The Cheesy Pasta Dish Trader Joe's Shoppers Keep Rebuying: 'I Could Drink This Sauce'

Trader Joe's is a haven for folks who like to eat well but don't necessarily have the time to cook a from-scratch meal every night of the week. There are always new products hitting the shelves, as well as plenty of old favorites that have stood the test of time, giving shoppers a wealth of options for quick and easy meals. One recent arrival to the lineup of Trader Joe's frozen pastas has made waves across the internet, however: the chain's 3 Cheese Pasta with Eggplant.

The hype is high, and it is not hard to understand when you begin to read the brand's description of the product. Based on the Sicilian dish pasta alla norma, each package contains two small trays of rigatoni noodles and eggplant tossed in tomato sauce and béchamel with mozzarella, provolone, and unspecified hard grating cheeses — a category that includes varieties like Parmesan and Pecorino. It may not be exactly a pasta alla norma, in which it would be more traditional to find ricotta salata.  Similar to the ricotta versus béchamel debate in lasagna, both sides are winners in the end.

As mentioned above, inside the $4.49 package the pasta is split into two small paper trays. This allows convenient portioning, with buyers easily able to split the dish into two separate meals. 

When it comes to the 3 Cheese Pasta with Eggplant from Trader Joe's the messaging is clear: buy, buy buy! "I tried today and it is SOOOOO good! I could drink this sauce," one Redditor wrote. Another shared that, after their first time sampling it, they went back the next week for not another package, but five more. Most customers are less extreme in their excitement, but it is clearly a favorite across the web.

There are, of course, naysayers out there, but the primary complaint seems to be the small size of the trays. There is a Reddit thread entitled "The 3 cheese pasta with eggplant kinda feels like a joke," that features one of the paper trays of pasta on a table next to the poster's hand for scale. That said, many seem to value the built-in ability to easily control their portions, and even those that think it's too little food for the price seem to enjoy their meager portions.

As much as the internet can be a helpful tool to discern the quality of a product before stepping into the store, the only real way to judge it is firsthand. With this many positive reviews, there's no doubt that this eggplant pasta is worth a shot.