Dill Pickle Chopped Salad, the Dupe that's Better than Store-Bought!

With crunchy dill pickles as "croutons"—yes pickles as croutons!—crisp greens, and creamy dressing that has no actual dairy, Dill Pickle Chopped Salad is your new favorite salad of the season! Let's get into it

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Though I don’t know the true origin of Dill Pickle Salad—likely one of those “everyone has been making it for backyard BBQs since the 1800s” recipes—the salad is recently famous because it's a Taylor Farms bagged salad kit. Not just a bag of triple-washed mixed greens, but an entire kit complete with pre-washed greens, a little plastic package of dill pickle flavored ranch dressing AND a separate little plastic package of dill pickle brioche croutons.

What is in the Costco/Taylor Farms Dill Pickle Salad Kit?

The Dill Pickle Salad Kit by Taylor Farms has only a few ingredients in the salad base, but a lot of ingredients in both the Dressing and the Dill Pickle Brioche Crouton Crumble. These are ingredients from the bag when I tried the Salad Kit:

• Cauliflower
• Radish
• Red Cabbage
• Green Cabbage
• Green Leaf Lettuce
• Kale
• Dill Pickle Ranch Dressing: soybean oil, cultured lowfat buttermilk, water, distilled vinegar, onion, pickles, nonfat dry milk, sugar, cucumber juice, egg yolks, salt, dehydrated garlic, dehydrated onion, spices, xanthan gum, natural flavors, celery seed, mustard seed, red bell pepper
• Dill Pickle Brioche Crouton Crumble: wheat flour, sunflower oil, spice blend (salt, vinegar powder {maltodextrin, white distilled vinegar}, maltodextrin, garlic powder, malic acid, onion powder, spice, dillweed oil, rice hulls added to prevent caking), palm fruit oil, sugar, salt, yeast, rosemary extract.

Apparently, the version of the salad kit sold in CostCo also contains crumbled feta cheese. None of the versions I bought from Bristol Farms (southern California) and Whole Foods had feta! I was robbed! So I tried adding feta in my version at home, and because the dressing I prefer and make is a vinegar base, not dairy, the subtle funk from the creamy feta is a good balance.

If this reads like I was absolutely awestruck by a bagged salad, I was. Until I went hunting for the marvel that is the Dill Pickle Chopped Salad kit, I had actually never eaten a complete salad from a bag of any kind. The closest I’ve gotten to a pre-made salad is packages of spring mix that I, like you and everyone else on dog’s green earth, would toss into the shopping cart out of some sort of unfounded obligation along with bananas, only to throw out as a sealed plastic bag of half-composted greens and shame two weeks later.

Trying the Store-bought Bagged Dill Pickle Chopped Salad Kit

So I tried the Dill Pickle Chopped Salad kit a few times. Right out of the bag, the salad kit isn't bad!

The salad kit also isn't great.

The dressing is a thick, creamy dill-flavored Ranch dressing (see photo of the salad in stainless steel bowl above).

I LOVE Ranch, but I call it "Ranch" periodt, because "dressing" should not be part of its identity.

Ranch as a dip for vegetable crudites? Yes.

Ranch drizzled over a commercial delivery pizza? Do it.

But Ranch tossed with greens, even if it's "thinned" out to a dressing consistency? Now your salad is coleslaw and that's not ok. (No hate to coleslaw. I love coleslaw, but only when it's intended to be coleslaw.)

I also didn't love the croutons. The pieces were were too crumbly and the hard, jagged edges were reminiscent of the Capn Crunch cereal. iykyk.

The next few times, I used only half the dressing and croutons, then ommitted the dressing and croutons completely. That felt wasteful, and also like I paid a lot more money just for washed kale.

Overall, I didn't love the salad enough to keep buying it as is, but I liked the salad enough to want to make it from scratch at home, better suited to my tastes.

Dill pickles in a salad? OH THE POTENTIAL.

Is This a Costco Taylor Farms Costco Dill Pickle Salad Copycat

This Dill Pickle Chopped Salad Recipe is inspired by the Taylor Farms product, almost a copycat recipe/hack but I made a few adjustments to better suit my anti-inflammatory lifestyle and "pack-as-many-nutrients-into-it" philosophy.

To keep the salad "easy," which is the appeal of the bagged salad in the first place, I reduced the number of greens you have to wash and prep. To make the salad lighter and brighter, this recipe replaces their thick, cream-based Ranch dressing with a bright, pickle-laced vinaigrette. Instead of crumbly croutons, you get "crunch" by adding diced pickles directly into the salad.

Diced pickles in salad is life-changing.

Ingredients You Need for This Dill Pickle Chopped Salad Recipe

Since the point of a bagged salad kit is to make it easier to get a salad into your bowl, and the point of remaking a bagged salad kit at home is to make it better suited to your weird picky ass taste, we made some adjustments. These are the ingredients you need for this Dill Pickle Chopped Salad recipe:

• Romaine lettuce
• Kale
• Red cabbage
• Watermelon or other radish
• Dill Pickle Dressing, that's a dill-y, lemony vinaigrette and not a creamy dressing, which just makes a salad taste like coleslaw.
• Chopped pickles
• Crumbled feta, optional

How Many Calories in Dill Pickle Chopped Salad?

