7 Prepared Meals At Sprouts, Ranked Worst To Best

There are many grocery stores to shop at; some are more well-known and vast, like Walmart and Trader Joe's, while others are (seemingly) smaller, like Sprouts Farmers Market. As of early 2026, Sprouts has 485 stores in 25 U.S. states, so it's not as small as one might think if you hadn't heard of it before. While it's mainly concentrated in California, you can find its stores in Florida, Texas, Arizona, and Colorado, which have the next-highest number of Sprouts locations, respectively. The store has grown considerably over the years, too. For example, in 2019, it was only in 19 states with 300 stores. Now, it can be found anywhere from Delaware to Tennessee to Wyoming.

One of the benefits of shopping at the grocery chain is that you get access to smaller brands, but it also has quite a large selection of its own branded items, including prepared meals in the refrigerated section. So, if you have a Sprouts Farmers Market in your vicinity, you might have wondered if these prepped foods are worth purchasing. I picked seven items available at my local store to test them out for you, basing my thoughts on the overall depth of flavor, texture, value (since items are priced by weight), and in some cases, personal preference. I will mention the price per pound to give you a reference point, but your store's pricing may be different. Let's find out if these meals are worth a place in your fridge.

Have you ever had soggy, bland chicken parmesan? It's not very good. I prefer a crispy, nicely fried chicken parm, so this Sprouts dish with spaghetti is unappetizing. Nearly every component has some major flaw, from flavor to texture to value. The chicken itself gets soggy after being nuked in the microwave. The chicken cutlet is thick and hard to cut through, as is the breading itself. It has a cheesy layer on top that tastes slightly sour, as though it went bad. The cheese in the pasta turned into a crusty, inedible rock after microwaving, too. 

Lastly, the spaghetti needs more moisture because of the lack of sauce. On the plus side, the chicken portion is pretty hefty. But back to the negative side, there's hardly any pasta. In this application, neither is tasty enough to enjoy. I should also mention the image of the meal on Sprouts' website is much more appealing, with a generous amount of pasta and sauce and a thick layer of cheese over the chicken parmesan. At $13.49 per pound, I feel like I wasted my dollars on this meal. I'd encourage you to skip this item and save your money for something else.

I love the richness of a fettuccine Alfredo. It has been one of my favorite dishes since my teen years, and adding chicken to the mix helps incorporate a bit of protein to the decadent meal. Sprouts' Fettuccine Alfredo with NAE Chicken (NAE means no antibiotics ever, by the way) costs $13.99 per pound and has cream, Parmesan, Romano cheese, butter, garlic, and spices to help make up the sauce and seasoning. That said, it seems very light on the last two ingredients, and the meal needs some added seasoning to make it more balanced.

As it is, it tastes like cream with pasta and chicken. I can appreciate the fresh green parsley, but they are so finely chopped and sparse that they don't necessarily add much flavor. Even so, I'd like to see more Alfredo sauce to better coat the pasta. Some pasta didn't have any sauce after heating and mixing. The chicken pieces, while wonderfully thin, range from delicious and succulent to chewy. It merely depends on the piece, which doesn't impress me. While this dish isn't as egregious as the chicken parm, the texture of the chicken and lack of sauce give it low marks. And for the price, it feels like you're getting mainly pasta, so I'd skip this, too.

At $14.99 per pound, the Grilled Atlantic Salmon Meal with Red Miso is one of the higher-priced meals, and it comes with an appropriate amount of fish. The miso sauce comes on the side, so you can add as much or as little as desired after you heat the food. The salmon is thick, so some parts feel a bit drier than others. Plus, it's cooked in-store, and meant to be reheated at home, which I don't love for certain proteins like seafood and chicken since they tend to get dry, overcooked, or hard. 

It's not the juiciest, most tender salmon I've had, but it isn't bad either. The sweet potatoes taste marvelously buttery despite no butter in their ingredient list. The green beans are fine; it's hard to mess them up, which is probably why they're included in four out of seven meals on this list. The red miso sauce brings everything together with its sweet, umami flavors thanks to red miso paste, brown sugar, garlic, and other ingredients.

Sprouts' seafood department may be good, but this salmon was slightly overcooked. While it's certainly more flavorful and successful than the pasta, I wouldn't really want to purchase this again based on the fish's texture and price.

