Trader Joe's Soy Chorizo

Pin It VB and I have been hit with sudden urges to eat a lot of Mexican food since we came back from our trip. So, I made some tamales with soy chorizo and black beans to curb those cravings (more to come on that later). It's nice to take a break from Chinese food for awhile -- not too much in common between Chinese food and Mexican food besides that they sometimes share the same strip mall. This also gives me a chance to review Trader Joe's Soy Chorizo -- yet another fake meat offering by Trader Joe's.

I like Trader Joe's Soy Chorizo. Like El Burrito's Soyrizo, the product is encased in a plastic casing. So, unlike real sausages, slicing soy chorizo up is not an option. Instead, you must squeeze the product out of its casing. It's meant to be a substitute of loose sausage meat. Compared to Soyrizo, Trader Joe's version is chunkier with looser bits. The texture is less like meat, in my opinion, than Soyrizo because real sausage meat tend to stick together a bit more. Since it is chunkier, it can be a bit chewy in a bad, fake-meaty sort of way.

As for the taste, Trader Joe's Soy Chorizo is nicely flavored with lots of spices, which mask that awful soy taste in many fake meat products. You can taste the soy a little bit, but it's not very noticeable.

Texture: 3 out of 5 stars
Taste: 4 out of 5 stars
Overall: 3.5 out of 5 stars

In A Nut Shell: I like El Burrito's Soyrizo better, but this isn't bad. It's a nice and less greasy substitute for the real deal.

Here are some recipes ideas for Trader Joe's Soy Chorizo -- black bean chorizo tamales, Caribbean rice and beans (and soy chorizo), taquitos and vegan jambalaya.