Trader Joe’s Honey Walnut Shrimp Review

Frozen meals that contain shrimp seem few and far between. Of course, if you look extra hard, you will find that there are some shrimp-based items lurking in the freezer aisle of your local Trader Joe’s. For example, you might come across the Shrimp Toast or the Spicy Thai Shrimp Fried Rice. We’ve tried both of those in the past, but today we’re trying another shrimp-based meal, the Trader Joe’s Honey Walnut Shrimp.

This is a package of shrimp that comes with a packet of honey walnut shrimp. You can heat the shrimp in the oven or on a stovetop (we chose the oven), but the sauce needs to be microwaved either way. There is a packet of sauce and a packet of walnuts — so if you don’t like walnuts, you can actually leave them out entirely. When the shrimp is done cooking and the sauce is done warming in the microwave, toss everything together and serve.

The shrimp is wonderful. Our oven-cooked batch tasted amazing, and the breading was nice and crispy. We tried one before we mixed the rest into the sauce, and we almost didn’t even want to use the sauce because the shrimp is so good without it.

Then again, the sauce is great as well. It’s a sweet, creamy sauce that actually tastes very citrusy. It contains honey, as the name implies, but it also has some lemon juice concentrate, giving it an intensely lemony flavor. The shrimp and the breading battle for flavor here, but they lose big time. Now, we have to admit that we find the sauce maybe just a tad too lemony, but it’s still very good.

We’re not huge fans of candied walnuts, but when they’re mixed into the sauce, they come out tasting like hard candy. They really are perfect for this dish.

While we just ate this shrimp without any sides, we think this would sit well atop a bed of rice. Thankfully, Trader Joe’s has a ton of options in their lineup. We think this would pair well with the Vegetable Fried Rice or the Chicken Fried Rice, or, if you really want to go all-out with the shrimp, you could use the Spicy Thai Shrimp Fried Rice.

The package claims that it contains about 2.5 servings of the stuff. One serving contains about 410 calories (210 from fat) and 520 mg of sodium. That means that a full package has about 1,025 calories (525 from fat) and 1,300 mg of sodium. Clearly, Trader Joe’s doesn’t expect you to eat this whole bag in one sitting, though to be honest, the portion size really isn’t all that big.

Trader Joe’s Honey Walnut Shrimp is very good. It starts with some really great shrimp, then adds a sweet, citrusy sauce that really sings. While we find the sauce a little too lemony, everything together makes for one seriously tasty combo.

To learn more about the nutrition contents or ingredients in this Trader Joe’s shrimp, check out our package scans below.