These Are 10 Must-Try Products From Canadian Grocery Chain Farm Boy

Farm Boy is Canada's answer to Trader Joe's. The Ottawa-based, grocery store chain focuses heavily on produce, fresh meat and ready-made food, but it also carries products labelled under a house brand that includes everything from kombucha and edamame hummus to crackers and tomato sauce.

This Is The Ultimate Store-Bought Salad Dressing Farm Boy seems to have a finger on the pulse of the latest food trends and churns out non-perishable in interesting flavours that are almost impossible to resist. I've slowly been eating my way through the aisles at this supermarket (which now has more than 25 stores in Ontario) and here's the inside scoop on some on some of the yummiest products I've tried.

Lemon Garlic Dressing

When it comes to salad dressing, simple is usually best. This Farm Boy vinaigrette has five ingredients (including salt and pepper), but it works magic over greens, slaw and whatever else in your fridge needs a lemony zip to dress it up. As an added bonus, you could even pass it off as homemade.

Cookie Chips

I prefer my chocolate chip cookies crispy on the edges and gooey on the inside. But when I came across a display for chocolate chip flavoured "cookie chips" at Farm Boy, I quickly threw a bag into my cart. These disks of deliciousness have the toffee-like flavour of homemade cookies but with the crunch of a kettle chip. They're what you always hoped Cookie Crisp cereal would taste like.

Double-Baked Pita Crackers

Theoretically, these round, ultra crunchy crackers (which eat like a chip) would be great dipped in hummus. But I gobbled them up plain when a box landed at my desk.  

Not Too Hot Sauce

This is the sauce for anyone who craves heat, but hates when their mouth catches fire. This sauce has a definite tang with a flavour that reminds me of Tabasco. It's not intimidating; think of it as a starter hot sauce.

Gourmet Mustard

Farm Boy's gourmet mustard comes in four flavours: Champagne honey, garlic dill, pub-style and jalapeño stout. I needed a mustardy pretzel dip for a beer-themed party I was hosting on the May 2-4 weekend, so I grabbed a jar of jalapeño stout. It's spicy and warm with a great grainy texture. I'm excited to try it on a turkey sandwich, or anything that needs an extra zip of flavour.

Duplex Sandwich Cookies

I wasn't expecting much from these vanilla-chocolate cookies, considering they looked pretty basic. But when my 3 P.M. munchies kicked in, I cracked open the box and dug in. Unlike other such treats, both cookies actually have a distinct flavour — the vanilla half tastes like the vanilla and the chocolate side is actually chocolately. Best of all, they're not overly sweet!

Pasta Sauce

Subscribe To Our Daily Newsletters — You'll Thank Us In The Morning Pasta sauce is pretty easy to make from scratch, but the jarred stuff is a huge time saver (A.K.A. a life-saver on busy weeknights). I've become accustomed to jazzing up the store-bought stuff with garlic, onions and various other spices, so I was eager to try Farm Boy's take on this pantry staple. I grabbed a jar of Arrabiata (because I'm a spice fiend) and was pleasantly surprised by its rich tomato flavour and fiery kick — I decided not to doctor it and was more than pleased with my easy pasta dinner. While this sauce contains sugar (likely to balance the heat from the chilis) many of Farm Boy's other pasta sauce offerings do not.

Artisan Pasta

These pastas from Calabria, Italy come in six different shapes and are bronze drawn (this refers to the device that cuts and shapes the pasta). This gives the pasta a rough texture, meaning it's supposed hold sauce and seasonings better than your conventional dried pastas. I tried the orecchiette. It had more heft than the pasta I usually buy and felt fancier too, thanks to the bite it retained when cooked al dente.

Spicy Pickled Eggplant

I'm a sucker for anything pickled, including this spicy eggplant with a satisfying texture and tang that works on sandwiches, in pasta dishes as well as on my fork, straight out of the jar.

Garlic Flowers

These fermented garlic flowers (garlic scapes, or the garlic plant's flower bud) have a mild garlic flavour that gives sauces, soups and stir-fries (or whatever you're cooking) a allium hit, without being too pungent or giving you garlic breath. These would also be yummy spread on fresh bread. Quebec company Le Petit Mas makes this product for Farm Boy.

Watch: How to make one-pot pasta