapple juice marinade. The result is a citrusy, savory, colorful main dish that will satisfy every bit as well or better than any mere carne asada.
Let’s talk asada. The term, I am informed by my vast knowledge of where to translate words on the internet, literally means “roasted” or “grilled”. Now you and I and anyone else who lives south of the 40th parallel knows that this term is encountered nearly exclusively with carne – aka beef. Specifically marinated beef. Exactly what form that beef is going to take, on the other hand, is anyone’s guess. As a rule you can expect long, thin strips, though you’re just as likely to end up with mince meat or a single giant block. Like barbecue, the only real rule is that it’s beef and that it’s been seared to hell on a grill. And, of course, that it gets served up with some sort of vegetable or another.
So it was with considerable curiosity that I picked up the chicken “asada” – or more correctly asado. Could chicken be as good as beef? It certainly can, and in this case it certainly is. Though it lacks the sinewy tenderness you might expect from a good bit of roast flank steak, you’re still getting a nice, juicy slice of flame grilled chicken that locks in that barbecue flavor. Even better, it brings that wonderfully lean nutrition that chicken is famous for – satisfying the health conscious with its rock bottom 3 grams of fat per serving.
Now as exciting as chicken is by itself, what really caught my attention in this dish is the unusual marinade. Pineapple juice is the base, seasoned with garlic, chili powder and coriander. Now it’s not unheard of from lemon juice to go into your carne asada marinade, but this is generally a highlight, not the base note. Here the pineapple flavor is unmistakable, and when coupled with the hints of coriander you might be left wondering if you’re eating a Mexican dish at all, or if you got a box of mislabeled Indonesian food.
If it wasn’t for the fact that Trader Joe’s Chicken Asada goes so well in a fajita, I’d probably make a bigger stink about this flagrant flaunting of traditional labels. As the case stands though, the sweet, citrus vibes and subtle smoky flavoring of the other spices do an amazing job spicing up your otherwise staid and ordinary fajita/burrito/taco.
Complimenting the chicken is a reasonable serving of sliced, grilled onion, poblano pepper, and red bell pepper. Nothing too crazy about these suckers – just your regular veggies soaking up the unusual marinade. If you decide to microwave this dish, just be sure to keep an eye on these guys. I found that even after nuking them for the upper time limit given the veggies were still a little tougher than they should have been.
Overall, this is a very good dish, and certainly one worth checking out, just so long as you don’t think of it as an ordinary carne asada.
The Breakdown
Would I Recommend It: Sure, it’s tasty and a little different.
Would I Buy It Again: This could become a staple of Mexican food night around my place.
Final Synopsis: A lean, citrusy alternative to traditional carne asada.
Trader Joe’s Chicken Asada – Nutrition Facts
Trader Joe’s Cobb Salad
Posted: January 28, 2014 Filed under: Bacon, Meat, Salad, Trader Joe's Brand | Tags: cobb salad, Trader Joe's 2 Comments
A salad named for some guy named Cobb.
I love salad, but so often it mystifies me. For instance, why do salads always cost more than the surf ‘n turf at restaurants, and why has no fast food chain been able to create a salad that tastes better than a pile of anemic grass clipping with woody chicken strips on top? But of all the salad imponderables, I’m most perplexed by the salads that manage to pack in more fat and carbs than the grossest monstrosities ever to shamble out of Wendy’s R&D department.
Now, Trader Joe’s Cobb Salad isn’t the worst offender on the block (that honor belongs to the 800 calorie candied pecan and blue cheese salad) but it’s still a serious fat delivery system.
Now, yes, before we get going, I am fully aware this is a cobb salad we’re talking about – never high on anyone’s list of healthy noshes. Nevertheless, this is one deceptively hefty salad we’re talking about.
Trader Joe’s bring you by-the-book cobb salad with no real surprises here. Grilled chicken breast, bacon crumbles, ripe blue cheese, some tomatoes, and of course, a sliced hard boiled egg, served with a side of hearty ranch dressing.
What, no olives and anchovies? No sir, I’m afraid not. Perhaps Joe was afraid of turning off the 98% of the population that can’t stand the two of those things together. The salad attempts to compensate for this by bringing in a second cheese in the form of some musky gorgonzola. At any rate, with a run down like that you’re going to expect a certain amount of fat, etc. And, in fact, in some ways this salad isn’t that bad. Only 380 calories, with dressing, and a quite satisfactory 10 grams of carbs.
Just below the surface, however, lurks some shocking stats – 250 calories out of 380 are from fat – that’s 28 grams AKA 43% your daily recommended amount. Combine that with the 47% of your daily cholesterol limits, and you might start to think twice.
