Low Fat Chinese Style Salad with Chicken

Salad is a crucial part of our day, as it’s a great way to pack in much needed veggies, vitamins and nutrients. But as much as we love salads, we’ll admit that on some particularly stressful days, the last thing we want to do is carefully prepare a complete meal.

We’ve seen pre-made salads before, but it’s easy to scoff at the idea of paying a premium for something that arguably takes so little effort. Frankly, it seemed like phoning it in to us. Still, phoning it in is better than missing out on a salad altogether, right?

All that said, we’ve been integrating some pre-made salads into our weekly meals, and the results have been both delicious and convenient. Case in point, this Low Fat Chinese Chicken Salad.

We’re quite pleased with this salad, and even though we don’t traditionally favor low fat options, we found it to be very tasty and satisfying. It’s worth noting, Trader Joe’s salads are not your typical throw-some-greens-in-a-bag pre-packaged salad. This item comes complete with salad dressing and features a wide variety of goodies, like snow peas, crispy noodles (separately packaged so as not to get soggy), carrots, lettuce, grilled chicken, and red and white cabbage.

On the down side, as expected, we experienced a few flavor sacrifices due to this salad being low fat. Specifically, the dressing, while tasty, felt a bit watered down and lacked some body, and the chicken, while tender and grilled, could have benefited from some more flavor.

All told, this was a hearty, good tasting salad at a great value (serves 2 people for less than four bucks!). We’ll definitely buy it again, though we might prioritize some of TJ’s other pre-made salad options like their Super Spinach Salad.