New Udon Noodle Salad Meal Kit Review | CostContessa (2024)

Costco dropped a new Udon Noodle Salad prepared meal kit in the deli last week and I got a chance to buy it and review it this week. Overall, I liked it – and I’ll give you all the details and you can see it in the video that pops up. The new Kirkland Signature Udon Noodle Salad with dressing and peanuts is sold refrigerated in the prepared food deli cases, find it next to the other Costco prepared meals like street tacos and yakisoba stir fry kits.

Availability Note: The Udon Salad Meal Kit appears to be a permanent addition to the core offerings in the prepared deli meals at Costco and is in warehouses nationwide.

My Review

On the whole I liked the meal kit – you just dump everything into a bowl, toss and serve. So it’s SUPER quick. Literally 3 minutes to prep it. The dressing it comes with is a creamy miso dressing. The flavor was pretty good – it was somewhat underwhelming and I personally would have enjoyed a little more punch in flavor in the dressing, but I did like the cilantro (that’s obviously subjective but I like it) and it was still good and I did enjoy it.

I’d say it was designed to be a crowd pleaser, so it’s a more moderate/mild flavor profile, and you don’t necessarily need to like miso dressing to like this. As such, I do think it would make a great side dish for picnic, bbq, shower, or other hosting event because it’s so quick to make it, it tastes pretty good, it’s vegetarian and I think the majority of people would eat this.

It comes with 2 separate dressing packets so it would also be easy to split up into two servings/meals, and take it to work or use in meal prep. The peanuts are also packaged separately if you prefer not to use them you can easily omit them. I liked them a lot in the salad and would have actually liked more.

On the vegetarian comment, note its not vegan, but it is vegetarian because there is mayo in the dressing. I didn’t add meat to mine, but I think it would definitely be well paired with some rotisserie chicken – either in the salad or on the side.

I didn’t finish my salad and I refrigerated mine overnight just to see how it did – to be totally transparent, once a salad has dressing on it I generally toss it and don’t like to eat it again the next day – but I wanted to test it out and see how well or poorly it held up. Well, to my surprise, it was actually pretty good! I don’t recommend doing it as a planned way to enjoy the salad…but if you have it leftover I do recommend tossing it in a storage container as I do think it’s still pretty good the following day.

All in all, I do recommend the Kirkland Signature Udon Noodle Salad from Costco. It’s a great lunch or dinner option for Fridays during lent!

What’s in the Kit

• Lettuce/slaw mix with cilantro
• lime wedges
• udon noodles
• 1 packet of peanuts
• 2 packets of miso dressing

Shelf Life: This will last about 3 days in the fridge.

Costco Price and Item Number

Kirkland Signature Udon Noodle Salad Prepared Meal Kit is Costco item number 32374 and costs $3.99 per pound or about $10 per package.

Interesting Note on Udon Noodles Marketing and Product Intro

Just a sidenote on the introduction of the udon noodle salad kit by Costco corporate. This is kind of neither here or there as far as the salad kit goes, but it marks an interesting change in the way that Costco is introducing new products.

Normally Costco is absolutely silent and new products are dropped in to the store without a word, it’s part of Costco’s treasure hunt strategy. The introduction of the udon noodle salad marked a notable difference in the product introduction process for court for Costco. They announced the new product across all of their social media channels with images and video before the product was even available in stores, just a couple of days, but not only did they announce it but they announced it in advance, which is a very very different strategy from what we have seen with most prior product introductions.

Time will tell if this is a new turn in strategy, or if this was just a one off – but I’ll be paying attention to it!

More Deli and Prepared Foods from Costco:

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