Normally, salads that suffer from such unhealthy nutritional profiles are under the sway of a fatty dressing. That’s true here – to some extent. The ranch kicks in 12 grams of fat, but even without it you’re still talking about 42% of your cholesterol.
None of that would be so bad, if only the dressing was better than it is. A far as ranch dressings go, this is actually a really nice version. This clearly isn’t something taken from another brand’s mass produced bottles. The ranch in this salad feels downright rustic – smooth and creamy, sure, but swimming with full-bodied herbs that season the ranch and give it some real character. It practically feels home made.
That said, it doesn’t really work in this salad. This ranch is too mild for such a robust salad as this. It’s a gentle butter milk ranch that disappears into the background of each bite, and while there’s much to be appreciated in subtlety, it leaves you wondering why you’re pouring 12 grams of fat into your arteries if you can’t even taste it.
Just like the Artichoke and Hearts of Palm salad from the other day, I’d recommend a dressing substitution. Chuck that tub of ranch (or save it for a future occasion) and drizzle on a little of Trader Joe’s Light Champagne Vinaigrette. Not only is it much, much healthier, and tastier but the creamy zing of the vinaigrette really plays well against the savory and salty flavors of the bacon, eggs, and cheese.
With the dressing switched out, this cobb salad does better – but it didn’t wow me. It’s not bad – just very average. The tomatoes taste like tomatoes, the lettuce tastes like lettuce, and everything else just sort of tastes pretty okay. Like Trader Joe’s Cowboy Bark, I feel if you’re going to sit down and eat 28 grams of fat, you should enjoy the hell out of it. Trader Joe’s has some great salads and some healthy salads – this one is neither.
The Breakdown
Would I Recommend It: It’s not bad, but I wouldn’t recommend it.
Would I Buy It Again: Not if I want to lose any weight.
Final Synopsis: A standard cobb salad without anything to recommend it by.
Trader Joe’s Cobb Salad -Nutrition Facts
Trader Joe’s Uncured Black Forest Bacon
Posted: January 23, 2014 Filed under: Bacon, Meat, Trader Joe's Brand | Tags: bacon 1 Comment
Despite repeated phone calls, TJ’s is staying quite on how the bacon is cured, what’s in the dry rub, and whether the pigs are actually from the Black Forest. That raises more questions than it answers, Joe.
Bacon week continues with Trader Joe’s Uncured Black Forest Bacon!
This has been a banner week for me. The transition from a baconless existence to a world of delicious bacon has left me unnaturally giddy and elated. Not just one, but two different kinds of suberp, praise-worthy bacon have glorified my breakfast this week. Trader Joe’s Uncured Apple Smoked Bacon we already covered, and by gum if you don’t have some of this in your pantry already then I don’t know what you’re doing with your life. Today we take a look at Trader Joe’s other delicious bacon – Black Forest Bacon.
Is the Black Forest bacon delicious? Absolutely – it’s a nice thick cut of fatty, smoky, slightly sweet bacon that is almost too good for this earth. Is it better than the Apple Smoked Bacon? That’s a trickier question. Where the applewood smoked bacon comes out the gate strong with plenty of razzle dazzle, Trader Joe’s Uncured Black Forest Bacon offers a more sophisticated and nuanced bacon choice.
Tastewise, these bacons are playing quite different games. The apple smoked bacon has set out to dominate the world of smokey, strongly seasoned bacon and it has done exactly that. In a side by side taste test, I’d have to choose the the apple smoked bacon, no question. But real life isn’t a taste test. When it comes to a bacon you’re going to turn to every morning, you don’t necessarily want the intense flavor and smokey aroma of the apple smoked bacon day after day. In the same way that you don’t always turn to the maltiest beer, or the sweetest soda, Trader Joe’s Black Forest Bacon provides a more nuanced alternative.
The taste of the black forest bacon is still as absolutely delicious as the apple smoked bacon, but plays up the “cured” side of bacon over the smoked side. You’ll notice the rind of spices on each slice forms a sort of natural crust once cooked, almost like a honey baked ham, and the raw sugar in the rub gives this bacon just a hint of sweetness. The taste is overall much broader than the apple smoked bacon, a little sugary, a little smokey, and lots of rich meaty flavor.
Two other factors enter into the comparison: nutrition and price. The Black Forest Bacon is actually the healthier choice, despite the sugar rub, with 70 calories a slice, and 45 from fat. That’s still 5 grams of fat per thick slice, but that’s better than the 7 grams of fat in each apple smoked slice. Pricewise, Trader Joe’s Black Forest Bacon is the more expensive option, $4.99 / 13 slice pack – a dollar more than the apple smoked variety.
