Longtime Freezer Meal Frenzy readers surely know us for our frozen food reviews. However, longtime Freezer Meal Frenzy readers probably also know that we stray into other parts of the grocery store from time to time. For example, we do try to review all of Trader Joe’s burritos, even the ones that aren’t frozen (like the excellent Super Burrito!)
So when we spotted the Trader Joe’s Cheeseburger Burrito in the refrigerated section of our local TJ’s store, we knew we had to try it out. Sure, it’s not frozen, but we have a long, long history of reviewing burritos, and we’re super curious about how this one tastes. They say that curiosity killed the cat, but in this case, curiosity killed our commitment to exclusively reviewing frozen food….
So we’re going to review this non-frozen burrito. We do hope you can forgive us!
Anyway, this is a pretty simple thing to cook. Just unwrap it a little bit (so it’s still loosely wrapped), then pop it into the microwave for about two minutes. No really, that’s all it takes. We thought this would still be cold in the middle after just two minutes of cook time, but it came out toasty, toasty hot. We had to let it cool for several minutes before we dared put it in our mouths.
You can also cook this in the oven if you’d like to, but that will take much longer than two minutes. You can read the full cooking instructions straight off the back of the package if you scroll all the way down to the bottom of this review.
So what on earth is a cheeseburger burrito? Well, it’s basically what would happen if you removed a bun from a cheeseburger, then ground it up and stuffed it all into a tortilla shell. That means this doesn’t have that southwestern feel to it; it’s more like an American classic gone rogue.
The main component to the filling is balls of ground beef. And it’s really exactly what it sounds like — it’s not like a sausage or a spicy beef; it’s what you’d expect from a cheeseburger patty. This stuff is just a tad but rubbery, but not enough to ruin the consistency for us.
The main event here, though, is the rest of the filling. You’ve got a cheddar cheese sauce that has tomatoes, onions, and pickles mixed in, with just a little bit of mustard. Yes, there’s mustard in this burrito, and no, it’s not as terrible as that might sound. In fact, this is actually super tasty, and very much in line with the theme of the burrito. We won’t be putting mustard on our bean burritos anytime soon, but on a cheeseburger burrito? It actually works!
And all of this is wrapped up inside a textured flour tortilla. The tortilla is kind of thick, but it does its job exactly as you’d expect, in that it holds everything inside it and tastes pretty alright on its own. We have no complaints about this tortilla.
Now, when you think of cheeseburgers and burritos, you probably don’t think of diet food, so if you smoosh a cheeseburger into a burrito, you’re probably not looking for a low-calorie meal. That said, we should point out that this burrito has 610 calories and 1,190 mg of sodium. This is definitely not what we’d call diet food.
The Trader Joe’s Cheeseburger Burrito is a successful experiment that combines everything we love about cheeseburgers with the joy of eating a burrito. This is a bit off the beaten path when it comes to burrito fillings, but we love it all the same.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this Trader Joe’s burrito, check out our package scan below.