Trader Joe's frozen food aisle is reason enough to shop exclusively at the low-budget grocery store: Almost all of the meals cost less than $5, and you could eat lunch and dinner there for weeks without repeating a meal—a fact I learned during my lengthy quest to rank every single frozen meal available. Since TJ's frozen food section is aggressively large, there had to be some parameters: I limited the frozen foods to what could be considered a full meal on its own, meaning none of the chicken patties, veggie burgers, appetizers, or desserts were included. Also excluded: cauliflower gnocchi, which might just be one of the best items Trader Joe's has ever created.

With the help of some very kind taste-testing friends, I tried everything in Trader Joe's frozen food aisle. Here's how the meals stack up, from the few you should skip to the ones you'll want to buy in bulk.