Ah, the holidays! What could be better? Well, one thing that’s certainly better than celebrating the holidays, with all the stress that goes along with them, is celebrating the holidays without having to make home-baked appetizers. Thankfully, Trader Joe’s has you covered with a pretty robust lineup of holiday-appropriate apps that will make your guests feel cheerful and jolly.
We’ve already given our two cents on the Uncured Bacon Wrapped Dates Stuffed with Goat Cheese, so today we’re going to be talking about something else. Today’s holiday snack is actually two different appetizers in one, and both of them come packed with shrimp. Yes, we’re talking about Trader Joe’s Spicy Shrimp Appetizer Duo.
When you crack open the box, you’ll find two sealed bags inside. One contains six kung pao shrimp spring rolls, while the other contains six lemongrass shrimp wontons. Cut each bag open to get started.
These are fairly simple to cook once you have those bags sliced open. Simply preheat your oven to 450 degrees fahrenheit, stick the contents of both bags onto a cookie sheet, and cook for 15 minutes or so. Flip them over about halfway through the process if you want to make sure they cook evenly on both sides.
Now, the box warns you to let these cool for two minutes after they come out of the oven, but we’d say give them a little longer than that. They’re extremely hot by the time they’re done cooking. And it’s more than just your mouth we’re worried about; you could easily scorch your fingertips on these little guys.
So let’s dig into the pirate-hat-shaped wontons first. These lemongrass wontons have a very lemony flavor to them. In fact, we think they taste a bit like the lemon pieces from Trix cereal. They’re incredibly sweet. Actually, we made a very similar Trix-inspired comment when we tried the Trader Joe’s Lemongrass Chicken Stix. We definitely thing the statement is equally applicable here.
You’ll find little pieces of shrimp inside the wontons as well, but we doubt you’ll taste any due to how overpowering the lemon flavor is. This isn’t a bad thing, mind you, if you enjoy sweet, lemon-based flavor. If you were simply here for the shrimp, however, you’re probably better served with a straight-up shrimp appetizer, like the Honey Walnut Shrimp.
The spring rolls, on the other hand, are certainly not lemony. These are actually the savory portion of the dish, and you will taste a bit of the shrimp inside these. It’s certainly not an overpowering flavor; it’s just a subtle bit of shrimpiness that adds a little something extra to that kung pao flavor. We really enjoy these spring rolls.
So which of these two appetizers did we like better? Well, we didn’t really have a sweet tooth the day we tried these, so we’re going to have to go with the spring rolls. It’s not that the wontons are bad — quite the contrary; they’re delicious — it’s just that we found the savory flavor of the spring rolls to be more to our liking in this particular moment. We can see ourselves gravitating toward the wontons if we were craving something lemony.
Of course, one thing we sort of forgot about is the fact that these have the word Spicy in the title. These really don’t live up to their namesake here, since they’re not the slightest bit spicy. We’re not sure why Trader Joe’s felt it was necessary to call these spicy; they would have had us at the word Shrimp anyway.
One serving size is about half a box, and we have to assume Trader Joe’s intends for you to eat three of each type of app rather than all six of just one type. We find it hard to believe that the wontons and spring rolls would have the exact same nutrition info as each other. What a coincidence that would be!
One serving of this stuff contains 250 calories and 510 mg of sodium, meaning the whole box has 500 calories and 1,020 mg of sodium. While those earlier numbers definitely look more appealing, we have a feeling the latter are more realistic. These are quite difficult to stop eating once you start.
Trader Joe’s Spicy Shrimp Appetizer Duo offers kung pao shrimp spring rolls and lemongrass shrimp wontons in a single package. Both are delicious, but neither is spicy. If you’re bringing these for a party, you’ll definitely want to pick up more than just a single box. These will fly off their plate pretty quickly.
To learn more about the nutrition content or ingredients in these Trader Joe’s shrimp-filled appetizers, check out our package scan below.