Like the apple smoked bacon, the black forest bacon is also “uncured”, meaning no sodium nitrate or commercial curing salts were used in the process – nothing but the natural nitrates found in sea salt and celery power.
The takeaway is, on the balance these bacons are equally good. If you’re only an occasional bacon eater, the apple smoked version is probably the better choice – given it’s bigger flavor and worse nutritional profile. If, on the other hand, you’re snacking on bacon all the time, you might want to go with the more nuanced, and slightly healthier, black forest bacon.
The Breakdown
Would I Recommend It: Yes, but try Trader Joe’s Apple Smoked Bacon first.
Would I Buy It Again: I already have.
Final Synopsis: A delicious bacon for frequent bacon eaters.
Trader Joe’s Uncured Black Forest Bacon – Nutrition Facts
Trader Joe’s Uncured Apple Smoked Bacon
Posted: January 21, 2014 Filed under: Bacon, Meat, Trader Joe's Brand | Tags: apple smoked, bacon 6 Comments
God bless you, apple wood smoking process. You’ve done it again.
To date, the only bacon I’ve had from Trader Joe’s has been the healthy, if middling, Turkey Bacon. In fact, so devoted have I been to the concept of being healthy while eating bacon that turkey bacon is the only bacon that I’ve ingested for the last two years. So biting into Trader Joe’s Uncured Apple Smoked Bacon was like a spelunker emerging from cloistered subterranean depths to thrust his head into the sunlight again, like a skin diver coming up for air after a crushing 120′ dive, like Dr. Manette emerging from the Bastille to be recalled to life. It was, to be blunt, really good.
This is, quite simply put, some knock-out bacon. And it’s not like I haven’t had bacon before guys. I was raised on Oscar Meyer brand, I enjoy a slice or two with the occasional Denny’s Grand Slam, but there was never anything really and truly memorable about the long train of sizzled bacon slices that came before. Certainly nothing to make me buy into the still white-hot bacon mania that has gripped the nation lo these past few years.
Folks, I’m telling you this bacon has turned me all around.
I’m going to start out with my one quibble, my one insignificant little quibble, then commence with the waxing rhapsodic. The bacon, as you can see above, is all layered on top of each other – not fanned out as in most bacon packages. This makes it a little more difficult to pull the bacon slices apart – especially considering how marbled with thick bands of delectable fat they are.
Manage to pull off a couple thick slices of bacon, however, and you are in for a treat. The smell, by itself, is enough to get you drunk. It’s almost hard to find a bacon in this country that isn’t “applewood-smoked”, or “mesquite-smoked”, or appended with some other marketer-inflated appellation that means, essentially, nothing at all. Believe me when I tell you that this bacon has been smoked – really and properly smoked. It smells so richly of the savory curls of smoldering wood that you will swear you’re smoking it yourself as you cook it. It smells so good you’ll have to fight off the urge to shove raw strips of meat into your mouth with both fists.
Once your nose has feasted to satisfaction, it’s time to take a bite. Friends, every promise that the sizzle and smell of that bacon made to you the taste more than delivers on. Is it fatty? Yes, tremendously fatty – packing in 7 grams of fat per slice, but it is deliciously essential fat, fat which enriches the smoky meat with melt in your mouth, hug-your-tongue flavor. It is a lot of fat, but that, of course, is God’s way of keeping us from eating bacon all the time, non-stop. If you have room in your diet for a little extra fat, this is a fantastic way to spend it.
It’s all so wonderful, that it’s impossible for me to fully describe to you with mere human words how much this bacon pleases me. To top it all off, this wonderful apple smoked bacon is uncured and nitrate-free. Delicious and nitrate free? What else needs be said?
The Breakdown
Would I Recommend It: Yes, please buy this bacon.
Would I Buy It Again: As frequently as my diet allows.
Final Synopsis: The tastiest, store bought bacon I have ever eaten.
Trader Uncured Joe’s Apple Smoked Bacon – Nutrition Facts
Trader Joe’s Chicken and Roasted Beet Salad
Posted: January 16, 2014 Filed under: Beets, Cheese, Chicken, Feta, Meat, Salad, Trader Joe's Brand | Tags: Beets, Salad 6 Comments
I should replace this crappy picture with a better picture, but why bother? It’s just beets.
Sure, I tried beet salad once. Once. At the time I compared it to gelatin made from dirt, and nothing in the intervene months and years has done anything to convince me otherwise. So it was in a perplexed, slightly surreal haze that I found myself buying Trader Joe’s Chicken and Roasted Beet Salad.
