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Trader Joe’s has crowned strawberry the flavor of summer, but most of the strawberry swag is limited edition for a reason (not worth your time!). The best new finds are in the ice cream department. There are some new pints like Passion Fruit Sorbet and an XL tub of Italian Pistachio & Fior di Latte Gelato Style Frozen Dessert, both deserving of praise. What else is new? Bitty square buns known as “Sandwich Starters,” a vegan spicy mayo called “Dynamite Sauce,” and Ranch Cottage Cheese Dip that questions the lengths worth going to get your protein. Read on for the favorable picks of the season.
Worth a Repeat Purchase
Spicy Mango Habanero Guacamole
As sacrilege as store-bought guac is to a woman who helped write a salsa cookbook, this didn’t kill me. It’s got a tropical habanero heat, with chunks of underripe mango that distract you from the freaky smooth avocado mush. Pairs nicely with Trader Joe’s extra salty, extra sturdy Truly Tortilla Chips.
Sour Strawberry Candy Belts
These sour straws are almost too chewy, but incredibly satisfying. There’s a subtle bitter aftertaste, a hint of plastic that’s best squashed with a chaser—another belt, and another, until the citric acid numbs your tongue and the sugar numbs your senses. Nice.
Italian Pistachio & Fior di Latte Gelato Style Frozen Dessert
This gelato comes in a proper family-sized container. When did we, a depraved society, declare a pint of ice cream the default size? Inside the 28.74-oz tub are beautifully piped plops of alternating milky and pistachio gelato—beautiful to behold when you peel back the plastic seal. The gelato is creamy, nutty, legit.
Passion Fruit Sorbet
Tropical n’ tangy, this passion fruit sorbet gave me all kinds of ideas, like adding a scoop of it to my iced matcha. Mainly that idea. But we’ll see if there’s any left to make it happen.
Sparkling Tea and Lemonade
A fizzy Arnold Palmer, what a joy. It’s sweet and summery, with the pleasant rustiness of nondescript black tea. Split between two glasses, over ice with a splash of whiskey, it’s also an easy porch cocktail.
Sparkling Matcha Lemonade
Mostly lemonade with a hint of matcha, sweetened to perfection. It’s fancy soda, and I love it.
Root Beer Float Pieces
I assumed these were going to be ingenious ice cream bites, but turns out they’re ingenious candy bar bites. Behind the potent root beer-flavored coating there’s a vanilla sandwich cookie thing with popping candy to replicate soda fizz. Innovative, imaginative, weird, wonderful.
Seasoned Lamb Shoulder Rack
This lamb shoulder has travelled from Australia to be with us, shrink-wrapped with a coating of herbs—thyme, rosemary, garlic powder, celery seed—and sesame seeds. I wish there were more cooking instructions on the packaging, but you can either slow roast, grill it, or do a haphazard pan-searing like I did. The seasoning didn’t bring much to the table, but we’re here for the lamb’s earthy goodness.
Brioche Style Liège Waffles
I simply don’t understand how these are so good. They’re Belgian-style (thick) waffles with a coating of sugar. After a quick toasting, the lightly crisp crust gives way to plush, fluffy dough—I didn’t even add syrup.
Morning Harvest Cheese
I hate reviewing new cheeses because they never last on shelves more than a few weeks, but if you spot the Morning Harvest Cheese from Iowa’s Milton Creamery, grab it. Mild and fruity, creamy and soft. An affordable upgrade to your cheese-and-cracker snacking.
Halloumi
Joe only stocks halloumi seasonally, so get it now. It’s a salty number, flecked with herbs that disappear in the background. I slice it up and fry it to be the protein (hi Chris!) on my salads. It browns nicely and like most cheese, makes salad worth eating.
Toscano Cheese Crunchy Chili Onion
Give this 20 minutes to get to room temperature and it’s a crowd-pleasing creamy-sweet cow’s milk cheese. But the addition of TJ’s chile crisp, aka “Crunchy Chili Onion,” is barely noticeable. It colors the rind with a splotchy orange rash, but I detected only a smidge of onion and no heat as I made my way through the wedge.
Organic Silken Tofu
Finally! Joe stocks silken tofu now, and it tastes like all the silken tofus I’d had before. I made Emma Lapperruque’s tofu with buttery-soy sauce (microwaved!), or you could also make this sleeper hit peanut dip, among a million other things.
