Trader Joe’s has some pretty great chicken-based snacks in their frozen food lineup. We’re particularly fond of their Jerk Chicken Thigh Skewers, and, of course, their Mandarin Orange Chicken is the stuff of legends. So we were curious to see what their hot wings were all about. Today, we’re checking out Trader Joe’s Hot & Spicy Chicken Wings to see if they’re a worthy snacktime treat.
The package includes microwave directions, but everybody knows that hot wings deserve better than to be cooked the microwave. The oven instructions take quite a bit longer, but we figured these were probably worth the extra time.
If you want to go the oven route, like we did, you’ll need to preheat your oven to 375 degrees fahrenheit, then grease up a cookie sheet and place your chicken wings on top of it. We used some aluminum foil as well, because these wings come all slathered in sauce and we didn’t want to spend 20 minutes scrubbing our cookie sheet afterward. Once that’s all taken care of, pop these in for 28 to 33 minutes. You can cut that time down if you let these thaw first, but you’re really only saving yourself about ten minutes.
One bag should have about nine wings, but ours had a couple extra. We had a total of 11 wings, plus a few little pieces that had broken off some of the bigger chunks. The bag is resealable, so you’re under no obligation to eat the full bag at once (though we’re not saying you won’t want to).
Now, these aren’t boneless wings — these are your traditional bone-in wings that you could expect to find at Happy Hour at your local dive bar. That means they’re a bit of a mess to eat. Of course, they’re not quite as sloppy as we expected, since the sauce dries up quite a bit while these are cooking. Still, you’re going to end up with some sticky fingers if you eat these.
After spending a half hour in the oven, the sauce turns into more of a sticky buffalo-style dry rub. The flavor is subtle, but the spice certainly isn’t. We’d rate these at a medium spice level — not too much mouth burning, but they’ll leave you with spicy lips and a runny nose.
Trader Joe’s recommends pairing these with some blue cheese, which we didn’t get around to trying. We did dip these in some ranch dressing, though, like the stereotypical midwesterners that we are. If we can put down our ranch obsession for a moment and speak objectively, we can admit that ranch isn’t quite the right dipping sauce for these. We’d love to try the blue cheese sometime.
One serving size is three wings, which is ridiculous. Sure, a few of these wings are larger than average, but most of these are comparable to your typical bar-food hot wings. Three is hardly anything — you’ll probably be eating at least a half dozen of these in a sitting. Three wings contains 200 calories (130 from fat), which means our recommended half-dozen serving size puts you up to 400 (260 from fat). That’s a little high, but if you’re going to scarf down a plate of hot wings, you’re probably willing to skip counting calories for the evening.
Trader Joe’s Hot & Spicy Chicken Wings will satisfy a hot wing craving. They take a little time to make, but we promise you that effort is worth it. These little guys are very tasty!
To learn more about the nutrition content or ingredients in these Trader Joe’s hot wings, check out our package scans below.
MADD AZZ YUMMY YO
The microwave instructions can’t be right – I followed them and ended up with something completely dried out and inedible. The proper timing has to be less than half of what the package says.
Why? Why? The microwave? Nooooo.
Put aluminum foil on a sheet tray. Put a trader Joe’s frozen Mac & cheese on half of tray. put hot wings on other half of tray. Peel plastic film off the Mac & cheese
Put a big handful of frozen broccoli on top of Mac & cheese. Throw sheet tray in 400 degree oven for 30 minutes. Wash down with iced tea. Cold leftovers are delicious also!!!