Taste Test: Trader Joe's Coconut Shrimp
The coconut shrimp that you'll find in the frozen food section at your local Trader Joe's certainly look promising on the box: plump, golden-brown shrimp, flecked with coconut. Our real-world experience with the product, unfortunately, didn't quite live up to the expectations the box set.
We baked the frozen shrimp for about 10 minutes at 450 degrees, as specified on the box, and while the coconut itself came out brown and crunchy, the rest of the shrimp were paler than we'd have liked. The texture of the coconut shrimp overall was a bit mushy, as the batter never really crisped up. The shrimp inside was tasteless and mushy as well, and a few tasters said that they wouldn't have known there was shrimp in it at all if not for the tail.
That said, a lot of coconut flavor comes through, but it's not cloyingly sweet or overly salty. We just wish that the whole thing had the chance to get brown and crispy; maybe tossing them in a deep-fryer would have worked better.
Trader Joe's Coconut Shrimp came in a box of 15, and a serving of five contains 250 calories, 11 grams of fat, and 480 milligrams of sodium. Ingredients include shrimp, wheat flour, soybean oil, coconut, onion powder, natural beer flavor, and pineapple juice.