Why am I buying this?, I thought, bemused, as if watching myself in a dream. Why am I paying this quirky sales clerk good money, money which could literally buy me anything, on beets? Have I truly gone mad at last? Sitting at my kitchen table, staring into the unsealed maw of this uncouth salad, it seemed the only likely answer.
I’m willing to admit that I have never eaten any beet and liked it. Certainly not in their rawest, beetiest form. I can boast that I managed to get down about a pint of Trader Joe’s Beet and Purple Carrot Juice a while back, before realizing that, no, this is terrible. Beets really have no place in my life, and I no place in a the life of beets. It’s an arrangement I think we’re both happy with.*
If you, gentle reader, have managed to make space in your heart for this ignoble root vegetable, than you are a better fellow than I, and I would ask you to keep in mind that I’m prejudiced against these things from the start.
This is a terrible salad. I’ve never really had a bad salad from Trader Joe’s, other than, you know, the ones with all the salmonella in them, but their Chicken and Roasted Beet salad blazes new downward territory. It’s not just the beets which are the bad part of this salad, that much was to be expected. The rest of the salad mix contribute as much to this stinker as the beets. It’s as if the salad engineers at TJ’s just gave up while putting it together.
“It’s got beets in it,” they probably said to themselves, pausing to let out a long, defeated sigh, “It’s not like anyone’s ever going to eat it.”
The salad mix here involves a very nice, snappy mixture of greens, but that one high point is defrayed by a couple factors. One, despite being a big 10 oz. salad, there’s not much in the way of greens or chicken in it. Two, it’s packed with a pungent, yet bland fetid cheese. There’s almost as much feta in here as there is chicken. I’ve got nothing against feta, per se, I think it’s a fine cheese, but this particular feta is on the mild and squeaky side. Cheese in a salad should be the highlight, not the grist you have to chew through.
That leads us to the beets themselves. Though unheralded on the packaging, this salad actually comes with two, count ’em two, kinds of beets – red beets and white beets. Isn’t that a pleasant surprise! All too aware that leaving beets in prolonged contact with wholesome food will ruin it, both kinds of beets come packaged in their own individual tubs. It’s these tubs, plus the considerable water weight of the beets, that accounts for the bulk of this salad. Such a sad waste of space.
The beets themselves are typical beets, which is to say: wet, cold, lumpy, drab, unpleasantly musky, and repulsive to the taste. It’s amazing to me how something can be so bland, yet so disgusting at the same time. Mother Nature must have been in a particularly creative and dark place when she came up with beets. It was probably the same day she figured out slugs.
All that said, Trader Joe’s did choose a good dressing to pair the salad with. The balsamic vinaigrette is well formulated, hitting all the rights notes of viscosity, acidity and sweetness. It does a good job highlighting the flavorful notes of the salad while masking the weaker ones. Good, but not good enough to rescue the salad from the beets.
In the end, if you, like all right minded people, dislike beets, then avoid this salad. For good measure, maybe consider avoiding any salads it happens to be touching as well. If, on the other hand, you don’t mind beets then why not eat this, as it appears you’re willing to eat anything.
*I take all this back in the face of borscht, which is one of the most delicious soups in existence. How such a charming son came from such a damned sire, I can’t imagine.
The Breakdown
Would I Recommend This: Ha ha ha.
Would I Buy It Again: Ha ha ha ha ha, no.
Final Synopsis: A subpar salad with some beets thrown on. It’s like someone was trying to get fired.
Trader Joe’s Roated Beet and Chicken Salad – Nuitrition Facts
Trader Joe’s Turkey Gobbler Wrap
Posted: November 14, 2013 Filed under: Sandwich, Trader Joe's Brand, Turkey | Tags: Thanksgiving, Wrap Leave a comment
Nothing stokes a hunger like “festive dipping sauce”!
Surely we can all agree on a good Thanksgiving dinner – complete with juicy turkey, stuffing and all the trimmings. But what if that dinner was served in the form of a wrap? Would that be just as agreeable? Trader Joe’s is certainly hoping so, with their sandwich, the Turkey Gobbler Wrap.
Trader Joe’s Turkey Gobbler Wrap is not the first sandwich to try and cram an entire Thanksgiving feast into a sandwich, not by a long shot. This is America after all, if there were only two thing we like they’d be commemorating our nations founding and compressing whole meals into fast-snacking cylinders. What Trader Joe’s does different from these other sandwiches, however, is loose the bread. I’ll save you some time and tell you right now: that was a misstep, but let’s take a look at what’s actually inside this wrap before passing sweeping judgement.
