Turkey Bolognese…The Frozen Trader Joe’s Version vs. The Homemade Version

Bolognese is traditionally a pasta dish served outside of Italy made from tomatoes, minced beef, garlic, wine and herbs. This can be a heavy dish, as pasta dishes often are, so it has been lightened in various recipes using ground turkey.

I have made my own pasta sauce many times, but never considered making a formal bolognese sauce until I saw Trader Joe’s “Just Sauce” Turkey Bolognese in the frozen section at Trader Joe’s. I know this is a popular convenience item for those who don’t want to make their own sauces, because I have seen people use it in meal prep on Instagram. Looking at the ingredients, I knew I could make this same sauce, except perhaps heartier (even though it looks hearty on the package), and as per usual, with less sodium.

Apologies, my foot is in the photo, but here you see the nutrition label. I think this recipe will work without navy bean flour or chicken stock, or butter.

I would say to make your own mirepoix for this sauce, but conveniently, Trader Joe’s has a fresh mirepoix chopped up and ready to cook. Its fresh, real vegetables, without the hassle of chopping them up. If this is easier for you, I say go for it…otherwise it would be roughly a half a cup each of chopped carrots, celery and onion.

After the mirepoix cooks for a bit, add the spices! Dried spices are fine for this dish.

Then we add tomato paste.

Then, we build the sauce into the mirepoix, adding fresh tomatoes.

Next, we add ground turkey. I used Empire kosher organic brand.

And then we let this simmer covered for a bit…

So while the homemade sauce simmers, I decide to cook the frozen one. Not that I expect a masterpiece opening a frozen sauce, but its hard to say that looks appetizing.

Frozen block of sauce goes into a pan to simmer for a few minutes so it can become edible sauce.

So here we have the two sauces, to the left is the frozen, to the right is the homemade. I did not use the same proportions of ingredients, but the frozen sauce is supposed to be three servings, which is scary to me because if I was hungry, i would easily pour that whole pot over a serving of pasta or zucchini noodles, it really isn’t much and doesn’t have much volume, but that would be 1,820 mg of sodium, so around 78 percent of a person’s daily sodium intake? All things considered, sodium intake should really be lower than that, but anyhow, bottom line, its too much salt, but very easy to consume all of it. The vegetables and actual chunks of ground turkey make the homemade version more voluminous, fibrous and overall more filling. PLUS, there is so much of it, you can store some in mason jars if you wish and have it with other meals.

Birds eye view of the sauces so you can really see what you are getting here.

Also, I should add, the Trader Joe version does taste good, there is no arguing that. I just like my bolognese a bit more hearty. I could run it in a blender and perhaps it would be slightly more like the Trader Joe version…slightly.