The Worst Store-Bought Marinara Sauce, According To Our Taste Test

Though most of us would love to eat homemade marinara sauce regularly, when it comes to cooking quick and easy meals, we're likely to opt for a store-bought sauce to save time and money. The good news is that it's easy to supercharge a basic jarred sauce with add-ins like basil and pepper, but it's absolutely vital that you start with a high-quality base. That's why we made it our mission to determine the gold standard of marinara sauce — and the ones to avoid at all costs.

Chowhound writer Michelle Bottalico used her expertise in Italian cuisine to rank 14 marinara sauces based on blind taste tests. Her criteria evaluated the sauces' appearance, smell, taste, texture, and value. The winners, which tended to fall on the pricey side of the spectrum, used top-quality ingredients (including imported Italian tomatoes) and mastered the delicate balance of oil, garlic, and tomato flavor, without smelling or tasting artificial.

On the other hand, the worst of the bunch were overwhelmingly artificial, sickeningly sweet, and unappealingly acidic in taste and aroma. Of these disappointing sauces, Bertolli Traditional Marinara Sauce was the worst offender. Bottalico found its taste so off-putting that she could hardly eat more than one bite.

Bertolli is a popular brand of Italian food products that has become something of a supermarket staple. Though it originated as a family-owned grocery store that spun out into an artisan olive oil business, since the 1970s the company has been owned and operated by various multinational corporations, with its different product sectors manufactured by separate companies. That's certainly the reality of many well-known food brands, but it may also help explain why Bertolli Traditional Marinara Sauce tasted less like a homemade Italian comfort food and more like a metallic, artificial disaster to our reviewer.

According to Michelle Bottalico, the sauce tasted of chemicals, "as if unknown and unpleasant ingredients were covering the tomato taste." She noted that this was the only sauce on the ranking to list calcium chloride as an ingredient, an extremely salty preservative compound that has a firming effect on canned vegetables. Though Bottalico did appreciate the attractive appearance of the sauce and its low price point (under $4 with exact price depending on retailer), its taste and smell were so "weird" that she deemed it essentially inedible. Even for budget shoppers, this is not a deal worth taking.