Trader Joe’s Southwestern Style Chicken Poppers

Southwest Chicken PoppersTrader  Joe’s Southwestern Style Chicken Poppers – Trader Joe’s famous for their easy to make party food. The freezer section is full of mini dogs in a bun or stuffed mushrooms or party meatballs so it was no surprised that I regularly see a new party snacks. At first when I saw the Chicken Popper in there, I was like what in the world are these things. They looked like multi-colored meatballs. When you think something like chicken poppers, you are thinking about some deep fried ball of chicken you get at one of the TGIF type restaurants at happy hour. I love Mexican food as much as anyone, but although the ingredients and flavors are remotely southwestern, this is clearly an American concoction! I love the cowboy on the box, like cowboys go to Trader Joe’s and eat these poppers…

This is not that. I’m not sure how they came up with this but it is a concoction of chicken, beans, corn, cheese and tortillas. It’s somehow rolled into a ball that’s covered in a triage of three different colored tortilla chips. The look is a little unappetizing to be honest. They look like uncooked beef meatballs to me with all the purple and red tortilla chips in the mix.

Anyway, you get something like 12 of them in a box. They are in the frozen section with all the other h’ordeuvres as I mentioned above. They are easy to make, just preheat the oven and put these on a baking sheet and 15 minutes later they are ready. Let these puppies rest for a few minutes because as I learned the hard way they are molten lava inside the popper! (Note to self, do not put poppers in mouth directly from the oven!)

After I recovered from my third degree burns in my mouth, I actually enjoyed these! They have kind of a crunchy exterior, but in the inside is like a chicken burrito with black beans, red bell peppers, spinach and best of all lots of cheese! I like cheese and that always wins me over. There is a bit of heat, but for me it was enjoyable. I could see dipping these in salsa or sour cream. If you are serving these to guests, put out toothpicks, salsa, guac and sour cream for dips.

I really enjoyed these Trader Joe’s Southwestern Style Chicken Poppers. The are a feat of modern food engineering but also very fun to eat and taste great too. They are alike a little chicken burrito ball but that’s the intent, something easy to nibble on at a dinner party. I could also see making a meal out of these if you really wanted to. I thought the visual appeal was a little off. The purple and red tortilla chips on the exterior reminded me of uncooked beef meatballs. Cutting them open also reveal a mish-mash of stuff. But at the end of the day they just plain tasted good!

I am going to rate these Chicken Poppers a solid 8 Bells!

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