The Trader Joe's Prepared Foods Worth Buying For A Busy Week

During busy weeks, even the easiest recipes feel like insurmountable roadblocks to feeding yourself or your family. Between work, errands, family obligations, and everything else competing for your time, chopping vegetables and starting dinner from scratch can quickly send you tip-tapping on takeout delivery apps. But not so fast — a few strategically chosen Trader Joe's prepared foods can make a huge difference.

It just takes a bit of forethought. If you keep some quick-serving prepared meals in your fridge or freezer, then you can pull them out just in time to save the day or evening. The trick is choosing tasty options that actually work on busy days. The best prepared foods from TJs can be complete dinners on their own, but there are also excellent choices that do the heavy lifting while allowing flexibility for adding a few sides or quick enhancements.

For example, you could incorporate fully cooked chicken in a salad, wrap, or rice bowl. Pulled pork can go from tacos one night to sandwiches the next. Even stuffed pasta becomes a more substantial dinner with a vegetable or protein added to the equation. As a fully devoted Trader Joe's shopper, I know my way around the prepared food and freezer sections of every TJs store within range of home, work, and family — so I've compiled a list of five items I'd want around for especially busy weeks. They're all ones I've tried myself, some over and over again.

Trader Joe's Stuffed Poblano Peppers are an excellent choice for ready-made dinners on hectic days.  The refrigerated entree combines large poblano pepper halves with white meat chicken, brown rice, corn, Monterey Jack cheese, and a creamy cilantro sauce. You can microwave the stuffed peppers in just a few minutes, but with a bit more time, the oven is another option. When the cheese on top browns and crisps up just a tiny bit, it feels more like a meal made from scratch. 

With all that goodness tucked inside each of the included two pepper halves, it's really not necessary to add anything else. You've got protein, veggies, cheese, and sauce for lunch or dinner. However, it's super easy to add complementary ingredients to make the meal feel more complete. My favorite poblano pairings are sliced avocados or guacamole for creamy texture, salsa or pico de gallo spooned over the top, or simply serving black beans on the side. Trader Joe's routinely carries some pretty fresh-tasting canned organic black beans for very low prices. Add a squeeze or a scatter of chopped cilantro to brighten up the overall poblano persona. 

If you're feeding more tummies than your own, you could serve one pepper per person alongside a simple salad or some tortilla chips and salsa. The microwave is clearly the winner on genuinely hectic evenings, but some helping hands or oven-watchers could facilitate that extra browned-cheese touch. Either way, very little effort stands between your fridge and dining table. 

Sometimes the most useful prepared food isn't a complete meal at all. Trader Joe's Grilled Chili Lime Chicken Breast is a simple 12-ounce package of already cooked, sliced chicken seasoned with chili powder, paprika, garlic, cumin, and lime juice. Since it's already cooked (superbly, in my opinion), the door is wide open for eating it cold or quickly warmed. This eliminates one of the most time-consuming parts of putting together a meal. As such, this citrusy, slightly spicy, package of protein can rescue several lunches and dinners, depending on how you throw it all together.

For the easiest possible meal, put the chicken over salad greens with avocado, corn, tomatoes, and your favorite dressing. Or better yet, grab one of TJs pre-packaged salad kits; the Southwestern Chopped Salad Kit is my favorite companion for the grilled chili lime chicken, and it comes with avocado dressing, crunchy toppings, and cotija cheese for a quick tabletop toss. The chicken also fits naturally into tacos, burritos, quesadillas, pasta, or rice bowls with black beans and salsa. For more of a dinner-style meal, serve with some Trader Joe's precooked roasted or frozen veggies and a loaf of garlic bread.

The takeaway from this one is versatility. You aren't locked into one type of lunch or dinner, and the package holds plenty of grilled chicken for splitting into different kinds of meals when rushing from one thing to another on hectic days.

