What To Know Before Buying Trader Joe's Jalapeño & Cream Cheese Crispy Wontons

If you've been to Trader Joe's lately, you may have noticed a fairly new item in its freezer aisle: Jalapeño & Cream Cheese Crispy Wontons. The box for the wontons features a pile of the appetizers alongside a small bowl of a dipping sauce that appears to be sweet chili sauce — in other words, it looks enticing. This tasty item is creamy and cheesy — it contains parmesan and cream cheese — and has a kick of spice thanks to the diced jalapeños. All that flavor is wrapped in the crispiness of the wonton exterior, which will become crisp and golden brown in either the oven or the air fryer.

If you're sold on the appetizer, there is one thing that you need to know before you head to your local TJ's and buy it: The Jalapeño & Cream Cheese Crispy Wontons do not come with the dipping sauce pictured on the box. This is important to know because wontons are arguably at their best when paired with a sweet chili sauce.

These wontons are definitely still worth the buy — they're easy to prepare, delicious, and make for the perfect appetizer for a dinner party or just a simple daytime snack. However, when you buy them, you'll have to make sure you already have a sauce on hand, either store-bought or homemade.

The Trader Joe's recommends pairing the Jalapeño & Cream Cheese Crispy Wontons with sweet chili sauce — which explains why that's the sauce that appears to be next to the wontons on the box. TJ's sells its own sweet chili sauce, as do most supermarkets, but for the best, freshest taste, you may as well whip up your own batch — Tasting Table's easy sweet chili sauce takes just 20 minutes to make. Plus, if you make it yourself, you can control exactly how spicy it is by adjusting the amount of red chili flakes added — this is important because the wontons already have some spice from the jalapeños.

If you want to avoid spice altogether, you can make a batch of homemade sweet and sour sauce instead — this sauce will balance out the spice from the jalapeños and the richness from the cheese. You can also opt for a simple soy sauce or an at-home teriyaki sauce.

These wontons are already creamy thanks to the cheese filling, but if you want even more creaminess in each bite, you can pair it with yum yum sauce, which is a buttery mayo-based sauce seasoned with ingredients such as paprika, garlic, and tomato paste — you can steal the instructions from our recipe for yum yum chicken sliders. Or, if you prefer a nutty creaminess, you can make a homemade peanut sauce for the wontons.