Taste Test: Trader Joe's Lemongrass Chicken Stix

Trader Joe's (or more accurately, Thai Joe's) Lemongrass Chicken Stix take a crunchy outer layer and fill it with a combination of ground chicken, cabbage, ginger, and lemongrass.

Our intrepid taste-testers heated up a package of 10, which comes frozen, and dug in. The results? Not as tasty as we were hoping for. While the wrapper is perfectly crunchy after some time in a 450-degree oven, and the texture of the filling is pleasing if a little mushy, the lemongrass simply overtakes everything else.

"The lemongrass is so powerful it's overwhelming," said one taster, who added that "in Thai food it's supposed to be a lot more subtle." Others thought that it had what tasted like "artificial lemon flavor," and that it "needs a sweet chile dipping sauce, or maybe a sweet-and-sour sauce to balance out the lemon."

Once you get past the overpowering lemongrass, though, it's a solid party appetizer. There's a bowl of dipping sauce in the photo on the packaging, so we'd recommend you take their advice and find something sweet and sour to dip them into. 

 

Dan Myers is the Eat/Dine Editor at The Daily Meal. Follow him on Twitter @sirmyers.