Cheese Empanadas with Cassava Crust

It's been a long, long time since we've written about something new we've tried at Trader Joe's (since January!), but I've noticed that, without these posts, we really do forget if we've tried something and whether or not we liked it. So, time to get back into it!

We picked up these cheese empanadas with cassava crust ($2.99) on a recent visit. We're no strangers to empanadas, but the cassava crust here sounded unique, and the filling of cheese, caramelized onions, and spinach sounded delicious. The ingredients list on the box was simple and had everything you'd expect to find based on the description - a basic crust of cassava flour and starch, water, oil, and salt, and filling of ricotta cheese, caramelized onions, mozzarella cheese, spinach, salt, and pepper. No additives, nothing you couldn't pronounce, very straightforward. There were instructions for both the oven and the air fryer, and since I kept forgetting to make them while preparing the other components for dinner, we went with the air fryer, which took 10 minutes.

Unfortunately, they were just okay. The spinach was visible but didn't really add much to the flavor, and we completely forgot there were supposed to be caramelized onions in it until we re-read the box. You couldn't taste them at all. It mostly tasted and texturally felt like a ricotta cheese-stuffed empanada. The shell wasn't as crispy or crunchy as other empanadas we've had, but if that's not the cassava, maybe we just needed to air fry it a little longer. It was a good complement to the much stronger-tasting ceviche that we ate for dinner, but on its own, it was not that exciting.

Buy again? Probably not. They were fine, but we didn't love them.