The $13.49 per pound price of the Sprouts Chicken Piccata Meal seems high given the main ingredients: Chicken, green beans, and potatoes. Although you get a filling portion of chicken, it's not too expensive a protein, especially if you buy it from more affordable grocery stores than Sprouts. The roasted garlic potatoes and lemon herb sauce are the best parts of this dish. The sauce is creamy, tangy, and full of depth thanks to heavy cream, butter, white wine, lemon juice, tarragon, and other ingredients. It coats the chicken, which is quite thick and hard to slice into. 

I ended up cutting the chicken into smaller pieces to get more sauce to cover the surface area and offer more flavor. The fresh lemon wedge further enhances the sauce and chicken with a bright tartness. I don't find this dish too problematic, but the overall profile of chicken piccata isn't my favorite — I can admit this one boils down to my personal preference and the overall value. I like the flavors of each component slightly more than the salmon meal.

I'm not too familiar with Salisbury steak, so I was intrigued that it looks effectively like meatloaf. Sprouts offers its Salisbury Steak with Garlic Green Beans and Mashed Potatoes meal for $14.99 per pound, and there's a decent portion of the steak and mashed spuds to make you feel satisfied after eating. The green beans, while not abundant, still bring a vegetable element into the fold. After heating it and having a couple of initial bites, the Salisbury steak has a similar texture to meatloaf, except instead of being covered by a tomato-based condiment like ketchup, it has gravy. Every element is flavorful, so you aren't left feeling like it's bland. 

The Salisbury steak, though, needs the gravy to offer a savory depth; otherwise, it feels one-note from the soft and meaty ground beef. I like the overall flavor with ingredients such as mushrooms, Worcestershire sauce, and breadcrumbs to hold it together. I understand the pricing since both the steak and red skin mashed potatoes are heavy. It's not the best of Sprouts' meals, but it's a good pick when you don't want to cook. I definitely like the mashed potatoes and gravy over the roasted potatoes in the piccata dish, and the steak has a better texture than the chicken.

Admittedly, I didn't grow up eating meatloaf, so it's not a food item I've had numerous times. I purchased it at Costco, and that's about it; therefore, I was interested to try a turkey meatloaf from Sprouts. Surprisingly (and fortunately), the Turkey Meatloaf With Cheesy Cauliflower And Brussels Sprouts meal hit the spot. I really enjoy the added texture this version offers because there are small pieces of cubed carrots to diversify the soft, meaty texture of the turkey. Not only that, but the Brussels sprouts are cooked to perfection — slightly charred, wonderfully cooked, without a hint of bitterness. 

The garlic cheesy cauliflower rice is incredibly flavorful with heavy cream, Parmesan cheese, Monterey Jack cheese, garlic, and parsley. The cauliflower rice isn't as tiny and riced as you'd expect; instead, the vegetable has slightly bigger pieces, so it still feels like you're chewing something to offer texture. My impression was that this was supposed to be a mashed potato-inspired side of sorts. At $12.99 per pound, it has one of the lowest by-the-pound prices, but it is also the most successful in its flavors and textures. This is all-around a great meal, but the next one is my favorite of the bunch.

There's truly no comparison: The pot roast is the best, most flavorful of the prepared meals I tried from Sprouts. For whatever reason, we are blessed with three sides instead of two, so that's another reason it edges out the other dishes. We see green beans once again, but the baby carrots bring a bright and mildly sweet flavor to the savory dish. 

The pot roast itself is the star, though, which tracks because we ranked Sprouts as the best grocery chain to buy meat from. It's soft and succulent on its own; the meat falls apart when you dig your fork into it. The meat is flavorful and juicy, and it's only further enhanced with a bit of that delightful gravy. A tender pot roast can take upwards of three hours to cook, so buying a meal at $13.99 per pound seems reasonable (given that weight includes potatoes and veggies, too). 

The red skin mashed potatoes are thick and rich with whole milk, butter, pepper, and salt to give the base flavor, but they, too, are made better with a generous layer of gravy. This would be the meal I'd grab for myself on a day when I don't want to spend hours in the kitchen — a quick three minutes in the microwave is all I need for a hearty, drool-worthy meal.

I ordered all the meals for pickup and retrieved them from my local Sprouts. I consumed a couple of meals a day for three days to best enjoy the various components. I judged the meal as a whole, which includes the main protein and the sides. My ranking is based on flavor, texture, personal preference, and value, meaning what you receive for the price you pay for each item.

Fully seasoned meals (protein and sides) ranked higher than those that had one or two flavorful components. Items ranked higher if the protein had a good texture, meaning it wasn't overcooked, too firm, or chewy. For value, I was looking for a sweet spot that could justify the price based on how much food you receive and how good it tastes. Sometimes, my personal preferences swayed something more positively or negatively.