Trader Joe's Limone Alfredo Sauce

This is the third Trader Joe's Alfredo sauce that I know of. I liked both of the first two I found (see here and here)--but this new product is the one I want to buy again and again and again. It's far and away my favorite of the three.

I admit that I was skeptical of adding lemon to a creamy/cheesy sauce. I was amazed at how well the combination works. Who knew? (Trader Joe did, that's who.) It's not just a faint whiff of lemon, either--they doused it up strongly, and I like it.

Nina found the lemon to be much less prominent than I did. As she speculated, this may be because she used a much lighter coating of the sauce, whereas I went pretty heavy-handed. Overall, she found it nice, but nothing special.

The label claims 3.5 servings per jar. I've had two, Nina one, and it looks like there's enough for one more serving left--so I think the label is about right.

Predictably, it is high in both fat and calories. That will stifle my usage somewhat. If not for that, I think it would become a staple. Even with that factor, I can see a lot of this stuff in my future.


Will I buy it again? 

Yes.

Trader Joe's Tomato Sauce

An ordinary, humble item, to be sure, but important to keep around for recipes. I've been buying it lately to use with TJ's Taco Seasoning Mix, and it's perfect. Plus, organic, in case you care about that sort of thing.


Will I buy it again? 

Yep. Because I like the taco mix so much, this has become a permanent pantry item for me.

Trader Joe's Creamy Pink Primavera Pasta Sauce

The pinkish hue of this sauce comes from the prominent beet purée. It was prominent in flavor, too--excessively so, I thought. 

Nina disagreed. She thought the lemon was bordering on being too prominent, whereas I barely noticed it for all the beet. 

For different reasons, then, this was not a winner in either book. 


Will I buy it again? 

No. 

Trader Joe's Ghost Chile BBQ Sauce

This is way too hot for me. Unlike some people, apparently, I don't like the sensation of third-degree burns in my mouth and esophagus.

I was serving it side-by-side with TJ's Kansas City Style sauce, on some fake pulled pork over rice. (As one does.) They are very similar in basic flavor profile, except for the new one's added fire. Nina tried mixing them together, and liked the resulting combination for its blend of sweetness, smokiness, tanginess, and heat. I've tried it at 1:1 and about 1.5:1 (Kansas:Ghost), and it's still unpleasantly burny for me.


Will I buy it again? 

No.

Trader Joe's Marinara Sauce Made With Crushed Tomatoes, Garlic & Basil

I thought this was above average in flavor, with a nice acidic bite to the tomato sauce, the way I like. But I wasn't keen on how easily it separated, leaving chunks on top of the pasta, and watery runoff underneath. I also just generally prefer more thoroughly pureed spaghetti sauce over chunky ones like this.

Nina paid it the ultimate compliment in saying that it was very much like she would make for herself--simple and with few ingredients. But that would also prevent her from buying it, because she would just, y'know, make it herself.


Will I buy it again? 

No.

Trader Joe's Alfredo Pasta Sauce

When I saw this among the pasta sauces on a recent TJ's run, I thought it must be a new product, because I surely would have noticed it before now. But no--a little Googling reveals that it's been around at least since 2011. I don't know how I overlooked it for so long.

For coming in a jar, it's a very good Alfredo sauce. Nice, mild flavor. Perhaps a tad thicker than would be optimal, but that's not a fatal flaw. Not quite up to what one can get in a good restaurant, but how could it be? Though I admit that I haven't tried a lot of them, I'd venture a guess that this is about as good as heat-and-serve Alfredo sauce can be.


Will I buy it again? 

Yes. It won't replace marinaras as my go-to pasta sauces, but I think it will be nice as an occasional change of pace.

Trader Joe's Autumnal Harvest Alfredo Sauce

Frankly, I thought this product sounded like a terrible idea. Ruin perfectly good Alfredo sauce with pumpkin and squash? Preposterous. On the other hand, I had previously thought the same thing about salsa and marinara, and was dead wrong both times; they ended up with Top Ten rankings.