Taylor Farms Dill Pickle Salad Kit markets itself as a light and fit "150 calories per serving," but that "serving" is ONE CUP. I will tell you right now that no matter how sad a salad is, NO ONE eats only 1 cup of salad as a serving. There are 3½ servings per bag, so right out of the bag, the entire kit (and caboodle! ugh sorry) is 525 calories. The bulk of those calories come from the creamy Dill Pickle Ranch Dressing.

Health and Nutrition Benefits of Dill Pickle Salad

BUT! I am not a calorie counter. And you needn't be either. I am an anti-inflammation firefighter, so this recipe focuses on:

• anti-inflammatory ingredients
• nutrient-density

The brassicas, radishes, and ingredients in the dressing are high in phytonutrients that fight inflammation. The pickles are what makes the salad craveable so that you want to eat all those good things. And if the pickles are actually fermented vs simple vinegar pickles, then you also get the gut-benefit of the fermentation.

Ingredients Resources and Substitution FAQs

• Romaine Lettuce. The store-bought version of this salad uses green leaf lettuce, but for this, we're using Romaine lettuce for its higher crunch factor. The crunch comes from how sturdy the leaves are, which makes washed and chopped Romaine one of the best ingredients to keep prepped in the fridge. Any high-crunch salad green will work, even iceberg, which I also LOVE.
• Kale. Any sturdy kale works for this. My preference is for the darker green dinosaur aka lacinato and Tuscan kale; and the bright green curly kale is always available!
• Red Cabbage. In most cases, a brighter, deeper color of a vegetable indicates higher nutrient density. Use purple cabbage since you probably (hopefully!) already get a lot of green in your vegetables, and in this salad, you get green from the kale. However, if you can't find purple cabbage, use green cabbage.
• Radish. Use any kind of radish you can find. The store-bought bagged salad uses regular round red radishes that are crinkle-cut (I am not sure why this is a selling point). I like the look of bright pink watermelon radishes, and also find that they are not as spicy as the regular round radishes. If you don't like radishes, first of all how dare you, and secondly, substitute julienned carrots for color and crunch!
• Dill Pickles. I have been using this brand of dill pickle, which is available in most grocery store refrigerator sections. I generally prefer slightly less sour and high crunch, which means pickles that are "fresher."
• Dill. Use fresh dill for the salad. You can substitute half the amount of dill with dried dill if that's all you have/find.
• Feta. The Costco version of the kit has feta cheese, and it's definitely an umami boost. Because the dressing in this recipe is not creamy, the feta adds some of the umami that comes from dairy back in. The feta I like is made from goat milk so it's a little easier to digest for me. If you're not doing animal dairy at all, use a plant-based feta. My favorite plant-based feta is this one.

Watch Video of Dill Pickle Chopped Salad Recipe Assembly

Dietary Preferences/Restrictions

• Gluten-free. The recipe as written is gluten-free.
• Vegan. To make the salad vegan, leave out the feta, or use a plant-based feta.
• Keto/Paleo/Whole 30. Without the feta, the Dill Pickle Chopped Salad is Keto-, Paleo-, and Whole30-friendly. If you add feta, the Dill Pickle Chopped Salad is Keto- and Paleo-friendly. Dairy is not approved for Whole30 so you can try a nut-based feta. One thing worth noting with respect to these diets: make sure there is no sugar in your pickles and Dijon mustard (there probably isn't but it's always good to check the ingredients).

Dill Pickle Chopped Salad Variations

I could eat this Dill Pickled Chopped Salad every day as a main dish exactly as it is, straight out of the enormous stainless steel mixing bowl I use to mix the salad. (And with a spoon, of course!)

However, if you want to add a little protein boost or make the salad a little heartier, here are a few tried and true suggested variations:

• cooked or smoked wild salmon broken up right into the salad as you're mixing the other ingredients together
• canned tuna, added the same way as above
• shredded roast chicken (if it's leftover or store-bought rotisserie, even easier on you!)
• eggs, medium-boiled and cut into quarters. Little bits of cooked yolk will mix with the dressing and make it ever so slightly creamy.
• quinoa
• pasta (and you can go heavy on the pasta and turn the salad in to a pasta salad as recommended below)

The salad is perfect as a side salad to a piece of seared salmon. There's just something about the classic flavor combination of fresh dill and lemon with salmon.

You can also use the Dill Pickle Dressing (look how bright green it is above!) by itself:

• stir the Dill Pickle Dressing into hot, cooked grains or into pasta for a lighter in texture vs heavier cream- or mayo-based pasta salad
• toss the Dill Pickle Dressing with literally any other greens.

More Chopped Salad Recipes

If you go to the trouble of washing and chopping greens for the Dill Pickle Chopped Salad, you might as well go the distance, and prep enough to make salads for several days. You can use those greens in these chopped salads:

• Antipasto Chopped Salad recipe
• Tri Colore Salad recipe
• Chinese Chicken Salad recipe