“Skip The Bun” Crunchy Cheeseburger Salad
with Monterey Jack & Special Sauce
- Eggs
- Milk
Get ready for all the satisfaction of a cheeseburger with the crisp freshness of a salad! This 20-minute bowl of all your favorite loaded burger ingredients—tomato, pickle, lettuce, cheese, and savory seasoned ground beef, plus a classic special sauce in place of dressing—will convince you to skip the bun (and skip the drive-through!).
Ingredients
1 unit
Baby Lettuce
1 unit
Sliced Dill Pickle
1 unit
Tomato
1 tablespoon
Fry Seasoning
10 ounce
Ground Beef
1 unit
Beef Stock Concentrate
2 tablespoon
Mayonnaise
(Contains: Eggs)
1 unit
Ketchup
2 teaspoon
Dijon Mustard
¼ cup
Monterey Jack Cheese
(Contains: Milk)
Not included in your delivery
Salt
Pepper
¼ teaspoon
Sugar
1 teaspoon
Cooking Oil
Nutrition Values
Utensils
Cooking Steps
• Wash and dry produce. • Trim and discard root end from lettuce; roughly chop. Reserve ½ tsp pickle brine (1 tsp for 4 servings) in a small bowl; drain and discard remaining brine and roughly chop pickle. Dice tomato. • Stir ½ tsp Fry Seasoning and ¼ tsp sugar into bowl with reserved pickle brine (1 tsp Fry Seasoning and ½ tsp sugar for 4). (You’ll use the rest of the Fry Seasoning in the next step.)
• Heat a drizzle of oil in a large pan over medium-high heat. Add beef*, remaining Fry Seasoning, salt, and pepper. Cook, breaking up meat into pieces, until browned, 3-5 minutes. TIP: If there’s excess grease in your pan, carefully pour it out. • Stir in stock concentrate and ¼ cup water (1⁄3 cup for 4 servings). Cook, stirring, until liquid has absorbed and beef is cooked through, 2-3 minutes more. Transfer to a plate.
• Meanwhile, to bowl with pickle brine mixture, add mayonnaise, ketchup, and half the mustard (all for 4 servings). Stir until well combined. • Add water 1 tsp at a time until mixture reaches a drizzling consistency.
• In a large bowl, toss lettuce with half the dressing and half the tomato. • Divide salad between bowls. Top with beef, Monterey Jack, pickle, and remaining tomato. Drizzle with remaining dressing and serve.
Ground Beef is fully cooked when internal temperature reaches 160°.
Customer reviews
Review summary
Updated on Sep 2026- Flavor: The special sauce is a crowd-pleaser that genuinely tastes like a classic cheeseburger — many compared it to a Big Mac in a bowl 🍔.
- Ease of prep: This is a quick, easy weeknight meal that comes together in about 20 minutes with minimal cleanup.
- Suggestions: Add red onion, crispy fried onions, or croutons for extra crunch and bold burger flavor. Use all the mustard in the dressing for a punchier sauce, and consider spicy pickles for an extra kick 🌶️.
- Leftovers: The salad doesn't keep well — the lettuce gets soggy, so it's best eaten fresh rather than saved for the next day.
- Portions: The lettuce provided is consistently too small for two full servings; plan to supplement with an extra head of romaine to make it a proper meal.
Reviews from our home cooks
I love this meal kit because I can make several different meals with it. My family loves the crunchy cheeseburger salad. It's so easy to make, no clean up and it's soooo good. Sometimes I make crunchy cheeseburger lettuce roll ups with this meal kit. Equally delicious! Easy to make and no clean up. My family loves both ways I fix it!
I loved this salad! This is NOT a healthy salad but it IS delicious and worth the splurge...and better than most cheeseburgers with a bun! More sauce though, please but Hello Fresh nailed the flavors in this and made it absolutely a great substitution when you get a cheeseburger crave! Just do it...it is sooo good!
I really liked this one! I've never had a salad like this, it was fun to try something new! I thought the flavors worked together very well and it really did taste like a burger without the bun!
I love this salad. I also love cheeseburgers and this is a great way to lighten it up. I use some lite and sugar free sauces for the dressing. Maybe even get crazy and add bacon to it. It is FIRE.
It could have used onions to be cooked with the beef. Liked the lettuce (it wasn't iceberg, that was nice), LOVED the pickles & the Monterey Jack cheese was a good selection. Overall it was a pretty good meal!
The salad itself was very good but the amount of cheese sent was quite minimal for the title "cheeseburger". Tomato was impossibly pale and I substituted my own. A little scallion would have been nice--I added some. But flavors in sauce really livened it up.
I did not choose my meals and forgot to skip this week, but I am glad I didn't. I've had this before and wasn't that impressed but this new and improved recipe is fantastic. I really enjoyed the fry seasoning on the ground beef and the sauce. It tasted so much better this time around and I can't tell how, but so glad I got this on accident.
So delicious! The rest of my family wanted burgers from a take out spot and I wanted something a bit healthier, so I was able to make this Cheeseburger Salad while we waited for their delivery. It was done before their burgers and fries came! This was faster, healthier, a larger portion, and just as tasty as their burgers!
It was so fun to say the name. More important than fun? Delicious! Tasted like a cheeseburger. Made it exactly like the recipe. Wasn't quite enough cheese included, we added a little we happened to have. The dressing was the 'special sauce' 😊 !
Best one yet - all ages loved this one and it was great that each person could customize their salad. I'd love one or two more toppings, maybe something that adds a little crunch? We loved it!
