Trader Joe's Caramelized Onion & Bell Pepper Turkey Patties

I might be the odd man out here, but I'll generally gravitate toward a turkey burger before I'll choose the more common and more traditional beef patty. Same for Sonia. If we're going to eat red meat, we'd both prefer buffalo (bison) burgers before beef, but those aren't exactly ubiquitous, so it's largely moot point.

All that to say, we love turkey burgers and have had many throughout the years. See: Trader Joe's frozen turkey burgers. I assumed these would be, like, my favorite thing ever since I'm also a big fan of caramelized onions and bell peppers. And while I did enjoy the veggies mixed right into the meat, I felt like there was something just slightly off that I couldn't quite put my finger on at first.

Meanwhile, the beautiful wifey raved about her burger. She said she was shocked at how much she loved it. She was originally thinking of adding seasoning during the heating process, but I talked her out of it, noting that for the purpose of review we should taste them sans fixins, at least at first.

She was amazed at how not bland the burgers were, embracing the onions, peppers, and interesting seasoning blend, though we both did note that the caramelized onions mentioned on the packaging didn't show up visibly in the burgers nor in the flavor profile in any meaningful way. We had the burgers with cheese, mustard, arugula, and pretzel buns in the end, both deciding that any additional seasoning was unnecessary.

After the fact, I did a bit of recon and checked out traderjoes.com to see if they mentioned what kind of turkey meat was used. Sure enough, they specify on the website that these turkey burgers are made of 100% thigh meat, though it's not specified on the product label. I've mentioned before that I'm a white meat and poultry breast kinda guy. Turkey burgers where white and dark meat are mixed work quite well, too, in my humble opinion. This dark meat only stuff doesn't taste quite as good to me.

Also, wtf is "cultured onion juice"?

TL;DR—I like the veggies cooked into the patties but I don't like that they're made of only dark meat. Sonia absolutely adores Trader Joe's Caramelized Onion & Bell Pepper Turkey Patties.

$5.99 for four patties, found in the refrigerated section.

Sonia's score: 9 out of 10.

Nathan's score: 7 out of 10.