The Best New Products at Trader Joe’s: Winter 2026

The theme of this winter at Trader Joe’s is shrinkage. Everything new is mini. Shrink-flation, or just adorable? Is this a grocery store for ants? The script really writes itself. We have a little cookies ’n cream cake. We have a personal-sized blooming onion in the freezer department. We have itty-bitty PB&J bites and (terrible) mini chocolate biscuit cookies. We have all that and more, reviewed here today.

The Munchies

Onion Flowers

Single-serve Bloomin’ Onions! This is a dupe of the trademarked appetizer made famous by Outback Steakhouse, but shrunk—a big theme this winter. These sculptural snacks are a moment of brief brilliance. Brief because you’ll eat them fast. The frilly fried petals begin to brown before the center is unfrozen, so air-fry or bake them at a lower temp and for a longer time than the box suggests. As usual, there is no dipping sauce included, so you need to whip up a little spicy mayo on your own time.

Cookies ’n Cream Mini Sheet Cake

How’d they mess this up?! This typically perfect baby sheet cake (the flavors change seasonally) is too spongy and dry in this iteration. The slather of cookie-crumbly frosting helps mask it, to a point. But we can only fool ourselves for so many forkfuls, standing on the anti-fatigue mat in the kitchen, waiting for something better that will never come.

Pizza Bianca

Presumably, to keep costs and labor low, this pizza relies on dried onion powder for flavor, which gives it a funky onion breath note. On Reddit, TJ superfans report all the toppings they add to this blank-slate pizza, like pepperonis, arugula, and a drizzle of the balsamic glaze. But even unadorned, it’s one of the best frozen pizzas at the store. The crust puffs up nicely and isn’t as thin and cardboard-y as others, while the white cheese blend and wisp of rosemary remind me of a New York white pie slice. It’s a smaller size, which works for two people if you have a salad on the side. Or have it all for yourself. That too.

Kanom Krok (Thai Coconut Pancakes)

Behold, these are a real treat. I’d never had these before, but Trader Joe’s stamps the word “authentic” on the packaging to make sure you don’t feel fraudulent. They’re poofy, ping-pong-sized balls of tapioca starch, rice flour, coconut milk, and sugar, in a rectangular sheet, like pieces in a new board game waiting to be popped apart. I had to air-fry them five minutes longer than the box suggested to get the exterior crispy, but it was worth it. They’re a spectacular contrast of crisp outsides and chewy-ooey-gooey insides.

PB&J Oat Bites

These individually wrapped peanut butter and oat bites are a suitable lunch box treat, or fuel for people who take long bike rides and other torturous endurance sports. The jam in the center is so intensely sugary that it made the enamel on my teeth scream in pain, which usually only happens when I eat caramels. (Shout out to Sensodyne.) For a PB&J snack, I much prefer the squishy Trader Joe’s Uncrustables dupe, reviewed here.

Prebiotic Sodas

Poppi, Olipop, Culture Pop—just like one of those. These are alt-sodas sweetened with monk fruit, which has a hollow sweetness that leaves my tongue itchy. Am I slightly allergic? Maybe. My take is: When I want a soda, I want a full-fat Dr Pepper, and also a bag of Fritos to go with it. I don’t need to sacrifice my hard-earned joy for something vaguely satisfying and a little preachy. But, if you insist, strawberry and cream is the better flavor.

The Breakfasters

English Muffin Breakfast Sandwich

The egg patty is as thin as a bar coaster and just as flavorful in this McDonald’s-esque sausage-egg McMuff. The sausage is fine, the muffin is wimpy but fine, the whole thing’s fine. I reheated it in a toaster oven, which gets the muffin toasty, while the microwave would yield something steamed and soggy, a different kind of pleasure. Hot sauce or ketchup helps, as they do.

Morning Buns

This is exactly the kind of baked good I would never, ever make from scratch—leave that to Claire Saffitz. You need to take these out to proof overnight on the counter, but after a 20-minute bake, they’re golden and flaky. However, because Trader Joe’s puts minimal instructions on its boxes, you end up with buns that are flaky on the outside, while the inner dough is soggy with cinnamon-roll-type butter goo. Not complaining. But if you want to serve these to guests, I’d take them out of their muffin cups and put them on a wire rack to cool and set up.