Turkey, as you may expect, makes up the bulk of the filling, along with a combination of stuffing, real cranberries and, surprising to me, cream cheese. This mish-mash works together okay – satisfactory, if not tasty. But who does turkey all that well in a pre-packaged sandwich, really? Who picks up a turkey sandwich, even from Trader Joe’s, and goes, “Oh boy – this is going to be some amazing turkey!” No, you know it’s going to be dry, the only question is how dry. This turkey? Only a little dry. That practically deserves praise.
The stuffing is equally satisfactory, only the cranberries really stand out as notable with their big bold flavor. Thanks, no doubt, the the fact that TJ deciced to use big, whole cranberries in the wrap.
On two slices of bread, this would be a good sandwich. Wrapped in a whole wehat tortilla on the other hand, it tastes a little off. There’s a certain taste and texture to a cold tortilla that goes wonderfully with some foods,v but just does not favors for most others. A Thanksgiving meal is just one of these that doesn’t go very well with the smooth, chewy, gluey walls of a big, floppy tortilla.
There’s another interesting facet to the Turkey Gobbler Wrap – in fact it was the reason I was drawn to it in the first place. Along with all the fixin’s in the wrap itself also comes a serving of “Festive Dipping Sauce”. That phrase is blazing brand new avenues of nebulous terminology. “Festive dipping sauce” is one of those descriptors so vauge and pointedly undefined as to be actually frightening. It’s the kind of name that’s a mask, hiding the real nature of the food you’re about to eat behind a meaningless collection of words. It’s what you do when you realize the chicken you’re serving isn’t actually an identifiable part of the bird so much as it is a slurry of heavily processed ventrical matter, so you just call them “chicken nuggets”.
Opening up the little tub, you will discover that it’s an opaque tan liquid which, on taste, strongly resemles a milky gravy. It’s not bad tasting – it might acutally be the tastiest part of the sandwich and it’s certainly a tasty way to combat the dryness of the turkey – but it’s important to remember that it’s not actually gravy. If it was gravy, you can bet they would call it gravy, in the same way that if you could get away with putting “STEAK” on the cans of meat you sell you would. That’s why the FDA has regulations for these things and you’re forced to put “Mechanically Separated Pork” on the label instead.
The “sauce” as it turns out, is a mixture of turkey broth, milk cream, sherry wine and roux (a flour/fat mixture), and while lip-smackingly good also remains strangely uncongealed even coming straight out of the fridge.
Apart from the tortilla, Trader Joe’s does a good job replicating the Thankgiving dinner – right down to the calorie count. You’ll notice the nutritional information below is only for ½ of a wrap – which means you’re getting 98 grams of carbs and 20 grams of fat along with your 800 calories. That’s an audacious wrap, people. The only aprt of the wrap that didn’t really stand out to me, the cream cheese filling, is the party responsible for much fo the fat and calories. It seems that Trader Joe’s could have subsittued this out for something lighter. As it stands, you’ll want ot substitute out the wrap for a healtheir meal if you’re concerned about your waistline.
The Breakdown
Would I Recommend It: Not really, unless you’re jonesin’ for Thanksgiving.
Would I Buy It Again: I’d go for the equivalent 1.5 Big Macs instead.
Final Synopsis: Not bad, but not nearly good enough to justify 800 calories.
Trader Joe’s Turkey Gobbler Wrap – Nutrition Facts
Trader Joe’s Salad with BBQ Flavored Chicken
Posted: September 26, 2013 Filed under: Chicken, Salad, Trader Joe's Brand | Tags: bbq chicken, bbq chicken salad 4 Comments
An uninspired name for an uninspired salad.
Today we have yet another entry in TJ’s seeming endless parade of salads. Unfortunately, Trader Joe’s Salad with BBQ Flavored Chicken is a pale imitation and poor match for the much more delicious MexiCali salad or, well, most of the salads I’ve tried from TJ’s.
TJ’s BBQ chicken Salad commits one of the great crimes of food – being bland. The salad is basically fine – it’s not unpalatable or gross or particularly unpleasant at all really – it’s simply mute, a more or less flavorless meal. This would have been less of a surprise if I this salad was all boiled watercress or something, but were talking about what sounds like a knock-out line up of ingredients. Lettuce, black beans, corn, minced red pepper, tortilla strips and smoked Gouda cheese. The smoked Gouda I’m not going to say a word against – it’s delicious burst of flavor in an otherwise uninteresting salad. Instead, let’s take a look at the BBQ flavored chicken itself. Sounds good, right? Or does it?
