Trader Joe’s Vegan Buffalo Dip Review

As anyone that has ever shopped at Trader Joe’s knows is that Trader Joe’s loves vegan food. I can’t think of another mainstream grocery store that goes as far with vegan food in new and interesting ways. Last time I was at Trader Joe’s I was looking for some dips for an upcoming party at our house and saw this Plant Based Dairy Free Vegan Buffalo Dip and had to pick it up and review it!

What is Buffalo Dip?

That’s a great question and many people know what Buffalo Chicken wings are. They are chicken wings deep-fried and tossed in Frank’s Red Hot sauce with some butter when they are still hot. The butter and the hot sauce combine to coat the wings perfectly. Then you have to serve it with carrots, celery, and blue cheese dressing. Yum!

Buffalo Dip is a take on Buffalo Wings. Simply shred some cooked chicken and mix it with some cream cheese, hot sauce, ranch dressing, and some blue cheese crumbles and bake it in an oven until it turns into an ooey gooey mess. Dip tortilla chips into it or pretzels or veggies, whatever floats your boat.

Trader Joe’s decided to go one better and make a vegan version of this dip and instead of chicken, they decided to use cauliflower as their main ingredient. 

Going over the ingredients list, you can see that Trader Joe’s veers quite abruptly from the traditional ingredients list. Instead of chicken, they have cauliflower. Instead of hot sauce, they have cayenne pepper sauce. Instead of blue cheese and ranch dressing, there is carrots and pumpkin seeds. In fact, this dip doesn’t have very much in common with traditional Buffalo Dip at all except that it’s thick and spicy.

If you look at the top view and the picture with some on the bread you can see it looks like a dip. Thick. But upon tasting it, it just doesn’t have the gooey wonderfulness of the chicken buffalo dip. It’s almost more like something you would smear on a sandwich as a spread like mayo or ketchup. You might even dip buffalo wings in this instead of blue cheese dressing.

Final Verdict

While I admire Trader Joe’s for trying new things and keeping it vegan, don’t fool yourself, this is not even close to a traditional Chicken Buffalo Dip. Because there is hardly any protein and no real cheese, and it’s not hot, it’s kind of a miss to call it Vegan Buffalo Dip. Calling more like Spicy Vegan Cauliflower Dip would be more like it. For what it is, it’s actually pretty good. So, if you need a spicy dip at your next party and want to keep it vegan definitely pick up a tub of this dip!