Pickled Jalapeño Slices
This is a rebrand, which TJ’s does all the time for its products, but a nice reminder that these pickled Js are essential. With a reliable medium heat, I need to have them in perpetual stock.
Worth a One-Night Fling
Mini Shrimp Bao
These remind me of the apps you encounter at bars in the Midwest, where the menu curiously has shrimp bao next to wings and potato skins because they all came from the same frozen food supplier. But they are good enough when one is hungry.
Okonomiyaki Japanese Vegetable Pancake
If anyone knows where I can get amazing okonomiyaki in Ann Arbor, let me know because I’m deprived. This frozen version is high maintenance to prepare (microwave, then fry covered, then fry uncovered? What am I, an astronaut?), and my result was both burnt and mushy. It comes with wiggly bonito flakes and a sweet barbecue sauce. (I added a drizzle of Kewpie, not sold at TJ’s.)
Korean Style Bibim-Guksu
In the fridge section of last-minute lunches and prepared meals, this is an exciting new addition. Admittedly, it’s mostly noodles, with a few pieces of dried-out cucumbers, three bites of kimchi, some wisps of cabbage, which all get coated in a gochujang dressing. You can BYO-protein, but I inhaled it and complained later that I was still hungry. Everything’s a choice.
Risotto Semplice
It feels borderline illegal to buy frozen risotto, but rules don’t apply in the Trader Joe’s frozen aisle anyway. To reheat, add a few tablespoons of water and warm it on the stove, covered, stirring here and there. The result is a gloopy pile of blank slate risotto: butter, parm, a fairy’s modest pinch of saffron. It miraculously retains some distinct rice grains, and that’s all we can ask for, really.
Organic Margarita Mix
My cashier was obsessed with this and told me that the pro move was to mix it with more lime and top it with seltzer to balance the sweetness. Great tips, but what if the product was formulated to be good from the start? We dare to dream. I found it awfully sweet, but if you don’t have the time or energy to squeeze a ton of limes and remember what Cointreau is, this will get you started.
Guava Spread
Guava spread the color of pink jelly sandals, an adorable summer addition. It’s sweet, though watered down in flavor, so not ideal for your cheese plate, where a more concentrated guava paste is better. I spooned a bit into iced green tea, but it’d also be fun in a PB&J, swirled into vanilla ice cream or yogurt, or atop cream cheese in puff pastry tartlets.
Sweet, Spicy & Tart Chile Lime Flavored Seasoned Dried Strawberries
Very spicy! Like a chile-dipped raisin. Could be fun in trail mix?
Strawberry Fields Gummy Candy
Some of the strawberry-shaped gummies are supposedly sour, others are not. If you need a gummy candy fix, they’re nicely juicy. When I want more of that puckering, sugar-crusty satisfaction, I have a Kirkland vitamin C gummy instead.
Parsley Crackers
Not a transcendent cracker on its own, due to the whole tasting-like-grass thing, but these jazz up a cheese plate with their festive green sprinkles. They’re better with cheese, where the dried herb notes can mellow behind a slab of dairy. I also like the sturdiness and size—larger than a memory card, smaller than a business card—which means they can be eaten in one bite.
French Galette Cookies
These galette cookies are simple and super-buttery with a hardened sheen of caramelized sugar on top. Classy. The texture reminds me of a denser pie crust. I love to have a few with my afternoon matcha while signing off emails with “cheers,” though I’ve never said that aloud.
Organic Sour Apple Watermelon Fruit Leather Wrap
A TJ’s lunchbox classic. The new sour apple-watermelon flavor has Jolly Rancher vibes that hit the nostalgia notes for me. Extremely sticky, as all kid food should be.
Dark Chocolate Thins On the Go! No Sugar Added
What are “thins” you ask? Thin and bitter dark chocolate bars, individually wrapped to safely stash in the bottom of your tote bag, with cacao nibs that crackle between your teeth, a minor thrill.
Spicy Dynamite Sauce
This is an oil-heavy vegan “mayo” with serious heat. Because of the sesame oil’s prominence, it tastes like spicy tuna roll sauce. As such, I’d pair it with salmon rice bowls, or as a dip for Crispy Baked Tofu Nuggets.
