The Worst Store-Bought Crab Dip Hardly Tastes Like Seafood At All

While it's rather easy to whip up a batch of cheesy crab rangoon dip at home, picking up a crab dip from the deli section at your local grocery store is perfectly fine when you're short on time. After taste-testing nine different store-bought brands ourselves we found that Kroger's Kickin' Krab Salad to be the worst of the bunch.

There are plenty of warning signs from the start — it's labeled as a "Krab Salad" (though Kroger lists it as a dip on their website), plus, it's not actually made from crab meat but "imitation crab" according to the packaging. This, as it turns out, is a very common thing in store-bought crab dips. To save on cost, they make the "crab" from a combination of fish and other ingredients instead. In the case of Kroger's Kickin' Krab Salad, it's Alaskan pollock and pacific whiting. Beyond that, unlike other brands like the Aldi Park Street Deli Crab Rangoon Dip which at least includes a bit of real crab meat, Kroger's contains absolutely none.

The imitation crab meat itself isn't the main issue here; that would be the complete lack of flavor. If you go in expecting a seafood-forward flavor (which most of us naturally do), you'll be disappointed. The salad tastes like generic fish blended with an overly-sweet dressing that overwhelms what little jalapeño and paprika are within. Seriously, we had to check the labeling to make sure there's any spice in the dip at all. So despite the name, there's nothing kickin' about it.

Here's where things got weird. When we went online to see if anyone else thought this dip was a letdown, we found the opposite. Most reviewers raved about it, which left us second-guessing ourselves. Did we get a bad batch? Not according to Robin, who posted a review on Kroger's website in August 2024. They mentioned that they'd been a loyal fan for years, but noticed something had changed in the salad's recipe. They called the new version "sweet and gross" and said it "no longer has a nice savory spicy taste to it" — which matched our experience perfectly. Robin's theory was that Kroger started loading it up with sugar or corn syrup around this time, and while Kroger hasn't said anything publicly about changing the recipe, their own website's ingredient list shows 10 grams of sugar per serving, with 7 grams being added sugar. No corn syrup, thankfully.

But in all honesty, it doesn't matter if there was a recipe change or not. The fact remains that you might want to skip the Kickin' Krab Salad if you're looking for a good crab dip. The good news is that its deli section isn't entirely a lost cause. We found the traditional crab dip and Cajun-style crab dip to both be solid options that actually contained some real crab. Sure, they're also made with imitation crab, but at least they actually taste like seafood rather than sweetened mystery proteins — a definite win.