Trader Joe's Seafood Boil

You know what my favorite type of seafood is? Corn on the cob. Ah, it'll be harvest time soon and we'll be casting our nets in the bay and pulling those ears of corn out by the hundreds. Yum. Then we'll boil them up along with a bunch of other ocean critters like sausage and potatoes, similar to what we have here with this quaint, seasonal Trader Joe's product.

Matter of fact, it might be done for the year right now. No matter. This review will still be good next year if this product comes back. There might still be a few stragglers out there in TJ's freezers here and there. I'm not sure how that works, quite frankly, and I don't care. Or like the beautiful wifey and me, you might have this sitting in the back of your freezer at home and you're wondering when to boil it up.

Like my old man always said, "There's no time like the present." Sounds good. Let's fire up the big black pot on the stove and get boiling.

The only authentic cajun style cooking I've really ever had was at The Gumbo Pot at the Farmers Market in Los Angeles. I'm not calling it authentic myself. My old friends with their extended family from Louisiana told me it was legit, and it seemed pretty tasty to me. Catfish. Gumbo. Crawfish. You name it, they served it, and it was very flavorful, spicy, and delicious.

This Trader Joe's product? Oddly, the only element that seemed to really flaunt any cajun spice was the sausage, and as many of you know, I'm not a huge fan of pork sausage. The texture and taste of the seafood was fine, but none of it was really bursting with sassy Southern spices. The potatoes were soft and unoffensive, but again, not particularly flavorful. The corn on the cob was interesting. If anything, it absorbed more of the cajun spices than anything else, but still, it begged for a dusting of chile lime or cayenne pepper.

It's a fair amount of food, but Sonia and I easily polished it off in a single sitting. There were only three little corn on the cob pieces in the whole mix, four slices of sausage, a half dozen shrimp, and three or four pieces of each other element. For ten bucks, it's a little steep for grocery store fare.

Again, this was a seasonal item which may or may not be back for next year. We had it in the back of the freezer and there are my thoughts, for whatever they're worth. Sonia ate her portion without complaint but she had to add plenty of extra seasonings. She'll throw out six out of ten stars for Trader Joe's Seafood Boil. I'll go with five out of ten.

Bottom line: 5.5 out of 10.