Food

Trader Joe’s Crispy Crunchy Champignon Mushroom Snack

Description

Don’t be fooled by the pretty front of the bag of these TJ’s crispy crunchy mushrooms. These are Trader Joe’s dried champignon mushrooms or dried white mushrooms, flavored with sunflower oil, sea salt, and corn maltodextrin. 

Packaging

These crispy crunchy mushrooms packaging is quite deceiving since what you see on the front packaging is not exactly what you get. I immediately thought adorable, kind of colorful mushroom snacks, perhaps similar to those Japanese mushroom-shaped snacks. It isn’t until you see the back of the packaging until you know that you’re getting actual mushrooms that are mushroom-colored, dark and not colorful. 

Nutrition

They put a serving of these crispy crunchy mushrooms as the whole bag of these. It doesn’t look too bad if you split up the bag or consume the bag in multiple sittings. The macros are: 26g fat, 25g carbs, and 4g protein for the entire contents of the bag. Ingredients are rather simple too, with just the champignon (white) mushrooms, sunflower oil, sea salt, and corn maltodextrin. It definitely contains fewer ingredients compared to their vanilla chantilly cake. 

First Impression of the Contents

I laughed when I opened the packaging. These are actual dried mushrooms! The packaging was so adorable that I didn’t look to see what these were exactly, so it surprised me a bit. I do like mushrooms, so I wasn’t hesitant to try after all that laughter. 

Texture

The crispy crunchy mushroom texture was rather interesting. They were just like typical freeze-dried fruit texture. These are practically dehydrated mushrooms, seasoned, and packaged. It was my first time having mushrooms in this way, and I was not a fan. I didn’t mind it too much, but I’d rather have other things as a snack. The husband was appalled by the texture. He isn’t a fan of dehydrated fruits to begin with, so it makes sense that he didn’t enjoy the texture of these.

Taste

I admit I didn’t really enjoy the first one I tried. They did get better later on as I got more used it though. The husband thought they were very mushroom-y, so if you don’t like the flavor of mushroom, you might not enjoy these at all. I tried to get the kids to try them, pretending that these were chips. They did try and they did not enjoy these. The mushroom flavor does come through quite strong, with the salt that’s added in as well. Very umami-ish, but not in the best way. 

Buy Again?

No, probably not. I enjoy fresh / non-dehydrated mushrooms a lot more than these. I don’t enjoy the mushroom flavor enough to get these again. LOL, I’m still laughing about how I thought these were going to be something else. Somehow I thought they would be not actual mushrooms, as the snacks pictured below, and wow, I wished I checked the back sooner. I actually might have bought these to try even if I knew they were actual mushrooms because the concept is so new to me and sounds quite interesting… now I know.