Trader Joe’s Rants & Raves (mostly raves, a few rants)

Product of Italy

Trader Joe’s frozen “Mushroom Medley” is a great product. This is an assorted mix of mushrooms that have been cooked with olive oil and garlic (Frozen). You can just use these exactly the same as if you had spent time cooking up a big bag of assorted mushrooms.

I love this and find it to be a great Trader Joe’s item. I like to always have a bag in my freezer, as I can use these to come up with lots of things fast and easy. For example just by adding these mushrooms to pasta or gnocchi or polenta, I can make a very tasty dish, super fast.

Of course they are good for other things besides pasta or gnocchi. Sometimes I’ll use these to come up with a mushroom sauce for say chicken. Or add some of these to eggs and make a nice mushroom omelette or maybe a frittata. You can use just what you need in the package and put the rest back in a Ziplock.

In addition to the standard kind of mushroom we’re most familiar with, these are a mixed variety of mushrooms. Beside “regular” mushrooms it mixes oyster mushooms (pleurotos ostreatus), porcini / boletus (boletus edulis) and slippery jack mushrooms (suillus luteus). Other ingredients include extra virgin olive oil, sunflower oil, parsley, salt and garlic. It can use more garlic so usually I will add that as well as a nice slug of good EVOO.

One example of a pasta dish might be something like cooking up a shaped pasta (bowties (farfalle), rigatoni or trofie) or gnocchi and then mixing the defrosted mushrooms in. I usually add fresh garlic plus butter and olive oil and mix in a few tablespoons of the pasta water to come up with sauce. This makes a very tasty nice mushroom pasta dish. You could use a long pasta instead of a shaped one (like spaghetti) but in that case I might chop up the mushrooms first perhaps.

Another use might be to toss these into cooked rice or Harvest Grains Blend for a mushroom grain dish. So again, these are very versatile and useful!

One of my favorite/go to dishes is to use these to make GNOCCHI & MUSHROOMS. Crisp fry up a package of Trader Joe’s regular gnocchi while these mushrooms are cooking with a good slug of butter. When the gnocchi are golden brown, I just toss in these mushrooms and grate some Pecorino or Parmigiano on top. Voila, a gourmet dish equal to a restaurant that serves two for dinner and costs under $6!

Another one would be pairing these with the great ORGANIC PAPPARDELLE noodles. Sauté some garlic with olive oil, add the mushrooms and mix them with the pappardelle. Easy and delicious.

You don’t have to use the whole package; take out what you need and put the rest back for later in a ziplock into the freezer.

These are a must try.

Trader Joe’s frozen Mushroom Medley is $3.99 (12 oz)

I would buy it again

Ingredients: Mushrooms/Champignons, Oyster Mushrooms, Boletus Mushrooms, Slippery Jack Mushrooms, EVOO, Sunflower Oil, Parsley, Salt, Garlic