I was wrong again. I loved this. The pumpkin/squash actually blends with and complements the cheesy sauce very nicely.

Nina was less excited. She thought it was too thick and "gloppy." She's not entirely wrong about that; it would be nicer if it flowed and spread more readily.

But it was such a nice break from marinaras, and such a surprise win, that I'm willing to overlook that flaw.

So maybe I shouldn't pre-judge so much next time?


Will I buy it again? 

Yes, at least once more this season while it's still around.

Trader Joe's TJ's Organic Kansas City Style BBQ Sauce

When I reviewed the Carolina Gold Barbecue Sauce, I wrote, "It's straight down the middle in terms of overall flavor, sweetness, heat, etc. It's just what I would expect from a grocery-store BBQ sauce, really." 

I wish to retract that, and instead apply it to this one. I blame the misattribution on too many years having elapsed since I had purchased and used barbecue sauces. My memory was warped. 

Since writing that, I've found something I like, and now eat frequently, that cries out for good barbecue sauce: Morningstar Farms fake pulled pork. I've been using the Carolina Gold almost exclusively, despite having originally written that I wasn't sure whether it would become a staple. 

Now I have tried the Carolina Gold and this new one side by side--literally on the two halves of the same plate of food--eight times. It has become clear to me how mistaken I was in my sense memory to see the Gold as the standard product. Compared to this, the Gold is quite a bit sweeter, tangier, and spicier. This one is the down-the-middle, traditional BBQ sauce--less sweet and spicy than the Gold, but with much more smokiness. It's also quite a bit thicker; it comes out more in globs, whereas the Gold is fairly thin and pours easily. 

Which one do I like better? I spent a good portion of eight meals pondering that, and couldn't come to a definitive answer. I think if you put a gun to my head and made me pick one of them to use for the rest of my life, it would be this one. But I found that I really, really liked having both of them on my plate of food, side by side, and switching between them several times in the course of one meal. I had originally done that just for comparison-testing purposes, but I think I'm going to keep doing it, even though it seems like a bit of an odd practice. The contrast just works really well for me. 

I guess you could say I discovered co-champions. 

Will I buy it again? 

Yes, definitely. I'm going to include both this and the Gold in my list of staples, because I anticipate keeping both of them on hand permanently. 

Trader Joe's Thai Green Curry Simmer Sauce

Two years ago, I bought a jar of an identically named TJ's product, used it to cook up some fake chicken, put the mixture over rice, and ended up loving the result. At that time, I intended to do more cooking with the sauce--but then I forgot about it and never did.

A few months ago, Nina was making dinner at her place, and I noticed that she was using a jar like the one shown above--very different (and far more boring) from the one I remembered. Clearly TJ's had changed the recipe, and probably the supplier. Comparing the two lists of ingredients makes it even more obvious that this is not the same stuff, despite the same name. They're similar, but with different proportions and spices.

I did basically the same thing with this as I had with the other one. I liked the result just fine. However, I was less excited about it than I remember being with the original. I'm not sure if that's because of the changed formula, or changed expectations on my part, or maybe the use of a different brand of fake chicken (this time, one called "Comrade Cluck," from the Asheville-based company "No Evil Foods"). The coconut component seemed less prominent, which was one of the things I most liked about the previous version. Most unfortunately, the color was about as unappealing as it could be--an icky gray-brown--though this may have been largely the fault of the Comrade Cluck, not the sauce, or perhaps a specific interaction between them.


Will I buy it again? 

Yes. I wish I had jar of the old stuff to compare directly; maybe they're more similar than I'm thinking. But regardless of what might have changed, I like the result enough to add it to my regular rotation.

Trader Joe's Korean Style BBQ Sauce

I think calling this barbecue sauce is a misnomer, if not outright fraud.

