Freezer Meal Frenzy started out as a burrito-rating project before we became a full-fledged frozen review site, which means we’ll always have a fondness for frozen burritos. When it comes to Trader Joe’s, however, we’ve stopped searching for new frozen flavors, since we reviewed all of their frozen burrito offerings long ago.
Or so we thought.
Imagine our surprise when we stumbled over the Trader Joe’s Carne Burritos in the freezer aisle at our local TJ’s store. We don’t ever expect to find new frozen burritos at Trader Joe’s (in fact, we’ve started reviewing their refrigerated options instead), so this caught us off guard. There was only one appropriate reaction: Take these to the Freezer Meal Frenzy office and get them reviewed as soon as possible. And that’s what we’re doing today.
According to the back of the box, you can heat these in the microwave or the conventional oven. We normally would go for the microwave, but today is a special day. Today we’re reviewing actual frozen burritos from the actual freezer aisle of an actual Trader Joe’s. Folks, we’re using the oven today!
Now, we do have to say that the 20 minutes recommended by the package just wasn’t enough for us — our burritos were still cold in the center at that point — so we had to give them almost ten minutes of extra cook time. (If you want to read the full cooking instructions for the oven or microwave, check out the package scan at the bottom of this review.)
One of the features that the Trader Joe’s website boasts about is how well these tortillas survive the microwave process. This does make us a little sad that we didn’t try nuking at least one of these burritos, but we suppose we could always do a second take later on.
In the oven, these tortilla shells end up a bit crispy, and they have a delightful flavor. These are flour tortillas rather than corn tortillas, so it’s more of a flatbread flavor than a corn shell flavor, but we still dig it.
Inside the shell, you’ve got succulent cuts of beef, spiced up with poblano chiles and seasoned with black pepper and lemon pepper seasoning. It’s mostly beef — like, almost 100% — with the other ingredients just there to complement these delicious hunks of meat. And all of it works. The beef is great on its own, but the citrusy flavor from the lemon pepper seasoning really elevates it to the next level. These aren’t complex burritos, by any means, but they’re still tasty ones.
So are these spicy? Well, not really. We did notice that our sinuses were clearing out about halfway through our first burrito, but the spice level is really laid back. It’s a mild spice level that comes more from the black pepper than from the actual poblano peppers, so it’s not the kind of spicy that makes it feel like your mouth is on fire.
These burritos come two in a pack, and the package considers just one to be a serving. Stick with that and you’re looking at 490 calories and 880 mg of sodium. Double up (like we admittedly did) and that jumps to 990 calories and 1,770 mg of sodium. Let’s just say we’re not thinking about any sort of diet today…
The Trader Joe’s Carne Asada Burritos are pretty simple, mostly just seasoned beef inside tortilla shells. However, that doesn’t mean they’re bland. No, these are rich and flavorful, and we think they’re a joy to eat. While you could certainly add some salsa and sour cream, we ate ours without any additional toppings and found them to be great as is.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for these frozen burritos, check out our package scan below.
I have to tell you that our experience with these burritos microwaved was the polar opposite to your review. As with oven cooking, the 2.5 min was not enough to heat the interior fully BUT, we did not add more time because the flour tortilla shell does NOT stand up to microwaving.. it becomes tough and almost inedible. Ours had a weird minced beef inside.. no chunks of meat. It was spicy but not tasty. All in all, they were really bad