Trader Joe’s Trader Giotto’s Penne Arrabbiata

Every time I shop at Trader Joe’s, I notice their frozen Italian meals, but have always decided to pass on them for the time being to try something different. Well, I finally bit the bullet and picked up a bag of Trader Giotto’s Penne Arrabbiata after seeing them purchased in a YouTube video.

I had the bag stashed away in the freezer and one night when I wasn’t really feeling the idea of cooking dinner, I pulled this out and popped it into a pan. Frozen pasta dishes can usually be hit or miss because pastas sometimes don’t fair well after being frozen. But I have to say, this dish was perfect. The pasta came frozen along with quarter size bits of sauce. That definitely was interesting to me because I was anticipating a bag of frozen pasta, along with a bag of frozen sauce. The dish itself came together quickly; the sauce was melted and blended with the pasta in less than 7 minutes.

The pasta is a perfect al dente and the sauce is delicious. It’s a smooth tomato sauce, which has a slight bite of spice to it, which becomes more and more noticeable as you eat it.  It’s definitely not overwhelmingly hot, but it has a nice spice in the background which is a perfect, delicious dish.

The one thing I noticed was that even though the package listed 3 servings, there was a little less than 2 servings in the bag (a little over 1 ¾ cup).

A serving is 1 cup, which is 200 calories or 5 points plus values.