People have been enjoying pesto since ancient times — it can be traced all the way back to the days of the Roman empire. This tasty mix of basil, garlic, oil, and pine nuts was once a dietary staple. While it’s easier to avoid pesto these days, we still like to enjoy it whenever we can. We’ve been waiting to try Trader Joe’s Linguine with Pesto & Tomatoes for a while now, and now that we’ve had it, we can say that it definitely lives up to our expectations.
Like Trader Joe’s other frozen pastas, this pasta can be cooked up in a skillet. We had to cook this a little bit longer than the recommended cook time; there were chunks of noodles that weren’t thawing out. In spite of this small inconvenience, the process wasn’t very difficult, and we were left with a delicious-looking, great-smelling dish.
There are only a handful of ingredients in this pasta dish, and most of those ingredients are a part of the pesto sauce. If, for some reason, you don’t like pesto, this is a meal you’ll want to stay away from. Everything in this dish tastes strongly of pesto, from the noodles to the tomatoes. It’s a simple meal, which means the pesto really stands out.
Pesto lovers, on the other hand, will find a lot to love here. The pesto has a rich, velvety flavor that we really enjoy. Because it uses cashews rather than pine nuts, it’s a little bit creamier than a traditional pesto. This allows it to coat the noodles perfectly. All of the ingredients were cooked to perfection, especially the tomatoes. We do wish this had just a few more tomatoes; these tomatoes taste amazing.
Trader Joe’s says that there are three servings of pasta in a bag, but we’d say that it’s a little closer to two. That said, there are plenty of things you can do if you’d like to make this pasta more substantial. We recommend adding some spinach or some of Trader Joe’s Sausage-Less Sausage.
We’ll definitely think of Trader Joe’s Linguine with Pesto & Tomatoes the next time we’re craving pesto. It may not be the fanciest meal in the Trader Giotto’s line, but it’s still a yummy and appealing dish. If you’re trying to decide between this and Trader Joe’s Organic Pesto Tortellini, we’d recommend this linguine. The pesto has much stronger flavor, and the linguine noodles are better and soaking up the pesto sauce.
To learn more about the nutrition content or ingredients in this Trader Joe’s linguine, check out our package scan below.