I suppose the “flavored” line in the title should have tipped me off. When people start tossing in qualifiers like “flavored”, as in “grape juice flavored beverage drink”, you know you’re going to be getting some sub-par cuisine. That’s what we’re getting here. This isn’t barbecue chicken, or chicken with barbecue sauce, its barbecue-flavored chicken, meaning, I suppose, that instead of actually cooking the chicken up like someone who cares, you sort of mist the chicken with a barbecue solution while it runs by on a conveyor belt. Whatever the method, the chicken holds only a weak bbq sauce taste that vanishes under the stronger lettuce and corn flavors.
Hand in hand with the bland bbq chicken, goes the bland BBQ Vinaigrette. We’ve already looked, very briefly, at the proud tradition of vinegar-based BBQ sauces native to the Carolinas. This is not they. The included BBQ vinaigrette tastes like a weak, watered down BBQ sauce that does no favor for the vegetable medley. If you cut this out and substituted it with a more robust, flavorful sauce, maybe a blue cheese of some sort, you might have a salad worth recommending. That’s probably more effort that it’s worth however.
Overall, this salad manages to be less than the sum of its parts. It’s not the worst salad in the world, but it really has nothing to recommend it either. When you’ve got panoply of truly great salads just waiting for you in the produce aisle, it’s hard to imagine why you’d ever go for this guy.
The Breakdown:
Would I Recommend It: No, try the Mexicali salad instead.
Would I Buy It Again: Maybe ironically.
Final Synopsis: A salad as bland as it is poorly named.
Trader Joe’s Salad with BBQ Flavored Chicken – Nutrition Facts
Trader Ming’s (Trader Joe’s) Kung Pao Chicken
Posted: August 29, 2013 Filed under: Chicken, Frozen Food, Meat, Trader Joe's Brand | Tags: chinese, kung pao, trader ming 10 Comments
Tastes even better than it looks.
This, folks, is a classy frozen meal. When it comes to frozen dinners there are many terrible ones and a few tasty ones – then there are the classy ones. A classy dish is one that turns from frozen, straight-from-the-supermarket food into something that makes you feel like a real person – a dish you’d be happy to serve your family, not just shovel into your mouth alone. Our old friend Hake en Papillote was such a classy dish, and TJ’s Kung Pao Chicken is another. It tastes so good, and cooks up so easily, that and looks so nice on your plate (peanuts and spicy red peppers included!) that you can’t help but feel like a skilled chef.
Before I get into exactly why this Kung Pao is so tasty, a few words on its history are in order. Like many traditional dishes, Kung Pao chicken has a fascinating story that needs to be heard. Kung Pao chicken popped into existence in the 1800’s in the spicy Szechuan region of China. It quickly exploded in popularity, becoming a darling of restaurants all across the nation, until it abruptly ceased to exist one day in 1966, and wouldn’t return to tables for two decades. This sudden disappearance was, of course, the fault of Ding Baozhen, an aristocrat who died in the Qing Dynasty nearly a hundred years earlier.
“Kung Pao” literally means “Palace Guardian”, which just happens to be the title that noble Ding, then governor of Shichuan province, bore. Due to reasons lost to time, Govenor Ding was bestowed the honor of having this delicious, spicy chicken dish named after him. Kung Pao glorified Ding on menus across the kingdom until the sudden, alarming rise of Communism in the mid 60’s China and the ensuing Cultural Revolution. The Cultural Revolution was a period of intense fanaticism in China, and chief among its various purposes was to unmoor modern China from it’s imperial roots. Practically, this meant rewriting all of Chinese history, right down to the incidentally named local fare. As a result, from the 1960’s to the 1980’s, Kung Pao, though still served, was no longer known as Kung Pao. Officially, it was now known as “Hongbao Jiding” or “Fast-fried chicken cubes”.
At the exact same time, Kung Pao was experiencing great turbulence in the immigrant kitchens of Chinese Americans. There the savory dish was suffering an identity crisis of similar magnitude as in China. While the name persisted unchanged, its ingredients started to undergo a radical revision. Authentic Chinese Kung Pao hinges on one key ingredient, the Sichuan peppercorn – an ingredient common throughout Szchehuan cooking. These peppercorns were responsible for the unique, tingling zing Kung Pao was supposed to have on the tongue and lips. The peppercorns flowed freely into American ports until 1968, when Uncle Sam slammed the door. The problem? A botanical ailment known as “citrus canker” was devastating American crops and Sichuan peppercorns numbered among the disease’s potential vectors. With the fate of the Florida orange at stake, Sichuan peppercorns had to go. For 32 years, all the way until the year 2000, the peppercorns were banned from these shores, forcing Kung Pao to mutate into a different form – the peppercorn-free, vegetable-laden dish we know today.
