I Tried Every Chopped Salad Kit at My Target—This Was My Favorite

When chopped salad kits first came out, I thought they were frivolously expensive for the convenience. For the cost of an average Caesar salad kit, I could buy a pack of romaine hearts, plus dressing and my favorite garlic-and-butter croutons (or make my own), both of which would be enough to last for more than the three salads I could make with all that romaine. I always have Grana Padano in the refrigerator, so I didn't count that, but it's another ingredient that'd tide me over for countless batches. A kit didn't seem worth the per-meal cost.

These days, I sing a different tune.

In the past few years, salad kits have gotten significant glow-ups. Beyond the standard options, you'll find "Twisted" variations that add international angles or surprise ingredients like pesto; crunchy diverse bases beyond lettuce and cabbage; and specially flavored cheese or crunchy elements. In short, many kits now have ingredients steps above standard pantry staples, making chopped salad kits more a journey of discovery than a basic timesaver now. At this point, I would and could happily live off of them.

Target's Good & Gather line of bagged chopped salad kits is especially appealing. However, the dizzying array of options begs the question: which ones are worth buying?

With tremendously high hopes, I set out to find out. Here is my ranking, from worst to best.

7. Avocado Toast

My first reaction was, "Yay! How unique!" Even though I'm not an avocado-toast-at-brunch kind of gal, I appreciated that Good & Gather is the only brand I found that makes a kit in this flavor. Compared to some of the other Target chopped salads, this has more premium ingredients, like real Hass avocado (kept fresh as avocado mash in a tube), cheese and mini toasts, all packaged separately.

After the work of assembling it, eating it felt anticlimactic. Yes, the avocado tasted like real avocado when you got a random glop in your bite, but only until the aftertaste surfaced. The avocado ranch is nicely zippy, cutting through the earthy fruit and cabbage, but its impact is short-lived. And while it was a pleasant surprise to find that the "toast" was more a bagel chip than the Melba variety (as I'd assumed), it was doubly disappointing to learn it turns into saturated sponge more quickly than you'd think. Or maybe it was an error of perception, its impression of dense sogginess enhanced by the texture of the avocado mush.

This wasn't bad, but more of a let-down, its hints of green onion and cheese whispers in the wind bogged down by a feel of generic creaminess without much flavor.

6. Everything Seasoned

This salad was generous with the easy-mixing dressing that hints at cream cheese, as well as with the bagel chips. It came with an Everything seasoning packet, and the leaf lettuce, broccoli shreds and red and savoy cabbage were really well-balanced.

But when you hear a superlative like "everything," you hope for a flavor explosion. This was more like a sparkler. It had all the potential to burn bright, but fizzled out meekly, somehow missing the zhuzh that makes the on-the-surface-identical Taylor Farms Everything Chopped Salad Kit pop. The pinch of everything seasoning in the dressing was too discreet. The bagel chips held their own well against the dressing, but they still inflated with moisture faster than expected. But after I added a dash of my favorite everything seasoning, freeze-dried chives (while dreaming of fresh scallions), sharp Cheddar and canned tuna, it went from good to great.

5. Sweet Kale

Personally, this salad is usually one of my last picks, since it's calorically dense and I prefer savory, but people are obsessed with this salad. EatingWell has its own recipe for a perfect version, and every salad kit producer has it with very little variation. But Good & Gather's version was arguably among the best renditions I've had.

The dressing was extra-thick from its use of egg yolk and quickly turned into a rich, buttery glaze that was lovely over bitter ingredients like Brussels sprouts and radicchio. Pops of soft dried cranberries also did their job well to balance that bitterness with sweet-tart bursts.

By the end of the bowl, the dressing had lost some of its aroma, which let the otherwise-forgotten pepitas emerge with an accent of light toastiness, but the crunchiness remained until the last bite. The dressing floated across hearty greens like broccoli stalks and cabbage, making this a great salad for the soggy-averse and making it a salad you need to work at eating—an extended pleasure.

4. Southwest

My first thought when I read the ingredients was that not including cheese in this seemed like an odd decision. Also, interesting that they'd chosen to go the cilantro-pepita route for the dressing as opposed to something spicy or orange-hued, as many other "Southwestern" takes do. On my first bite, I had another pair of immediate thoughts: that it was bold of the brand to make a polarizing flavor like cilantro the star, and good thing I really like cilantro.