Korean Style Yangnyeom Sauce
The molasses came through strongly in this Joe version of yangnyeom sauce, most famously used on KFC (Korean fried chicken). At home, you could toss some air-fried chicken nuggets in it and live out that fantasy.
Teeny Tiny Strawberry Rhubarb Pies
How annoying is it that you can find strawberry-rhubarb pies at Trader Joe’s but not actual rhubarb during the peak of the season in Michigan? An age-old gripe I’ll never stop gripin’. So we settle for these palm-sized pies with a gloopy, starchy filling that has nice tartness. A warm-up in the toaster oven is a must.
Pretzel Buns
All I want from a pretzel bun is the thing I never get: big salt crystals on top. Joe can’t do it because salt absorbs moisture and it would make the buns look sweaty and go stale. Still, these buns are somewhat sticky, so that’s a fun little mystery. But otherwise they’re squishy and satisfying, with a vague whiff pretzel flavor.
Potato Buns
A totally standard grocery store burger bun, not looking to make a name for itself. Just out here, trying to live a quiet and decent life while there’s still one for the taking.
Sandwich Starters
These are thinner than buns, with perforated lines if you wanted to make teensy square sliders. They toast quickly and have an English muffin-esque bounce. More kid-sized than Your Usual Sandwich Bread, which I was into because it leaves more room on your plate for chips.
Strawberry Mini Sheet Cake
The mini sheet cakes are a top-tier purchase at Trader Joe’s, and they’ve been introducing seasonal flavors to remind us. Vanilla is still the best. The strawberry cake is oily-moist, with a treacly sweet frosting.
Not Worth the Cash
Ranch Cottage Cheese Dip
A creative temptation for our protein-maxed times. However, no amount of ranch seasoning can cover up the off-putting texture of the blended cottage cheese and Greek yogurt: pasty and clingy. Not luscious. Not alluring. I’ll be getting my protein the old-fashioned way, with highly processed, chocolate-flavored whey powder.
Roasted Tomato Labneh Dip
Too much tomato, not enough labneh. The pothole of roasted tomato in the center has a pizza sauce flavor that might be an enticing detail for some, a turnoff for moi.
Raspberry, Vanilla & Blueberry Macarons
After an agonizing 30-minute defrost that made me feel like a kid in the marshmallow experiment, these mini macarons were in fighting shape. Definitely on the chewier side. The vanilla was the best, with a toasty, rounded flavor, raspberry was jammy and fine, and blueberry was a minor abomination, reminiscent of the warm pool of flavor syrup at the bottom of your snowcone.
Japanese Soufflé Cheesecake
Japanese soufflé cheesecakes are a feat of steam engineering. But after defrosting in the fridge for a few hours per the instructions, it was a hockey puck that tasted like dry and foamy white bread. It’s almost like some things are meant to be cooked and eaten fresh?
Hard Top Chocolate Shell Topping
The tragedy of this packaging is that despite shake-shake-shaking it, I had trouble getting even an inch out, and it was all coconut oil, no cocoa. It separated in the bottle. Skip. PSA: You can make Magic Shell at home.
Sweet and Spicy Rice Cracker Mix
In this mix, the sweet, sugar-glazed rice crackers reminded me of Corn Pops cereal, while the spicy ones had a lingering heat. I was bored. Add some barbecue potato chips, seaweed chips, pretzels, something to change up the textures and give us the bar mix we deserve.
Strawberry Doodle Cookies
Doodle don’t! These fleshy pink cookies were ultra soft and overwhelming with strawberry flavor, which always reads as artificial to me, even when it’s made from strawberry powder. I tried to give these away at my book club—no takers.
Strawberry Cloud Cake
Don’t let “cloud” oversell this frozen treat, which would’ve been better as an ice cream cake. The custard filling barely edges in, while an off-putting whipped cream topping smothers everything. The strawberries have a dull, squalid complexion, trapped in a strawberry goo.
Strawberry Wafer Batons
The container is so hermetically sealed, I knew that whatever was inside wouldn’t be worth it now (but could be nice 57 years from now when they’re the only food that survives in my underground bunker). Finally inside, there were a few lollipop-striped batons, reeking with mummified strawberry powder that tastes as fake as my bunker. Neither worth pursuing.