I decided to get straight to the point in my title. It’s been a long while since I’ve reviewed any Trader Joe’s gluten free offerings. We were looking for something new and exciting on a recent trip to Trader Joe’s. That’s one of the cool things about them. When you’re in a Trader Joe’s, you can stop about anywhere, spend a minute or two checking out everything around you, and find something new and interesting to try. I was in the meat department, looking at chicken parts, and this particular item demanded to be tried. They’re Curry Chicken Tenders. And they have the Trader Joe’s “No Gluten Ingredients Used” mark on them.

The only instructions they include with these amounts to: “Grill them.” Here are the ingredients: Water, Curry Powder (Turmeric, White Pepper, Ginger, Mustard Powder), Garlic, Sugar, Salt, Coriander, Dessicated Coconut, Citric Acid, Cardamom, Cinnamon, Cayenne Pepper, Onion Powder, Cumin, Cilantro, Sodium Lactate (for PH control). As can usually be expected with Trader Joe’s products, this all looks pretty straight-forward (except for the last ingredient) – until you notice how high on this list the salt appears.

Of course, I didn’t notice this fact until it was too late. I do a lot of complaining about the salt content in Trader Joe’s products, but these are really off the charts. A serving size of 4 oz of chicken has 850mg (!!!!) of sodium. That’s ridiculous. It’s like eating a salt lick. Really.

Which we didn’t realize until I had served up the curry chicken tenders. I served them up with some broccoli, squash, and yogurt on the side. I love curry with yogurt. Another thing that goes great with curries is dried cranberries. You should try it sometime. Unfortunately, this dish just plain did not work. Mostly because of the salt I just mentioned. We also both felt that this dish is a little heavy on the cardamom. I really love cardamom, but in a curry I don’t usually want it to be the main flavor. It wasn’t inedible. But it wasn’t something we would want to eat again. We ended up with a bunch of leftover chicken from this, sitting in the fridge.

I would love to take the credit for this amazing idea, but actually Sienna came up with it. Why not try the curried chicken in a sandwich? So here you have it. Gluten-free bread, mayonnaise, pieces of lettuce, red onion, and slices of the curried chicken tenders. This, my friends, is a good sandwich! Did I mention that the chicken comes out amazingly tender? It does. Must be like, practically brined. But we both totally recommend this for sandwiches.