Smoked Steelhead Trout

Steelhead trout is nearly indistinguishable to salmon (to me, and many), but because there’s less demand, it’s cheaper. Wahoo! At Trader Joe’s, this smoked trout is $5.49 for four ounces, compared to $7.99 for four ounces of smoked sockeye salmon. And it’s just as satisfying on your morning bagel or avocado toast. The slices are thicker than any self-respecting fish slicer at Zabar’s would allow, but look, you can’t train an industrial slicer in the ways of the Upper West Side.

The Valentine’s Day Stuff

Mini Dark Chocolate Biscuit Cookies

So cute. So bad. These are memory card-sized “biscuits” with a thin chocolate coating on one side. They even say “MINIS” on the biscuit, so you remember that the cookies are small and you haven’t sprouted up into a giant all of a sudden, magic-beanstalk-style. The size and crunch make the cookies easy to eat by the handful before you realize they taste like wood shavings.

Milk Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Hearts

Valentine’s Day is more of a pizza holiday to me, but to each their own. These are Dove chocolate–sized strawberry marshmallows, coated in milk chocolate, and the overall effect is as romantic as being caught on the Kiss Cam with your mistress.

Dark Chocolate Sticks With Crispy Rice

Like skinny cigs, these are literal sticks of bitter dark chocolate with rice crispies. Smoke ’em if you got ‘em: if these are around, I’ll eat them. When they’re gone, I won’t miss them.

2 Affogatos Vanilla Non-Dairy Frozen Desserts

For the record, Trader Joe’s non-dairy ice cream is fantastic. It has an eggy custard flavor and it gets soft faster than full-dairy stuff. This is a goofy, overly-packaged box of two single-serve affogatos that look like baby pints of ice cream. Inside, there’s a hole into which you sprinkle a sleeve of crappy instant coffee, then activate with hot water, and voila, affogato-a-go-go. If you’re not familiar with the Italian delicacy of affogato—espresso over ice cream—it’s basically the thinking woman’s root beer float. And I hate thinking!

The Pantry Stock

Organic Peeled Ginger

The convenience food we deserve. Every recipe I want to make (this cod curry, these Thai chicken thighs) calls for peeling and grating fresh ginger. And while sometimes I’m in the mood to scrape the knobby, wrinkly knuckles of a witch’s finger, most of the time I am not. (Editor’s note: The spoon trick doesn’t work as well as people say it does! Just want to say that!) These are clusters of four to five fresh, naked ginger pieces, so they don’t get dried out, and are usually exactly how much a recipe calls for, between 1 and 2 tablespoons. They grate like a dream. Find them near the herbs and stock up.

Kaamté Gouda Style Cheese

This young gouda is so mild it veers on unflavored, but flavor isn’t for everybody.

Thick and Creamy Strawberry Greek Yogurt

The new unflavored Thick and Creamy Yogurt is a must-buy for me, because it’s as thick as Fage and a few cents cheaper. This strawberry version takes me back to a simpler time, before the Sugar Police showed up and shamed us for all the Boston Cream Pie Yoplait. So, yeah, it’s sweeeeeety sweet sweet, as if it’s half strawberry jam, half yogurt. Could be fun for freezing into popsicles, if I was crafty like that. Maybe you are.

Bird’s Eye Chile Hot Sauce

Hot! Go on a personal journey to discover how much you can handle. Perhaps a droplet on your eggs, or a squeeze mixed into mayo for dipping your air-fried Onion Flowers (above)? Or douse it straight into the soups of thine enemies.

Sliced Porridge Bread

Not as rustic as it sounds, this porridge bread tastes similar to any grocery store honey wheat-type loaf. Apparently there’s an oatmeal mixture in the dough, which is thrilling news for my colon. It has the flabby, cakey texture of any bread that’s been trapped in a plastic bag for a few days. It’s sweet and soft, waiting to be buttered within an inch of its life.

The Pastas

Spicy Alfredo Fusilloni Pasta

This looks and tastes like airline food, which I say about 99 percent of Trader Joe’s frozen pastas. There’s definitely some heat here, at least, so you feel a little more alive than when trapped in an airplane, breathing filtered air and wandering farts. Pair with a small cup of lukewarm ginger ale for best results.

Chicken Sausage Ravioli

It’s not Joe’s best ravioli—that would be the butternut squash one—but a reflection on the trendiness of chicken sausage. There’s chicken sausage all over this store! Pre-cooked links to fry up for dinner, breakfast patties, meatballs, a breakfast burrito, and in the spicy sauce of a new frozen pasta (above). I found a piece of chewy cartilage in one ravioli I had to sneak out of my mouth, and for that, I’ll never, ever forgive it.