The creamy, tangy dressing and fresh cilantro throughout were a highlight without being overbearing. Sweet carrots, square-chopped cabbage, and tortilla strips put crunchiness above all else. While I'd initially wondered why they didn't opt for freeze-dried corn, I understood the decision once I started eating—it needed the toastiness of the strips and the pepitas to ground this cool and refreshing salad.

3. Asian Style

Several salads that I was looking forward to trying let me down. Then there was this—the salad I dreaded having to eat that shockingly ended up in my top three.

I distrusted this one because "Asian style" salad kits tend to be uniform, omnibus "Eastern" flavors haphazardly thrown together in some corn-syrupy mess. When I tasted the dressing by itself, I remained suspicious—it literally just tasted like toasted sesame oil cut with cheaper soybean oil (it was) and sugar. I thought, This was exactly what someone who was not Asian might imagine Asian flavors would be. Chinese takeout-style crunchy noodles completed the cliché.

But the more I kept eating, the more it grew on me as I picked out familiar nuances. It started to remind me of sweet cabbage and chicken gyoza. The cilantro made me think of Thai papaya salad. When I stumbled on a bite with both a big chunk of celery and a crispy wonton strip, I remembered what I liked about shrimp egg rolls. I wondered how Vietnamese lemongrass pork would taste with this, and if I wanted to add chili crisp or nuoc nam, or chop potstickers into it next time. And when I tossed some warm leftover rice and grilled chicken into it, it became a filling meal I'd happily repeat.

2. Avocado Ranch

I haven't had a bad version of this flavor yet, and Good & Gather continued that streak. Like our Aldi salad kit reviewer, I, too, was very excited about the freeze-dried "crisp corn" … and that there was plenty of it. These kernels make an ideal mix-in: crunchy, sweet and crumbly without ever getting soggy. But what makes this salad kit stand out so much is that the corn remained only that—a complementary player in a blend that's so well balanced that this one ingredient couldn't hog the spotlight.

The avocado came in a very green avocado ranch dressing, which really worked in this refreshing blend with plentiful fresh cilantro leaves and stems, sweet carrots and taco-seasoned cheese that boosted my bites with lightly smoky zest.

The tang of the dressing with the corn gave me vague elote vibes, but the bites without corn made my mind wander to lime crema on fish tacos. So while the packaging suggests turning this kit into a nacho topping with taco meat and seasoned chicken, the sunny fluidity of these flavors would easily lend itself well to lump crab, battered fish or shrimp—flavors I'm already planning for the inevitable next time.

1. Nashville-Style Hot

When Good & Gather prefaces their flavor with "style," evocations of places and profiles is all they guarantee. But in this case, bravo!

Unlike the other chopped salad kits, this one doesn't offer the added nutrition and satiety of high-fiber cabbage. A romaine lettuce base made it light, refreshing and crisp. To keep it from floating away, radicchio grounded it, offering variety, substance and a bitterness that made the smoke in the creamy bright orange dressing stand out all the more.

This smokiness lazily winds through your mouth before it gives way to a pleasant warmth, like an ember that never quite catches. It's not spicy, though. The temperature doesn't shift from the undetectable use of Hatch chile in the awesome cornbread crouton crumbles, which retained their immediately identifiable corn-and-butter flavor … and a crunch that outlasted the lettuce, despite being mostly crushed.

Somewhere in the middle was the crunchiness of the "dill pickle seasoned crispy cucumbers"—not to be confused with fried pickles. Only very mildly dill-flavored, they had a fresher taste despite being slightly (expectedly) oil-logged. I ended up adding my favorite frozen Southern-style chicken tenderloins for protein, just as the bag suggested, and will do so again and again.

Bottom Line

Good & Gather's chopped salad kit collection is a mixed bag. I felt that all of the salads were missing a little something. But the thing is, they recognize that, offering suggestions on the back of every bag on how to make it a full and satisfying meal. For those in a pinch or too tired to think, this is a major pro.

There are a lot of truly interesting, creative salad concepts here that are restaurant- and dinner-worthy. While I appreciate that they have unique exclusive varieties, they don't all deliver as promised. But when they do, they're an absolute delight to eat—especially priced at $3.99 a kit, no matter the flavor. And now that you know which ones to buy, it'll be money well spent.