We don’t review a lot of olive-filled products here at Freezer Meal Frenzy. To be honest, we’re a bunch of olive-haters here, so it’s usually not fair for us to review olive products — we’re generally not going to like them. But the Trader Joe’s Fried Olive Bites are an exception. These actually look delicious, and we couldn’t resist checking them out.
The premise here seems to be taking the concept of a jalapeño popper and replacing the jalapeños with olives, which we find intriguing. Besides, we actually really liked the Trader Joe’s Olive Chicken Bites, which also have olives in them. So maybe we’re coming around to those little green veggie pellets after all!
Also, these have been stirring up some controversy this year, so we definitely feel like it’s our duty to find out what these are all about.
Cooking these is super simple. Just preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit, then put the olive bites on a baking sheet and put it in for eight to eleven minutes. (Read the full cooking instructions by reading the package scans at the bottom of this review.)
We alluded to some controversy earlier in this review, so we should probably walk you through that. Basically, this appetizer came out in 2020 and it seemed to be universally beloved. However, when it was brought back in 2022, the sentiment seemed to shift to people complaining that they’re way too salty. All of that information comes courtesy of a Mashed article, which cites user comments as its primary source, so take it with a grain of salt.
Okay, so take it with a lot of salt, because we have to agree with the commenters who were salty about the salt content. (We should be ashamed that we wrote the previous sentence, but we’re not. Deal with it!)
Anyway, like we mentioned earlier, the concept here is to cram a green olive full of cream cheese, then cover it in breading. We dig that idea, but we can’t help but feel that jalapeño poppers are this same concept taken to its best possible conclusion. The olive bites are just a lesser version.
Now, part of this is that we just don’t like olives. We know you’re all thinking it, and we admitted to as much in the beginning of this review. So we’re willing to concede that this is a biased opinion.
But we also have to admit that the breading is nice and crispy, and the cream cheese filling tastes excellent. These were on the road to greatness before the olives caused them to stumble. Perhaps anyone who’s absolutely bonkers for olives will actually find the olives to be the perfect thing to take these over the top. For us, though, they’re just too dang salty.
The box recommends 1/3 of the box as a serving size. There should be a dozen olive bits in the box, which means a serving is four pieces. If you stick with that amount, you’re going to consume 210 calories and 900 mg of sodium. If you go all out and eat the full box in a sitting, that jumps up to 630 calories and 2,630 mg of sodium.
The Trader Joe’s Fried Olive Bites are designed for olive-loving folks, and it seems the rest of the world finds them to be overly salty. We agree that they’re a bit too salty for our tastes, but we do think that this is exactly what olive enthusiasts are looking for. So if you’re like us and you generally don’t like olives, or you’re ambivalent to them, then these might not be for you.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this frozen appetizer, check out our package scans below.
