Trader Joe's Cold Pressed Pineapple Juice

It's excellent pineapple juice, without question. But, absent a side-by-side comparison, I can't tell that it's any better than the excellent TJ's pineapple juice in cartons, and it's a lot more expensive.


Will I buy it again? 

No. Well, I suppose I might buy it once more just to do that comparison, but unless the results really surprise me, I will always pick the carton.

Trader Joe's Sliced Fresh Gold Pineapple Spears

This is an improvement on Trader Joe's previous attempt to sell fresh pineapple slices as rings. You get two more ounces for the same price ($3.49), I think the spears are easier to eat than the rings, and, at least in this sample, the fruit was sweeter and better-tasting.


Will I buy it again? 

Probably not. As mentioned in the review of the rings, other grocery stores sell fresh pineapple that I have found to be consistently better quality for less money.

Trader Joe's Pineapple Rings

I've looked for a product like this several times before and never found it until last week, so I believe that it's new.

It is absolutely not worth buying. This small container cost $3.49. It had only seven thin pineapple rings in it. And they weren't especially good--just mediocre. Ingles, the locally dominant grocery chain, sells a whole pineapple, with the outer hull and core sliced out, for about the same price, but there's at least twice as much in the container. True, you still have to slice it, but that's not much trouble. And they're always excellent--sweet and fresh-tasting.


Will I buy it again? 

No. I have long wanted TJ's to carry a product like this, but now that they do, I'm bitterly disappointed in it.

Trader Joe's Sparkling Pineapple Spring Water

This is the best of the bunch so far. Just enough pineapple flavor to be pleasing, without being overpowering.


Will I buy it again? 

Still no. Fun to try once, but I still prefer plain tap water for most purposes. If I were to pick one, though, this would be first choice.

Trader Joe's Organic Agua Fresca--Pineapple Mango With Natural Mint Flavor

For the most part, this is what you'd expect--good but unremarkable pineapple-mango juice. The surprise comes mostly in the aftertaste, when the shot of mint kicks in, and it works nicely. I don't think I've ever had juice with mint in it before. It's a different experience, well worth trying.


Will I buy it again? 

No. You should definitely try it once, though.

Trader Joe's Crispy Crunchy Mixed Fruit

This is excellent. Pleasant textures. Vivid and compatible flavors--I liked all of the four about equally, so I didn't care which I picked up next and felt no urge to select one over another. Nicely sized pieces with relatively few broken, tiny bits. There is apparently a small amount of sugar added, and I've previously said that I don't want sugar in my dried fruit, but it wasn't prominent enough to bother me here.

One oddity: The package warns not to eat the included desiccant packet. I didn't notice that warning until Nina and I had noshed our way through the whole bag. So either I had picked the odd package with no desiccant, or one of us ate it without noticing. The latter seems unlikely. The only reason I mention it is that this bag had sat in my cupboard so long without being consumed that we were a full eight months past its expiration date when we finally tore into it. (It had become buried under some other stuff and forgotten.) And yet the contents remained in perfect texture, even without the desiccant it was supposed to have. It kind of makes me wonder why they bother with including it.

I don't know why they make the package with a resealable opening, cuz it's never going to be closed again after it's opened. They even specifically assert that the number of servings included is "1." So it's, like, illegal not to eat the whole bag at once.


Will I buy it again? 

Definitely. This is a superior late-night snack.

Trader Joe's Pineapple Tidbits

The only reason to prefer either canned or frozen fruit to fresh fruit is that you can keep it around for a long time, and indulge a whim for it whenever it may hit.

Canned fruit has the great advantage over frozen that you don't have to wait an hour for it to thaw before eating. Impulse snacking for the win!

Frozen fruit should have the advantage over canned of tasting fresher. Frankly, that's the only reason to go for frozen over canned as far as I'm concerned.

So when a frozen fruit fails to taste any better than its canned counterpart, I deem it an utter failure as a grocery product. It has no reason to exist and take up space in my little freezer.

