Trader Joe’s Chickenless Crispy Tenders Review

Trader Joe’s really seems to be stepping up the Vegan offerings lately. God knows I’ve reviewed my fair share of them. Every time I post anything remotely Vegan, that post gets triple the number of views compared to anything (well, except that speculoos stuff keeps bringing them in!). We all should eat less or no meat. I know in my family we try to eat less meat all the time. The kids don’t mind when I slip them these. 

I just did the Chickenless Stuffed Cutlets a few weeks and thought they were great! I’m a little more skeptical that these Chickenless Vegan crispy tenders would work. I think Trader Joe’s gets people to buy half of their frozen foods by making it crispy crunchy, and almost deep fried it will taste great! The picture on the cover of the bag looks really appetizing. Especially with that sauce, but I know this won’t have sauce. I will have to provide my own!

These are soy-based and are 100% vegan. They look just like real chicken tenders you would buy from Safeway or whatever mainstream grocery store.

 Actually, these went down pretty easily. They come in the frozen section and out of the bag they look like real chicken nuggets. Just like the real chicken nuggets, you just heat up the oven and stick them in for a few minutes. When they were baking these, they smelled great! I could see the batter sizzling on the baking sheet. I took them out of the oven and one thing I noticed is that the batter slipped off the main part of the tender when I just tongs on them to pick them up, but that is just a minor technicality. Once they cooled down the breading stuck to the tender much better.

I tried one without any sauce or seasonings. I really liked the breading. It reminded me of something from KFC or Popeyes. Lots of flavors!

Then I took a bite out of one of the tender and it had a texture very similar to chicken, which isn’t always the case for meatless products. I think they really nailed down the texture part. As for flavor, don’t expect them to taste like chicken because they taste a lot more like Tofu than chicken and that’s necessarily a  bad thing, just different.

I would definitely get out your favorite dipping sauce here. Ketchup or some sweet chili sauce, BBQ sauce or even salsa of some type. Just like chicken nuggets, these are fairly bland and dry on their own. Feed them to the kids, they will never know they aren’t eating meat. Stuff them in a sandwhich or make tacos out of them. The ideas are limitless here.

I was mildly surprised at how good these Trader Joe’s Chickenless  Crispy Tenders are and I might try to pawn them off on my kids and see how they react. I am going to rate these Crispy Chickenless Tenders a solid 8 Bells!