6 Prepared Food Items To Buy at Trader Joe’s To Save You Time and Money

How often do you make a visit to the Trader Joe’s prepared foods aisle? Some shoppers may be regulars over here while others may bypass this aisle entirely. If you find you belong to the latter category, you might not realize that their inventory of prepared foods is often a grocery shopper’s secret weapon for saving time and money on meals.

GOBankingRates reviewed the prepared foods at Trader Joe’s and pulled five of our favorites with a sneaky sixth prepared-food pick that you can find in the bakery section. Keep reading to see which prepared foods save the most time and money at Trader Joe’s.

• Price: $5.99

It just makes good financial sense to shop the California roll at Trader Joe’s versus dining out at a sushi restaurant. Every California roll comes with its own soy sauce, pickled ginger slices and a wasabi-style paste.

You’ll obviously save more money grabbing it to go than you would going out, but you’re also pocketing all that extra time spent out at a restaurant. By the time the sushi has been ordered, prepared, consumed and the check has been split and tips given out, well, you’d have finished that California roll long ago.

• Price: $6.99

Stocking up a few Caesar salads with salmon is a helpful approach to meal planning for lunch throughout the work week. This is especially true of the work weeks where there isn’t enough time to run out and order a salad or make one at home, if you work from home. 

Each prepared Caesar salad comes with romaine lettuce and kale, parmesan cheese, cheese crisps in lieu of croutons, grilled salmon for an Omega-3 kick and Caesar dressing.

• Price: $2.99

For a speedy weeknight dinner, it’s Trader Joe’s four-cheese ravioli to the rescue. This ravioli prides itself on being delicious and versatile enough to be paired with a wide variety of sauces. 

It’s also incredibly affordable (check the price tag) and cooks within minutes, as detailed on the Trader Joe’s website.

• Price: $2.99

We’re following one pasta recommendation with another with Trader Joe’s spinach tortellini. Again, this is a situation where the packaging literally spells out how quick and easy it is to cook this tortellini: it’s ready in minutes. 

At $2.99 for each 10-ounce package, you might find yourself stocking up on a few to have on hand to whip up affordable pasta meals on a time crunch.

• Price: $8.99

Skim the caption for Trader Joe’s pulled chicken salsa verde and you’ll notice that there’s a lot of messaging about the convenience of this meal. If the grocer says it saves time, we know they’re onto something good!

What sets this pulled chicken apart is that the meat is not only cooked, but it’s already seasoned, slow-cooked and shredded. The completion of all this cooking legwork  means the buyer only need to heat it up before adding it into the meal of their choice like quesadillas, tacos, nachos or anywhere else you’d like to add it.

• Price: $5.49

The final item in this roundup isn’t found in the prepared food aisle, but rather the bakery. To celebrate the fall season, we wanted to put the Trader Joe’s pumpkin spice mini sheet cake on buyers’ radars. 

Busy schedules mean there’s not always time to bake a cake and tight budgets can make it tough to afford all the key ingredients. This sheet cake serves as the happy medium between all of that: already baked, frosted and big enough to cut and serve to a small cluster of guests. Bon appetit!