The Frozen Mexican Food You'll Want To Buy Over And Over At Trader Joe's

Trader Joe's is known for many of its niche products, but even the best home cooks and esteemed chefs can't deny the flavorful options from various cuisines that its freezer section offers. A walk down the freezer aisles in any given Trader Joe's can take your appetite to China, India, and Mexico, of course. To find the best of Trader Joe's Mexican frozen products, we sought to rank nine of the options. What was the best one? The chain's chicken mole.

According to the taste test our writer performed, the frozen chicken mole stood out among other Mexican dishes like tamales for a few reasons. For starters, many types of mole contain chocolate but TJ's version doesn't — yet it still presents authentic flavor. For a little culinary history, Mexican cuisine contains at least 40 different moles, some of which don't contain chocolate at all. Our writer, who happens to be a fan of chicken mole, thinks it's a supreme second option for when you can't make it to a Mexican eatery. Then there's the portion size and the price, which should be around $6.99, making it stand out among the plethora of options.

For a little more about the product, Trader Joe's frozen chicken mole is sold in 16-ounce packages for that $6.99 price point. According to the grocery chain, its recipe is inspired by the red mole often found in recipes from Central Mexico. Its main ingredients include pasilla chile peppers, onion, tomatoes, and sugar. For the chicken, the meat comes from skinless chicken legs. It serves about three according to the nutrition label, with 190 calories per serving.

If you don't believe our review, other published taste tests claim the frozen product is worth a try when you can't make it to a Mexican restaurant. There are also Reddit comments that claim the product is tasty, although it's not quite as good as what you might find made from scratch in an authentic restaurant.

When you want to try the frozen chicken mole, cook it on the stove or in the microwave. Either way, you'll want some ways to serve it. Replace the beef with the chicken in our loaded beef enchilada recipe to save some time. Or toss it on top of something like our Mexican kale salad recipe. The chicken is also an ideal pairing with rice and beans, on tacos, or in any other recipe that requires flavorful chicken. For those who don't live near a Trader Joe's location (we're sorry), here's our shortcut mole sauce recipe that only takes 28 minutes.