After water and sugar, the main ingredient is soy sauce. This is followed by something called gochujang sauce, consisting mainly of sugar and miso. Bringing up the rear are sake, garlic, ginger, cornstarch, lemon juice concentrate, and red pepper. There's almost nothing traditionally barbecuish in the bottle.

From the product name, I expected a mainstream BBQ sauce with a soy-sauce accent--which I think would be interesting and potentially a winner--but frankly I found it hard to taste anything here except the soy sauce. A spiced-up soy sauce is really not what I want on my (fake/vegetarian) pulled pork.


Will I buy it again? 

No.

Trader Joe's Fat Free Pizza Sauce

This was perfectly decent pizza sauce--right up the middle of what you'd expect, with no surprises. Not too sweet, not too salty, not too spicy, not too chunky. It's been a couple of years since I had Trader Joe's refrigerated pizza sauce, but my memory of it is about the same this stuff, and this has the added advantage of shelf stability. I'd kind of like to try them side by side, but I never make enough pizza to justify having both open at one, as about half of each would end up wasted.


Will I buy it again? 

Yes.

Trader Joe's Kentucky Bourbon BBQ Sauce

I've never swallowed any bourbon, but now I have a pretty good idea of what it tastes like. This sauce is loaded with an unfamiliar (to me) flavor that just has to be the bourbon. It's a burned, slightly bitter flavor--and I don't like it at all. I've tried it three times now, and though my dislike on the third tasting wasn't as intense as on the first, it's still a net negative. On all three occasions, I was comparing it directly with Trader Joe's Carolina Gold, with half of the plate using each, and I strongly preferred the latter each time, with every forkful.


Will I buy it again? 

No. I don't want to eat any more of it, so it's going back to the store for a refund.

Trader Joe's Carolina Gold Barbeque Sauce

I've had this bottle sitting around unopened for over a year. I almost never use barbecue sauce and didn't really feel like finding a recipe in which it would be needed. But then I brought home a new MorningStar fake-meat product, this one a pulled "pork." No sauce included. This gave me an obvious opportunity to crack open the TJ's.

It's fine, though not distinctive. It's straight down the middle in terms of overall flavor, sweetness, heat, etc. It's just what I would expect from a grocery-store BBQ sauce, really. I definitely liked it better than the only other TJ's barbecue sauce I've tried, which was way too sweet.


Will I buy it again? 

Undecided. Now that I've found a product that I like that calls for BBQ sauce, I'll try some more of TJ's offerings in the category and see which I like best.

Trader Joe's Italian Marinara Sauce With Barolo Wine

As far as I can remember, I've never before bought pasta sauce with wine. But it was on the new-products shelf at Trader Joe's, so of course I had to try it.

The wine flavor is strong--far more than I expected. And I don't like wine.

But surprise! I like this. I like it a lot. It has a nice acidic bite, and the heavy grapeyness (but not really grape, if you know what I mean) adds an unexpectedly delightful and harmonious overtone.

It has quickly joined my list of favorite TJ's pasta sauces, along with this one, this one, this one, this one, and this one--and it's completely unlike any of them.


Will I buy it again? 

Yes.

Trader Joe's Low Fat Tuscano Marinana Sauce

I went to grab another can of my newly-beloved green-can marinara sauce when I spotted this next to it. It's apparently not new, as I find it archived in old online Fearless Flyers at least as far back as 2012, yet somehow I had never noticed it before.

It's not nearly as good as its shelfmate. It's chunkier, which I don't care for. But more importantly, it's just bland and boring. It has no zing to it.

It is lower in fat than the other one (presumably because of less olive oil), but the trade-off is more sugar and salt:

Note that this one does have added sugar, while the green-can version does not.


Will I buy it again? 

Nope.

Trader Joe's Satay Peanut Sauce

I'm often more adventurous in buying unfamiliar things than in actually using them once I get them home. So it was with this. I bought it over a year ago, and it just sat in my pantry, because I didn't know what to do with it. I finally asked Nina, and she suggested putting it over fake chicken strips with rice. And that's what I did.

