Trader Joe's Longboards Organic Tortilla Chips

Day 4 of chips, chips, and more chips!

These chips are ordinary white-corn tortilla chips, with two exceptions. First, they are less salty (note the "low sodium" designation on the package). Second, they are unusually shaped; intact ones are roughly the shape of a surfboard. Hence the name.

But I had to specify "intact ones" there, because there were so few. Maybe 10% of the chips were intact, the rest just broken pieces. So if the shape is the big selling point--and it appears to be--it is completely nullified by the handling that they receive, or that at least this particular bag received.

The copy on the back of the bag says, "Ever try to get a gnarly salsa dip going and end up with a broken chip? Bogus, right?"

Right.

Will I buy it again? 

No. Even if they had all been in pristine condition, I found after trying a bunch of them that I still prefer round chips for dipping in my hummus.

Nina's View

So, I liked these. I like the shape for dipping—less slop onto the fingertips, especially if you double-dip. They are super-basic chips with a nice, corny flavor and a pleasant but not harsh crunch. I didn't even find them too low on salt.

I can't comment on the percentage of broken chips, because I didn't really notice. But I will say I'd like them less if they were broken, because the whole special selling point of these is the shape.

Hang ten, brah!

Trader Joe's Baked Blue Corn Tortilla Chips Salted

If you're paying attention, this is three days in a row of posts about tortilla chips. Don't worry--this isn't becoming an all-chips blog. But TJ's does have a wide variety to explore, and with my new-found love of hummus, I've been buying every kind of hummus I can find, and making chip purchases concomitantly.

Compared to TJ's fried blue corn tortilla chips (see yesterday's post here), I like these a little bit less. But that is only because they are kind of on the delicate side. They break too easily when dipping, and crumble when bitten into. It's not a fatal flaw, but I wish they were less brittle. With a tiny sample of just one bag, my impression is also that there are a higher percentage of chips broken in manufacturing and shipping.

 I appreciate that they are lower in fat, and that they've managed to churn out a baked-chip product that needs no apology for sacrificing taste to achieve that. They're delicious.

Will I buy it again? 

Yes, though probably less often than some others that I've fallen in love with.

Trader Joe's Organic Blue Corn Tortilla Chips

Yet another excellent product in TJ's extensive line-up of snack chips, this time using blue corn. I don't know that that conveys any particular advantage, other than being a little more interesting to look at than ones made from the more common yellow corn, but I don't object.

The only thing I don't like about these is the large size combined with triangular shape. That combination makes them somewhat more awkward for dipping and eating than is the case for smaller or rounder chips. But taste, saltiness, texture--all just right.

Will I buy it again? 

Definitely. There's lots of hummus in this world waiting to be eaten, and a man's gotta have some good chips to do it with.

Roundup

This week's compilation of news, stories, opinions, and other links related to Trader Joe's.


Trader Joe's responds to lawsuit alleging high levels of arsenic in one of its wines 

Eight must-haves from Trader Joe's 

"Joy Sandwich" podcast, on the experience of a trip to an empty Trader Joe's 

My ten favorite Trader Joe's products 

Comparison test of sriracha sauce: Huy Fong Foods vs. Trader Joe's 

How good are Trader Joe's beers? 

What are your favorite things at Trader Joe's? 

Book review: I Heart Trader Joe's Vegetarian Cookbook 

I think I've linked to this before, but it came up on my Twitter feed again this week and is worth a repeat look: The Trader Joe's song 


And finally, in lieu of the usual picture of a cute cat in a Trader Joe's grocery bag, I bring you this delightful Twitter post from one Jackie Miller:

Trader Joe's Quinoa And Black Bean Infused Tortilla Chips

How far we've come from potato chips--or even from run-of-the-mill tortilla chips. Now corn isn't exotic enough, so they're incorporating black beans and quinoa. At least they are at Trader Joe's.

Fortunately, this is one instance where the exoticification process has resulted in an improvement. These are truly excellent chips. They have the baseline corn flavor, but the other ingredients add interesting new flavors and complexity. They're just salty enough, not oily at all. The hexagonal shape is both convenient for scooping up some hummus and easy to bite into, or pop into one's mouth whole. And they're attractive, to boot.

I find nothing not to love here. I rate them only a hair's breadth below my all-time favorite chips, TJ's veggie/flaxseed tortilla chips--and there were times I was chewing on one and thought that they might even be a mite better. They're a serious challenger, anyway, and worthy of elevation into my Top Ten list (which, as I feel I need to occasionally remind readers, is in no way limited to ten items).

Will I buy it again? 

I already have, and will many more times, I'm sure.

Trader Joe's Petite Peas

Nina bought and cooked these. We both ate them. They were petite. And they were peas. They were very pea-y. The end.

OK, the truth is that I never know what to write in reviews of common items like this. They're functionally indistinguishable from any other brand of frozen petite peas you might buy, and probably have a fair degree of variability in quality from one batch to another, making generalizations difficult.

All I can say is that this particular bag on this particular day was as good as any I can remember.

Will I buy it again? 

Sure. It's just a matter of price and convenience, and TJ's usually excels at both.

Trader Joe's Vegan Mozzarella Style Shreds

This was the final component in our homemade pizza last week. I've got plenty of real cheese on hand, but Nina has been trying to reduce her use of milk and milk products, so I decided to contribute a bit to that effort by trying this product.

I knew that there was something very off in the taste of the pizza (especially in the leftovers on the second day), but I wasn't sure how to assign the blame, between the underdone crust, the fake spicy ground beef sprinkled as a topping, and the fake cheese. As mentioned yesterday, the sauce was excellent.

It all became clear a couple of days later when I made myself two tostadas: tortillas with refried beans and more of the fake beef. On one I put this fake mozzarella. On the other I put some leftover TJ's Mexican cheese blend.

The difference couldn't have been more stark. It became abundantly clear that the off flavor I had noticed in the pizza was coming from this non-cheese. I wasn't sure how to describe it until I went searching for other reviews, and found this direct comparison of the TJ's product against another vegan mozzarella substitute--specifically a brand called "Daiya," which I had not heard of before. In the reviewer's words, "It tastes like Parmesan cheese mixed with mayonnaise mixed with foot. It is atrocious." A commenter on that post added, "I tried it on a pizza. Ugh, what a disappointment! I managed to eat it without vomiting, but I am wondering if the strange churning in my gut two hours later is a bad sign. I am throwing out the rest...."

I, too, ended up throwing away half of the tostada with the TJ's fake cheese. It was that bad. In retrospect, I think the yumminess of the pizza sauce is what made the pizza palatable in spite of having this ickiness on it. Once that was no longer present, and the full taste of the "shreds" was unmasked, it was inedible.

I threw away the rest of the bag, and hereby add this product to my own little hall of shame, the Bottom Ten list.

Will I buy it again? 

Good lord, no. But the review linked above and comments on it make me want to try the Daiya brand.


Nina's View

I am indeed trying to cut down on the amount of condensed cow-pain I eat. I've been trying all sorts of substitutes and have been generally dismayed at how lame (at best) or disgusting (at worst) they mostly seem to be so far.

My only encounter with these shreds were on the pizza Bob made, which was not a rollicking success in general but in which the fake cheese receded so far in flavor as to not register at all one way or the other.

I am prepared to take Bob's word at it that it's pretty awful.