Trader Joe’s Cocktail Sauce for Seafood
This post contains affiliate links.
Do you ever wonder why it’s called shrimp cocktail? There is no alcohol in that classic tomato-based, horseradish-spiced dipping sauce for seafood, so how did it get its name?
Cocktail sauce is commonly credited to British chef Fanny Cradock in the 1960s, but there is evidence people were serving similar sauces with seafood earlier in the 1900s, especially during Prohibition in the 1920s.
Cocktail sauce may have gotten its name from the fact that it was often served in cocktail glasses during the Prohibition era as a way to continue using the glassware even if alcohol was not being served. Cocktail sauce can be served with any shellfish, particularly shrimp or oysters.
Chilled shrimp with a spiced red dipping sauce is one of my family’s favorite appetizers, and I often serve it for holiday dinners. I usually buy Burman’s Cocktail Sauce from Aldi, and my family actually prefers the Aldi brand over certain name brands.
Then I spotted cocktail sauce at Trader Joe’s, which is a distant cousin to Aldi. I was curious to know how the TJ’s version compares to other brands. Sometimes when Trader Joe’s offers its own take on common staples such as ranch dressing or taco seasoning, we don’t get quite what we expected in terms of taste. Still, I put a bottle of TJ’s cocktail sauce in my cart to take home and try.
Trader Joe’s Cocktail Sauce for Seafood cost $2.29 for an 11-ounce bottle at the time of writing, or about 21 cents per ounce. One bottle has about five 1/4-cup servings, which comes out to about 46 cents per serving.
For comparison, a 12-ounce bottle of Aldi Burman’s Cocktail Sauce cost $0.79 at the time of writing, or about 7 cents per ounce. A 12-ounce bottle of Great Value Cocktail Sauce cost $1.72 or about 14 cents per ounce at Walmart at the time of writing. An 8-ounce jar of McCormick Cocktail Sauce cost $3.04 or about 38 cents per ounce at Walmart at the time of writing. So, the Trader Joe’s cocktail sauce costs more than other store brand private labels but less than name brands.
Ingredients are concentrated crushed tomatoes, grated horseradish root, sugar, distilled vinegar, cayenne pepper, spices, dried onion, salt, dried garlic, guar gum, and xanthan gum.
A lot of other cocktail sauce brands, including Aldi and McCormick, contain high fructose corn syrup, so it’s nice to see that this does not. However, some people may not like seeing guar gum and xanthan gum in the ingredients list.
A 1/4-cup serving has 60 calories, no fat, 440 mg of sodium (19% DV), 14 grams of total carbohydrates (5% DV), 1 gram of fiber (4% DV), 11 grams of total sugars, 9 grams of added sugars (18% DV), and less than 1 gram of protein.
With 9 grams of added sugar per 1/4-cup serving, that is slightly less sugar than the Aldi cocktail sauce, which has 12 grams of added sugars in a 1/4-cup serving.
As for how this Trader Joe’s sauce goes with shrimp, we found it to be some of the thinnest cocktail sauce we’ve ever had. It’s a lot less thick than Aldi Burman’s Cocktail Sauce or McCormick Cocktail Sauce, and we tried all three sauce brands in one sitting, so the difference was very visible. The Trader Joe’s sauce doesn’t stick to or coat the shrimp as well as other brands, so if you like a lot of sauce on your shrimp, that might not happen with the TJ’s sauce.
In terms of taste, this is one of the spiciest cocktail sauces we’ve had. It’s on the upper end of mild. Cocktail sauce naturally has some bite to it because it contains horseradish root. However, I noticed that this also contains cayenne pepper, which Aldi sauce and McCormick sauce do not have.
The Verdict:
Trader Joe’s Cocktail Sauce for Seafood is a thinner, spicier sauce compared to other cocktail sauce brands. It gets its spice not only from horseradish but also from cayenne pepper, and it might be on the upper end of mildly spicy. This is sweetened with cane sugar rather than high fructose corn syrup, which also sets it apart from other common brands.
We wish this was thicker so it could cling a little better when we dip shrimp in it. Ultimately, we won’t be buying this again because its consistency is too thin and we wanted more dip to stick to our shrimp.