Communism has fallen and the Sichuan peppercorn is again freely available, but the path of western-style Kung Pao is firmly implanted in the American mind. This isn’t a bad thing – bringing a delicious new form of food into the world can never be a bad thing – and Trader Joe’s has mastered the medium perfectly. I’ve been known to bandy the word “mastery” around fairly lightly, but in this case it absolutely applies. I’ve sat down to a plate after plate of Kung Pao chicken in numerous Chinese restaurants and I can firmly say that, like minestrone before it, the Trader Joe’s version is better than all of them.
I’ll be damned if I know how they packed that much goodness into a frozen bag, but they managed it. Snap open the 1 lb+ bag (cost, a damn reasonable $4.99), and you’ll find some frozen, breaded chicken, a bag of frozen veggies (bell peppers, onions, and water chestnuts and of course super hot peppers), two sacks of tangy sauce, and a baggy of halved peanuts. There are microwaveable instructions on the bag but disregard these – they’re only there to tempt the weak-willed. Your choice should be skillet cooking, which could not be easy, quicker or more rewarding. I’m generally a klutz in the kitchen, but even I can brown chicken in a tablespoon of oil, add the vegetables until they soften, mix in sauce and garnish with peanuts. Nothing more than that, and you end up with a somewhat sweet, salty, savory dish of tender chicken, crunchy veggies and yielding peanuts, all held together by a brilliantly balanced sauce and a thread of fire.
The only complaint I can level against the Kung Pao is that it comes with too much sauce. Two packets is more than you need – but this is as easily solved as putting one packet aside before cooking. If only all of life was this easy.
The Breakdown
Would I Recommend It: I absolutely would.
Would I Buy It Again: I already have.
Final Synopsis: A turbulent history has culminated in this better-than-restaurant Kung Pao chicken.
Trader Joes Kung Pao Chicken – Nutrition Facts
Trader Joe’s Bacon and Spinach Salad
Posted: July 25, 2013 Filed under: Bacon, Salad, Spinach, Trader Joe's Brand 3 Comments
12 ounces of heart-clogging goodness.
When is a salad not a salad? No, that’s not the set up for a hilarious joke – it’s a dead on serious philosophical musing. Undoubtedly there are as many different answers as there are salad lovers on this planet. Some might quibble over the presences of leafy greens, others might argue the necessity of a dressing. For me, it comes down to nutrition.
When a salad is delivering 108% of your daily fat intake in a single serving, that’s a poorly constructed hamburger not a salad. When someone can say to you, “Whoa, buddy, instead of that salad, why don’t you try something healthier. Here, shove these two Big Macs into your mouth at the same time.” That for me is where a salad crosses the threshold into junk food. What I’m saying is, brace yourself for Trader Joe’s Bacon and Spinach Salad.
I bought this salad the other night because I was hungry and had managed to convince myself that, you know, in light of the paleolithic diet, Atkins, etc TJ’s Bacon and Spinach Salad wasn’t actually that bad for me. If you haven’t looked yet, I’m going to direct your eyes to the bottom of this article. Yup, that’s right. Not just 108% of your daily recommended fat, but 105% of your cholesterol, 68% of your sodium, and even some trans fats in there for good measure, all delivered directly to your arteries on a healthy bed of fresh spinach.
Who in their right mind can call this a salad? If they’d stopped at the bacon, that’d be one thing but this salad by no means stops at the bacon. What else is in there?
Well, we’ve got some cherry tomatoes, nice plump and juicy, that’s fine, a whole hard-boiled egg, that’s not too bad, then we have the mozzarella cheese and the poppy seed dressing. I’m not sure which of those chokes me with surprise more. I mean, the mozzarella just seems egregious. We’ve already slathered the spinach with a hefty helping of cured pork belly, bacon that is literally sagging with fat, who was out there was thinking, “This salad just isn’t rich enough. Throw on a bunch of fatty, white cheese!” And, with that in mind, can I just say – poppy seed dressing? Really, Trader Joe’s? On top of everything else, poppy seed? One of the richest, liquid-fat infused dressings on the books? And not even a poppy seed dressing that makes overtures at healthiness, but an oily poppy seed dressing? Honest to god, this poppy seed dressing has a thick layer of oil floating on the surface when you crack it open. I’ve had poppy seed dressings many times before, but never one that comes with its own oil slick.
It’s astounding, readers. This salad is practically a novella about the rage simmering beneath the exterior of one crazed salad designer at Trader Joe’s, a man who has been forced, day after day, to design fresh, light new takes on lemon chicken while his soul within slavers for sticks of butter and pork flesh, a man who, one day, snapped when presented with a bag of broccoli slaw, the levees of his mind giving way to the flood of carnal need, and leapt about ransacking the shelves, tongue hanging out of his mouth, loading up a bed of spinach with his every secret, depraved desire.