And that's exactly the issue here. This is no better a simulacrum of fresh pineapple than canned. Both canned and frozen are OK, but they're a far cry from fresh. In fact, it's possible that the difference between fresh and either canned or frozen is greater for pineapple than for any other fruit. It's enough that I basically abandoned canned as soon as I discovered that grocery store deli sections sell fresh pineapple that has already been cored out; the work involved in preparing fresh pineapple was the only thing that had previously had me settling for canned.

To repeat: This pineapple is, to me, indistinguishable from canned, while being less convenient to use. I have no use for either.


Will I buy it again? 

No.

Trader Joe's Dried Baby Sweet Pineapple

I love these things.

I'm not sure if "baby sweet pineapple" is a different variety of pineapple than one usually sees, or just harvested early, but they sure are delicious. I think they're much better than the dried pineapple rings. They're far sweeter, they're a lot less sticky, and they didn't leave me picking big hunks of fibrous stuff from between my teeth.

There's no added sugar; all the sweetness comes naturally. In fact, the list of ingredients is one item long: pineapple.

A few of these make a perfect late-night snack for me when my sweet tooth is calling for attention but guilt prevents me from pulling out a bag of candy.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have here the newest addition to my Top Ten list.


Will I buy it again? 

Again and again and again.


Nina's View

Nope. Nuh-uh. Negatory. Hell to the nizzo.

They look like wizened baby squid. They are chewy but not in a good way. They are more sweet than pineappley.

Bob has a ginormous sweet tooth, which is all very well and good, but I do not. I will eat the occasional piece of dried pineapple in trail mix or whatnot. But these? A drupe too far.

Trader Joe's Island Salsa

This is Day Five of New Products Week. 


Trader Joe's description of the product is here. It's $2.99 per jar.

I passed this by the first two or three times I saw it in the store, for two good reasons. First, with mango as a main ingredient, I was pretty sure Nina wouldn't like it. Second, I haven't liked any of TJ's non-tomato-based salsas so far--and that specifically includes their Tropical Mango-Pineapple Salsa and their Pineapple Salsa. I saw little chance that I would like this version any better.

I was right. It's just too fruity, too nontraditional for my admittedly narrow taste in salsas.

I did try mixing it with my favorite, the Fire-Roasted Tomato Salsa, to see if that would make it more palatable. It did, but only by dilution, not by the two products enhancing each other in any way. So I eventually gave up and threw away the last third or so of the jar, so that I could enjoy the Fire-Roasted by itself.


Will I buy it again? 

No.

Trader Joe's Tropical Mango Pineapple Salsa

This ain't salsa. You know how I know that? Because there are no tomatoes in it. No diced tomatoes, no tomato puree, nothing. It's orange, not red. The first ingredient is mango, the second pineapple. I like mango and pineapple just fine, which is why I was interested in trying this stuff. But when something is advertised to be a mango and pineapple salsa, I still expect it to be, at root, a salsa--but with some mango and pineapple thrown in as accents. That is not how Trader Joe's sees things, apparently.

Also, too much onion. I have begrudgingly accepted that if I'm going to eat commercial salsa, I'm going to have to put up with some onion. But there's a limit to my tolerance, and this exceeds it--though only by a little, not so much as to make it inedible.


Will I buy it again? 

No. And I'm tempted to report TJ's to the Federal Trade Commission for false advertising. Salsa, my ass.

Trader Joe's Pineapple Salsa

Nina bought this. I've had it at her house a couple of times.

It's not bad, but it falls far short of my favorite so far, which is TJ's Fall Harvest Salsa. Even though pineapple is the second listed ingredient, after tomatoes, I get very little pineapple flavor. It conveys a general sweetness that I think is actually excessive. And it's too chunky; I prefer things more finely minced.


Will I buy it again? 

It's not terrible by any means--but no.

Nina's View

I bought this with Bob in mind, thinking salsa + sweet = winnar! But no. FAIL. I think it's tasty enough, but the last third of the jar has been sitting in my refrigerator for a month, and I think that tells us all we need to know. Farewell, adieu, aufwiedersehn, good-bye Pineapple Salsa!

