I Never Leave Trader Joe’s Without This $4.49 Pantry Item

The term “Marry Me Chicken” is nothing new. It traces back to 1982 and Glamour magazine’s “Engagement” Chicken, a lemon-and-herb-flavored whole bird so delicious that, legend has it, several staffers compelled their boyfriends to pop the question after consuming it.

More recently, the term has seen a resurgence, just as others have dubbed it problematic, the domain of “tradwives.” When EatingWell’s version of Marry Me Chicken, created by associate editorial director Carolyn Malcoun, came into my life, I was already married, but I would be lying if I said that the recipe hadn’t buoyed my relationship and freshened up our dinnertime routine.

More importantly, the dish, which features chicken cutlets in cream sauce, reintroduced sun-dried tomatoes into my life. I had long thought of the ingredient as the province of the 1990s, along with pesto and molten chocolate cakes. All things that are delicious, but that I strongly associate with my tweens and teens. Now, when I head to Trader Joe’s, I always put a jar of Julienne-Sliced Sun-Dried Tomatoes in Olive Oil in my cart.

Why do I love the TJ’s version so much? First of all, there’s the price. At $4.49 for 8.5 ounces, I get several servings for very little. The tomatoes are packed in olive oil, which I use to sauté the chicken in the recipe, imbuing it with a deep tomato flavor. Best of all, they’re already julienned, so I don’t have to risk my fingers cutting the slippery nightshades into slivers myself. 

My sun-dried tomato consumption may have been accelerated by Marry Me Chicken, but it hasn’t ended there. I’ve cooked my way through our collection of 22 of Our Sun-Dried Tomato Cream Sauce Recipes. My favorites include Spaghetti & Spinach with Sun-Dried Tomato Cream Sauce, which only takes 20 minutes to make; an indulgent side of Marry Me Scalloped Potatoes (which calls for Parmesan, but is even better with some Asiago); and the semi-homemade wonder, White Bean & Sun-Dried Tomato Gnocchi. 

As I’ve become more comfortable with the ingredient, I’ve learned to improvise with my own uses for sun-dried tomatoes. They make for stellar omelet inclusions, and I recently threw some in with a mustard cream sauce for pork chops that added an unexpected complexity to the acidic flavor. 

But I always go back to EatingWell recipes. I recently tried the Sun-Dried Tomato & Fresh Mozzarella Quiche and loved the balance of creamy and intensely tomatoey flavors. I’ve even tried adding them to my favorite vegetable in the form of Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto. Yes, a pesto. It seems everything old is indeed new again, but I’m not obeying the dictum that you shouldn’t wear it if you were there for it the first time.

Of course, there’s the question whether it’s good for me to eat sun-dried tomatoes as often as I now do. And there’s excellent news. Sun-dried tomatoes have some of the highest levels of lycopene of any food. Lycopene is a strong antioxidant, known to potentially lower inflammation, improving heart health. That same compound may also aid in cancer prevention. 

The truth is, I don’t love raw tomatoes, so using sun-dried tomatoes in so many recipes has tricked me into getting an almost-daily dose of the fruit’s vitamins C and A and potassium.

There’s just something so special about these healthy sun-dried tomatoes. It’s the ingredient that makes my husband wish he could marry me all over again. And while I appreciate what it does for our heart health, I’m in love with its versatility. That’s why I never leave Trader Joe’s without it.