Trader Joe’s Chicken Enchiladas Review

Trader Joe's Chicken Enchiladas

A great enchilada can be quite a treat, but in the world of frozen foods, enchiladas can be a hit-or-miss affair. For example, we loved the Amy’s Kitchen Spinach and Cheese Enchilada Verde Whole Meal, while the Lean Cuisine Cheese and Bean Enchilada Verde is pretty terrible. So we asked ourselves this: what is the Trader Joe’s version of this meal like?

Well, we picked up the Trader Joe’s Chicken Enchiladas to find out.

First off, we have to be honest here: This meal comes with both microwave and oven instructions, but when we saw how long this would take to cook in the oven we opted for the microwave instead. These enchiladas still take more than five minutes to cook in the microwave, but that’s better than the 45 or so it would have taken to bake them in the oven.

When you pull these out of the microwave, they smell like something you’d order at a Mexican restaurant. Our first impression, then, was a positive one.

There’s a reddish brown sauce that sort of sits along the edges of the tray, and this sauce tastes excellent. We don’t know exactly what it is, but it’s rich and creamier than we expected. We like it.

Trader Joe's Chicken Enchiladas

We were surprised to find large chunks of chicken inside the enchiladas. We’re so used to the barely noticeable chicken portions that most frozen enchiladas try to get away with. Trader Joe’s is not stingy with this chicken. It also tastes delicious and has a melt-in-your-mouth consistency that really blew us away.

Trader Joe’s is also not stingy on the cheese topping. This is gooey and melty, and it’s the perfect topper for a tasty pair of enchiladas.

Now, we do have one complaint about these enchiladas: the shells aren’t very good. We’ve had some incredible, authentic-tasting shells in our day, but these ones fall short. Ours ended up hard and dry and a bit stale on the ends. This might be due to our cooking method, but we wouldn’t expect them to turn out any more moist in the oven.

One enchilada has 210 calories, but these are clearly intended to be eaten as a pair. They come together in a single tray, after all, and you won’t be removing that tray before you cook them. It would be tricky to portion one of these out and save the other for later, though we suppose you could cook the whole shebang and split it two ways. So the calorie count becomes 420 (180 from fat). This isn’t the highest calorie count we’ve ever seen, but it’s definitely not the 210 you’ll see when you scan the nutrition facts. That also means a pair of these has 1,080 mg of sodium. Yikes!

Trader Joe’s Chicken Enchiladas are a real treat. While the shells could be better, all of the other parts are incredible. Even when cooked in the microwave instead of the oven, these enchiladas are something special.

To learn more about the nutrition or ingredients in these frozen enchiladas, check out our package scans below.

Trader Joe's Chicken Enchiladas

Trader Joe's Chicken Enchiladas

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