A bowl of tortilla chips goes nicely with Trader Joe’s Salsa Autentica.
One of the lost pleasures in the pandemic is the communal bowl of salsa at our favorite Mexican restaurant and the experience of filling up on dipped tortilla chips before our entree arrives. Trader Joe’s Salsa Autentica to the rescue! This stuff somehow has the perfect viscosity to coat a chip without making it soggy, even if you dump a cup of the stuff into your socially distanced individual bowl.
It also has just the right spice level for most folks, a kick of heat without being really hot. A minor quibble: previous jars had a hint of cumin (the signature spice of a Tex-Mex flavor profile) while now the flavor is more tomato-y. And indeed a look at this Amazon listing shows the ingredients as tomatoes, fresh yellow chile, distilled vinegar from corn[!]), salt, onion, spice while the ingredients in our current jar are tomato puree, yellow chili pepper, salt, distilled vinegar, dehydrated onion and garlic powder. But there’s an easy hack to fix this: just stir in half a teaspoon of cumin powder when you open a new jar.
At under $2 in our local store for a 12-oz jar, this is also one of the more affordable choices. The Trader stocks over 20 different salsas (we counted) including refrigerated varieties but this is the one to buy. Trader Joe’s Salsa Autentica is the real deal.