Regular Trader Joe's shoppers have likely seen the name "cacio e pepe" in other incarnations, including pasta sauce and puff snacks. But this tasty time saver is the Cacio e Pepe Ravioli, one of the easiest shortcuts to a substantial dinner with minimal effort involved. It doesn't even need seasoning, since all the goodness is tucked inside the ravioli itself. 

Located in the refrigerated deli section, these ravioli get filled with ricotta and PDO Pecorino Romano cheeses, along with black pepper. They have the cheesy, peppery profile you expect with cacio e pepe (which in Italian simply means "cheese and pepper"). Because stuffed ravioli cooks so quickly, this is a particularly convenient option for evenings when you want something warm and comforting but aren't remotely interested in standing over a hot stove. After bringing to a boil, it takes only three to four minutes for a fully cooked pile of cheesy peppered pasta to get plopped into waiting bowls. There's also no real need for a complicated sauce; butter or a good olive oil and a little extra grated Parmesan are plenty. 

For a fuller meal, toss in some quick-cooking frozen peas during the final minutes of cooking; wilt some baby spinach into the drained pasta; or serve it with roasted broccoli or asparagus. Prosciutto strips are another fine addition, as is sliced chicken or Italian sausage. For more quick raviolis ideas, check out our ranked list of the best Trader Joe's ravioli.

Pulled pork is infamous for low-and-slow cooking, definitely not what's on the agenda during hectic weekdays. That's unless you turn to Trader Joe's Hardwood Smoked Pulled Pork, which can be sitting pretty in your freezer until time to shine. The fully cooked pork comes in a 16-ounce package and is seasoned with ingredients including garlic, onion, brown sugar, molasses, maple syrup, and coffee. All that deliciousness then gets smoked over real hardwood logs. It comes in a microwavable pouch and is ready to plate in about three minutes. 

Even better, this smoked pulled pork doesn't limit you to one specific meal. Think of it as an adaptable, protein-packed lady-in-waiting instead of a predestined package of barbecued meat. Of course, adding your favorite barbecue sauce and piling it high onto toasted buns with coleslaw is the obvious option, but your imagination can do wonders with this one. 

Warm tortillas easily become the base for pulled pork tacos in mere minutes. Just add salsa, shredded cabbage, avocado, pickled onions, or whatever taco toppings you have on hand. You can also scatter the pork over nacho chips with cheese and jalapeños, add it to a baked potato, spoon it over jasmine rice, or fold into a cheesy quesadilla. It has excellent leftover potential as well: Think next-day sandwiches, grain bowls, or barbecue-sauced buns. TJs did you a solid with the cooking, shredding, and smoking — just send it on the easiest path to a relaxing meal.

This one is near and dear to my heart — or at least to my appetite. I buy Trader Joe's Chicken Mole Mole every week, and it crops up in all kinds of meals as inclination dictates. The thought of making mole from scratch is intimidating enough, not counting the chunks of time required for getting it just right. TJs takes that off your plate by pairing fully cooked dark-meat chicken with a rich mole sauce built around pasilla and guajillo chiles, tomatoes, cinnamon, onion, garlic, and coriander.

The frozen masterpiece can be heated in the microwave in only a few minutes or warmed on the stovetop if you've got hands-on time available. The simplest way to serve it is also one of the best: Spoon the chicken and sauce over hot cooked rice. Then add avocado, cilantro, a squeeze of lime, and a little toss-in of cotija cheese. Even cooking the rice is optional with Trader Joe's frozen cooked rice options, which include organic basmati rice, Spanish style rice, or even an alternative organic riced cauliflower.

The mole chicken also works beautifully as a shortcut for tacos or rice bowls. With a short bit of extra time, try spooning the chicken into flour tortillas, rolling them into a baking dish, adding cheese, and popping them in the oven for a deeply flavorful twist on enchiladas. For even more ideas, here's a deeper look at things to do with Trader Joe's frozen chicken mole.