5 Thousand Island Dressing Brands, Ranked

If you're looking for a delicious dressing to drizzle on your salad but you don't want to make one from scratch, you have plenty of bottled salad dressing options to choose from at the grocery store. Italian dressings abound, so you're absolutely covered on the vinaigrette front, and if you prefer something on the creamier end of the spectrum, you can find more than enough ranch dressings worth trying. But you don't have to limit yourself to the basics when you're choosing a salad dressing. For something a bit more interesting than the standard, you might want to try a Thousand Island dressing.

Not only is Thousand Island dressing a solid choice for your salad if you prefer a creamier, thicker texture, but it can also be used as a sandwich spread and even as a dipping sauce. To help you find the best Thousand Island brand, I tried and ranked five different ones. The highest-ranked of these dressings offer a more balanced flavor profile, with less intense sweetness and more focus on acidity. Even if you prefer a sweeter dressing, though, hopefully these descriptions can point you in the direction of an ideal dressing for your next salad.

You can find Kraft products all over the grocery store, and the brand's salad dressing selection is impressively large. But if you're looking for the best possible Thousand Island dressing, you're probably better off skipping this brand. It's not technically that bad; if I weren't comparing so many other brands to this one, I probably wouldn't mind it too much. But when I tasted all of these dressings side by side, I realized that Kraft's Thousand Island Dressing is a bit too sweet for my taste. Yes, Thousand Island dressing is generally pretty sweet, but I think this bottle has too much sugar for it to be enjoyable in most savory contexts.

Other than that sweetness, though, this dressing doesn't have a strong, discernible flavor at all. The acidity is barely there, and you don't even get that mayonnaise-like flavor that this type of dressing is generally known for. Unless you're looking for a super sweet, otherwise bland dressing, you can feel safe skipping this bottle in favor of another one of the options on this list.

There are a lot of Ken's Steak House salad dressings out there that I actually really enjoy, so I was fully expecting to love the brand's Thousand Island dressing as well. However, I found that although it wasn't the worst of the bunch, this dressing didn't really hit the mark for me. There's definitely some discernible sweetness here, and it's not as overpowering as Kraft's take on this dressing. It's still a bit too sweet for me, but I wouldn't say it's unbalanced. If you like sweeter dressings, then you probably won't mind this one.

Although there's more flavor balance here when it comes to sweetness, I didn't get as much of a concentrated flavor with Ken's Steak House as I did with Kraft. With such a weak flavor profile, it almost feels like you're just adding a creamy texture to your salad without gaining much on the flavor front at all.

Is Wish-Bone's Thousand Island Dressing the most amazing store-bought salad dressing I've ever tried? Not exactly. Like several of the other dressings on this list, it has an arguably unnecessary sweetness that limits its versatility. Sure, it might be decent as a burger spread or dip for fries, but that level of sweetness can be overpowering for a simple salad. But despite that flaw, Wish-Bone's take on this classic dressing delivers on the acidity front, which is why it's ranked higher than some of the other varieties on this list.

Although the sweetness in this dressing is pronounced, it's nicely balanced by a bold tanginess. As such, it's one of the most flavorful options on the list. It's far from the best dressing I've ever tried, but it's probably a safe bet if you're looking for an affordable, accessible bottle of Thousand Island dressing.

Unfortunately, a lot of Signature Select's products just aren't that good. Considering that this is a budget-minded store brand, maybe that shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. But that doesn't mean that every Signature Select product is a miss. When it comes to Thousand Island dressing, you can feel confident that you're getting one of the better brands on the market. One thing that I noticed about this dressing right away was its thickness. It's a lot denser and creamier than most of the other options listed here, which makes it a win on the textural front — especially if you're using it as a spread or dip.

Once I tasted the dressing, I realized that it also delivered a solid flavor. It tastes like there's more pickle relish in this recipe than in any of the others I tried, which lends itself to a bolder acidity. Perhaps because that acidic note is so strong, I didn't taste quite as much sweetness here as I expected to. If you're a big pickle relish fan and really want to taste that note in your dressing, give this brand's Thousand Island dressing a try.

So, which brand should you seek out if you're looking for the best possible bottle of Thousand Island dressing? If you ask me, you should make your way to Whole Foods to pick up the 365 Organic Thousand Island dressing. Out of all of the dressings I tried for this ranking, I found that the 365 version was the creamiest of them all. It has a more uniform texture than the other brands, which is something to consider if the textural component of the dressing is important to whatever you're making.

Although this dressing didn't have the same intense tang that I appreciated in Signature Select's version, I think the flavor balance here is really well done. Yes, there's some acidity as well as a note of sweetness, but neither is too pronounced and both are well-integrated. There's a coherent flavor balance that allows this dressing to work in a lot of different contexts. It also has a lovely peppery note that keeps things more interesting and infuses the salad with that much more flavor. It's a must-try dressing for all the Thousand Island lovers out there.

These Thousand Island dressings were selected based on their availability at local grocery stores in my area. I tried them all on their own, without any salad, to better taste the differences between them. 

The criteria for this ranking include both flavor intensity and flavor balance. Bolder, more intensely flavored dressings ranked near the top, while blander options were further down the dressing hierarchy. Additionally, I ranked the dressings with more pronounced acidity and more balanced sweetness higher than those that leaned toward the sweeter end of the spectrum.