And it was pretty good! For something that I knew zero about and had never even heard of before, just being not-awful is a win; being "pretty good" is a major victory. It means that there's a small sector of the food spectrum--satay sauce--that is now open to me when it was effectively closed before.

The taste mostly follows the ingredients list: peanuts, soy sauce, and chili peppers. Coconut extract is supposedly there, too, though I couldn't taste it.


Will I buy it again? 

Yes, once in a while.

Trader Joe's Marinara Sauce

I first learned of the existence of this sauce when in January my daily Google news dump for anything with "Trader Joe's" in it brought me this odd article about a man upset with Trader Joe's for discontinuing his favorite marinara sauce. I next heard about it in May, when the same man wrote about his "victory" in getting TJ's to bring it back.

Now, I don't know if his blog post caught TJ's corporate attention and made them reverse course. Given my experience with TJ's products randomly disappearing for a time and then reappearing, it seems to me more likely that whatever happened had nothing at all to do with his writing. They changed to a different supplier, or the supplier had a fire at the factory and took a while to get production ramped up again, or TJ's and the supplier had a dispute about pricing that took time to resolve. Who knows?

Anyway, when I first noticed it at my local TJ's recently, I naturally had to try it to see if it was as good as Joseph Farah claimed.

I'm here to tell you that it is.

I served it with spaghetti and a fake ground beef for a dinner with Nina. She was all "meh" about it, but I immediately took to it. I finished off the can over the next two days with the leftover pasta, and liked it more with each serving.

It tastes simple and pure. The ingredients list bears this out: tomatoes, tomato puree, olive oil, onions, herbs, garlic, salt. This is probably the first commercial pasta sauce without sugar added that I've really liked. It shares a tomato-y acidity with another TJ's marinara that I like.

The container is a bit odd. TJ's choice of a can instead of a traditional jar precludes the usual easy way of putting leftover sauce away. But I can just dump what's left into a reusable plastic tub. No big deal.

I'm sorely tempted to plop this right onto my Top Ten list. I'm going to resist, at least until I've had a chance to try it again after waiting a bit, to see if I still feel it's worthy. Whether or not it ever makes that list, it's definitely not only one of my favorite TJ's pasta sauces, but one of the best commercial pasta sauces I've ever had from any source.


Will I buy it again? 

Of course. I'm confident that it will become a staple.


Addendum, September 21, 2017 

Yep, I still love it. Welcome to the Top Ten list.

Trader Joe's Bruschetta Sauce

I bought this to use in a recipe that called for a few tablespoons of bruschetta sauce as a topping to homemade veggie burgers. The recipe was from page 82 of this book.

I liked the result a lot--except for this sauce on top.

In fact, it was so obvious to me that I would never use it again that I sent the rest of the tub home with Nina. What she might have done with it I do not know, because I forgot to ask.


Will I buy it again? 

No.

Trader Joe's Fresh Cranberry Sauce

I wanted to buy this last year, but the store had run out by the time I was looking. I was stuck instead with their cranberry sauce in a jar--which I thought was pretty good.

This year I nabbed the fresh version, and it's even better. It contains actual whole cranberries--what a concept! It manages to retain their native flavor, with enough sweetening to counteract the natural tartness, but without being overwhelming.


Will I buy it again? 

Yes. I'd like some every holiday season, please.

Trader Joe's Curry Simmer Sauce

I used this just at the name implies, as the liquid in which to simmer an otherwise bland fake-meat product, which was then served on a bed of rice. The result was entirely acceptable, even mildly pleasant, but far from wowing me with wonderfulness. Nor did it make me feel as though I had made something genuinely Indian. It lacked zip. It lacked freshness. It lacked complexity.


Will I buy it again? 

No. I would much rather use Trader Joe's excellent Thai Green Curry Simmer Sauce.