A quick internet search will reveal that Trader Joe's is just about the only place that sells "soyaki" sauce. Plenty of other folks are peddling bottles of teriyaki with sesame seeds as a primary ingredient. It seems fairly self evident that "soyaki" is a mashup of the words "soy" and "teriyaki," but if regular teriyaki has soy in it anyway, then wouldn't all teriyaki be soyaki? Seems to me that the sesame seeds are the things that make this product unique, but I guess "sesameyaki" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.
Trader Joe's Soyaki is bursting with the umami flavor of soy sauce, but behind it there's a surprising amount of cane sugar sweetness along with garlic and ginger purees. You can taste sesame, vinegar, and tamari, and the whole thing is nice and savory. There are enough sesame seeds that they not only provide a bit of nuttiness to the flavor, but they add some texture, too.
My instincts would gravitate towards poultry or fish as the perfect pairings for this sauce, but I suppose steak wouldn't be out of the question. We used our soyaki as a marinade for salmon and it was scrumptious. We served it with rice and salad, and it was just perfect for dinner.
I hear it goes quite well with tofu as well, so if you're prepping a plant-based meal you're in luck because Trader Joe's Soyaki is certified vegan. It's also kosher. $3.99 for 21 oz. Would buy again. Eight out of ten stars from both Sonia and me for Trader Joe's Soyaki Sauce.
This is only our second K-Cup review on this blog, but it looks like we've reviewed in the ballpark of a dozen other types of coffee throughout the years. As per my usual, I'll let the beautiful wifey do most of the evaluating and analyzing since she's much more into coffee than I am. So my contribution to this post shall be the following compilation of those other Trader Joe's brand coffee reviews:
Your guess is as good as mine as to whether any or all of the above are currently available, but at least you know we've sampled our fair share of TJ's java over the past decade and a half. Sonia likes this one at least as much as any of the others. $5.49 for 12 K-Cups. If you'd like to know her specific reasons for liking this one (beyond just convenience and reasonable price) you'll just have to click on the video review below.
Not to be confused with Trader Joe's Scallopini Potatoes, which is a frozen dish available exclusively around Thanksgiving and Christmas, this cheesy potato product comes refrigerated and is still available currently at TJ's, though it, too, is marked as "seasonal." It comes in a plastic tray with a thin film covering, and they actually want you to bake the product right in the tray. Peel back a corner, plop the tray on a baking sheet, and throw the whole thing on the center rack at 375° for 25 minutes and you've got a steaming hot side dish ready to rock and roll.
This isn't the first product we've reviewed that came in an "ovenable" tray, but I'm not gonna lie, this one smelled a bit like burning plastic at the end of the heating process. There was no discernible melting going on, but the odor was a bit off-putting. The fact that the product itself wasn't exactly bursting with flavors of its own didn't help matters much.
When I read the words "Four Cheese," I expect a rich comfort food flavor that's heavy and bold in the best ways possible. There's nothing offensive about the taste of this product but if I'm honest, it just didn't do it for me. If not more cheese, it would have benefited from a more potent spice blend with onions or garlic.
The texture of the potatoes was a bit firmer than I'm used to with this type of dish—it's almost as if they weren't cooked long enough. On a more positive note, the cheese wasn't overly oily or greasy. I liked that there were shreds of leeks throughout the dish, although I would have appreciated a lot more of them.
In the end, it's a convenient side dish that's innocuous enough and quite easy to prepare, but there's better packaged scalloped potatoes out there. Would not buy this particular product again. $5.99 for the 3.5 serving package. Six and a half stars from Sonia for Trader Joe's Four Cheese Scalloped Potatoes. Five and a half stars from me.