Trader Joe's Pineapple Juice (canned)

Trader Joe's pineapple juice in a carton is so good that it's on my Top Ten list. This stuff looks like it should be the same, except in cans instead of a refrigerated carton. The only external hint that they are not, in fact, the same stuff packaged differently is that the carton is labeled as a product of Thailand, the cans as a product of the Philippines.

Nina and I tasted the two products side by side. (I did not mind one bit purchasing another carton of TJ's pineapple juice for this experiment.) There is definitely a difference. The one from the carton is superior in every way. It's sweeter, richer, and fresher. I thought that difference was real and fairly easily discernible, but not dramatic. Nina--well, I'll let her tell you her opinion.

A 4-can pack costs $2.99 for a total of 33.8 ounces, compared to $3.99 for a 64-ounce carton, which means that the good stuff is both better AND cheaper per ounce.

The only advantages of this form pertain to storage. The cans will keep longer, don't need refrigeration, and are obviously more convenient for dispensing small amounts at a time--e.g., to drop one in a lunch bag. The steel cans are also more readily recycled than the cartons. If these considerations are not dominant factors for you, then don't bother with the cans.

Will I buy it again? 

No.

Nina's View

NEGATORY. NOPE. NUH-UH. 

Away with you, unbright, stale, metallic, watery, bad-tasting pineapple juice. 

People, there is no contest here. None whatsoever. Do not buy these cans. Get the stuff in the carton, which is delicious, and if you need to travel with it put it in a thermos. Problem solved!

You're welcome.

Trader Joe's Pineapple Juice

As David Letterman likes to say, "Phone the neighbors, wake the kids." We've found the real stuff here, and everybody ought to know about it.

Hidden among the many, many mediocre and just plain bad "juice" concoctions at Trader Joe's are a few true gems, and this is one of them. It's remarkable for its simplicity and purity: it's just pineapple juice, not from concentrate. It has not been mucked with in any manner. No tweaking or adulterating or sweetening or "improving" with added flavorings.

The result? Absolutely delicious. Every drop conveys the richness that it should, and nearly the freshness that you'd get by running a pineapple through your own juicer--though that would be enough of a challenge and a mess that it's probably worth a trip down to your local Trader Joe's to avoid the bother. Is it worth the $3.99 asking price? I sure think so.

When a TJ's juice product has only one entry in the list of ingredients, it's usually a winner. This pineapple juice and the equally excellent Grapefruit Sunset are the epitome of that general truth. Like the grapefruit juice, it deserves recognition of its excellence by placement in my Top Ten list.

Will I buy it again? 

Yes indeed. In fact, I'm already on my third carton.

Nina's View

I don't drink orange juice regularly with my breakfast any more. But if I did, I'd be sorely tempted to substitute this absolutely fantastic pineapple juice instead. So refreshing! So delicious!

This is very good.

Trader Joe's Dried Pineapple Rings

I've had lots of dried fruit in my day, but I don't think I had ever heard of the existence of dried pineapple until I noticed these packages on the Trader Joe's shelf. I love pineapple, so it was an instantaneous decision to add these to my basket.

They're pretty good, but they have a couple of functional limitations for the purpose I had in mind, which was to carry in my backpack for lunch/snacking on a long bus ride. First, they're rather sticky, so if you're in a situation where you won't be able to wash your hands, or at least use a wet wipe, you're going to regret it. (This is probably true of pretty much any dried fruit, I guess, but I think these are somewhat more so.) Second, as with fresh pineapple, you'll be left with big hunks of fruit stuck between your teeth for a while.

Oddly, they're not as sweet as I had anticipated. Some dried fruit tastes sweeter than fresh because of concentration of the sugars. It did not seem to be the case here. That's OK, it's just not what I imagined before my first bite.

Will I buy it again? 

Not regularly, but I think dried pineapple rings can easily be a "once in a while" late-night snack.