Okay, so if you eat this salad everyday your body fat will eventually smother your heart and you will die, on that we can all agree. On the other hand, it’s very tasty. And of course it’s tasty, it’s a pile of fat and salt – it’s incredibly delicious. Pour on the poppy seed dressing, mix up the bacon and cheese and dig in – you’re taste buds will be taken on a wild ride of salty, fatty, meaty tastes. In fact, the most incredible thing about this salad is that it’s actually edible. As anyone who’s had a Big Mac can testify, it’s hard to eat so much fat and salt in one sitting and not leave feeling at least a little ill. For this we can thank the spinach and cherry tomatoes, which provide a clean, light taste counterbalance to the more dominant heavy tastes. In a way, it’s a brilliant solution to the problem of how to eat a bunch of fatty bacon and cheese all at once. If that’s not a problem your trying to solve, then this may not be the salad for you.
The Breakdown
Would I Recommend It: No to salad fans, yes to bacon fans.
Would I Buy It Again: I’m not sure my blood pressure can take it.
Final Synopsis: A novel way to eat a bunch of sloppy bacon.
Trader Joe’s Bacon and Spinach Salad – Nutritional Facts
Trader Joe’s Broccoli Slaw and Kale Salad with White Chicken Meat
Posted: July 5, 2013 Filed under: Chicken, Kale, Salad, Trader Joe's Brand 7 Comments
Man, red onion is an absolute salad winner – why are you leaving it off your label?
Ah, another delicious salad from Trader Joe’s – but like most TJ’s salads, their Broccoli Slaw and Kale Salad with White Chicken Meat has a unique set of quirks and shortfalls. Somewhere out there is the perfect Trader Joe’s salad, and while I’ve come close before it still eludes me. Nevertheless I press on, searching for that pot of leafy greens at the end of the rainbow.
Things get a bit weird from the word go as we face the fact that this is a kale-based salad – an uncommon choice in a world of iceberg and baby spinach. I have been underwhelmed by kale before, but at least now it’s being utilized for it’s intended purpose. Kale is a tough, flavorful leaf – a mess of roughage just waiting to scrub your insides clean, and as such demands a flavorful and carefully balanced composition to justify such a bold base. TJ’s finds exactly this with the addition of such hearty ingredients as cranberries, sunflower seeds, a coarse grating of broccoli slaw white chicken meat and, though it goes unheralded on the label, finely sliced red onion. Thin shavings of red onion are one of my favorite additions to any salad and they do beautifully here, adding a bit of zing to the broad, nutty flavors of the kale and sunflowerseeds.
What works a little less well for me is the broccoli slaw. Not that I have anything against broccoli slaw – in fact I buy Trader Joe’s Broccoli Slaw by the bagful for use in my own salads. That, however, is exactly the problem. The broccoli slaw on this salad is indisputable the same kind they’re peddling to me from the produce aisle three feet to my left. While that doesn’t necessarily drive me into a rage or anything, it does make me feel a bit cheap.
I suppose it was a little naive of me to think that Trader Joe’s might have a separate storehouse of special ingredients they use to make their salads and that weren’t just dipping into the common trough of their consumer goods and slapping something together. Nevertheless, it’s nice to see someone get dressed up if they’re courting your tastes. If you look at your little pail of food and realize it’s just just a diverted conveyor belt away from whatever goes into the bulk, economy bags the magic fades a little.
Aside from that rather abstract gripe, there’s only one other thing that bothers me about this otherwise very fine salad – the salad dressing. The packaging bills it as a “Sweet and Spicy Vinaigrette” which begins to approach the truth of the matter but then explodes in a burst of absurdity. Sweet and spicy? Yes, and very tasty to boot. Vinaigrette? Not on any planet I’m familiar with. The thick dressing that rolls sluggishly about its little plastic tub has more in common with 1000 Island than any vinaigrette I’ve seen in my life. In fact, a quick survey of the ingredients, or a quick taste, reveals that the dressing is primarily made from mayonnaise. Is this bad? Not necessarily, certainly not if you don’t mind a delicious but hugely fatty dressing on your kale. For my part, I substituted in Trader Joe’s Balsamic Vinaigrette and was much happier for it.
The Breakdown:
Would I Recommend It: Yes – even if you’ve never liked kale before you might like this.
Would I Buy It Again: Despite a couple short-comings, absolutely.
Final Synopsis: A robust, healthy salad with an unhealthy dressing.
Eating At Joes 
Recent Comments