Trader Joe’s in a never ending quest to stay current has come up with another trendy frozen meal you can prepare in minutes. But this time, I have to say I am pretty impressed. In the freezer section you’ll now find a bag of Trader Joe’s Chilaquiles Rojo with chicken. The subtitle on this is “grilled white chicken meat, cojita cheese, vegetables, pinto beans & corn tortillas in a tomato based chili sauce”.
You get a bag and in that bag are a couple more bags (Trader Joe’s never shy about having lots of plastic packaging). The inner bags have frozen cojita cheese and tortilla chips. It only takes a few minutes to prepare. You add the contents of the big bag to a skillet and start to cook the chicken and vegetables then you add a bit of water, I think it was about 1/4 cup. Then cook for a couple of minutes. I had to cook it for a couple of more minutes because there was a little too much liquid, but it cooked down relatively quickly.
At the last minute you toss the tortilla strips and stir them around to soak up a bit of the sauce and soften up a bit, but not too long or they will probably turn to mush. I erred on the side of less time and then dump it all into a shallow bowl. Then I dumped the little tiny bag of cojita cheese on top and took one look and realized it was barely enough to give it any flavor, so I grabbed a bag of Trader Joe’s Mexican cheese blend and sprinkled a small handful on top. That made the difference!
Trader Joe’s suggest splitting it into two servings. Maybe for very small people on a strict diet. I ate the whole thing for dinner by myself and it was very flavorful and filling but not too much. The chips kept their crunch. The sauce was a good mixture of spice and heat without getting too hot. Trader Joe’s has been known to not be shy about adding heat to some of their prepared foods (Trader Joe’s Thai Fried Rice, I’m looking at you.) You can always had more heat with some hot sauce if you want. I really like the suggestion of putting a fried egg on top. My only complaint is that I would like more chicken or even just give me a vegetarian version of this so I can put in my own meat or egg. I did add an avocado and that helped make it that much better.
For lunch, you could cook the sauce down and throw the chip and cheese bags in a cooler to take to work and combine everything and microwave for a minute or two to re-heat.
I would easily buy this again and I am probably going back to store to buy a couple more!
