Best Jar Pasta Sauce?

You are better off getting take-out Pasta from a favorite Italian restaurant.

R1 you’re so right. I’m in Buffalo, NY and the best of the best is cash only and I’m never prepared. Sauce and meatballs from this place are beyond compare!

None. They're all loaded with sodium.

Make your own, it's not hard. Just use high quality canned tomatoes.

If I buy rather than make my own, then I like the sauces over in the fresh pasta, refrigerated section, e.g. Buitoni, Rana.

I was so relieved when Don Jr's gangster boo wife left him and I could buy Raos again. Although Silver Palate and Michael's of Brooklyn were great too

Rao's, OP. Ignore the people who preach about making your own. They really don't get it. Rao's is very good, and you can doctor it easily - much more easily than making your own, especially if you like a rich, thick, complex sauce and not a watery mixture of tomatoes, olive oil, too much garlic and too much basil.

Raos is expensive but when it goes on sale, stock up! Worth every penny. I eat it cold in a bowl sometimes.

Michael's of Brooklyn sauce is even better than Rao's.

Didn't really care for Rao's. Did not live up to the hype. Neither did Carbone. Out of the jar, with nothing added or changed, both were too oily. And Rao's was fairly bland.

I like Hunts traditional.

You're better off making your own, but if you had to rely on a jarred sauce, go with Victoria brand.

I like Michael's of Brooklyn, tasty. If you're in Texas, I like Central Market's puttanesca sauce.

It's Ragu or nothing in this house.

I prefer homemade, but my go-to in a pinch is the Whole Foods brand arrabbiata sauce. Reasonably priced (which is unusual at Whole Foods) and spicier than most jarred arrabbiata.

I’ve never tried it but the Kitchn is telling me Vincent’s Clam Bar.

You do know that Campbell's acquired Rao's last fall, right? Enjoy that $10.99 jar of condensed tomato soup.

Team Michael's of Brooklyn (when I'm too lazy for homemade).

Rao's is not worth the price. It's watery and tasteless.

This chianti wine sauce is the best bottled sauce I've ever tasted.

I think homemade sauce is not worth the time or effort and it never tastes any different than the sauce from a jar.

Michael's of Brooklyn looks so yummy. Has anyone eaten there?

I don’t care which is “best,” they all taste the same when the hell is cooked out of them. Don’t pretend they do. So whatever I buy has to be on sale, under $3 a jar, no HFS, low sugar. A couple of store brands fit the bill and one even comes in glass jars.

Rao's is my favorite but Michaelangelo's is my second choice.

[quote]I don’t care which is “best,” they all taste the same when the hell is cooked out of them.

Why would you cook the hell out of them?

Jarred sauces are ready cooked, so all you need to do is heat them.

And no they don't all taste the same.

Meant "already cooked" @ R22.

Another vote for Michael's of Brooklyn. The Arrabbiata sauce is delicious! Sprouts sells it but you can also order online:

Wegman's brand Grandma/Grandpa's pastas sauce for the win. Grandma's is a pomodoro and Grandpa's is "a zesty sauce featuring Italian sausage, sweet roasted red peppers, & wine."

Lots of DL posters swear by Rao's. IMO, not better than other sauces, plus costs more.

My choice: Classico, the one with mushroom and olive. No, there are no nice, large chunks of mushroom & olive.

2nd choice: Prego mushroom. A bit sweet, though.

I like the Aldi Priano one with the green lid: (Tomato Basil)

Why is there always someone who pipes up to say my local is better? No one is talking about you and your local restaurant.

If I do not make my own, I prefer Ragu with doctored up with meat and some onions. It's not a chic alternative and probably consider low end but it's tasty while some of the more prestigious brands are a bit bland.

I make my own. Don't need fancy canned tomatoes because I know how to condiment. Never a fail.

Speaking of pasta sauces .... has anyone tried doing pasta in an Instant Pot? I mean in a recipe where you put everything in the pressure cooker -- pasta sauce, meat, pasta, additional seasoning, etc. -- and then pressure cook it. I've tried a few recipes and they usually come out tasting OK (pasta is cooked through and takes on the flavor of the sauce) but they're usually too watery. (You have to add water in addition to the pasta sauce or the pasta won't cook.) I guess I could cut back on the water but then I wonder if the pasta won't be soft enough to eat.

R24 : that jar of sauce is $72.

Only an idiot would pay that amount for something like that. May as well just make it yourself for a fraction of the price.

I usually make my own. There’s no compare! But not always.

So… when I don’t I use BOVE’S brand. I discovered it in my nearby ShopRite one time and liked it a lot. They don’t always stock it, so when they do I grab about three jars. That will usually last me about a year.

r32, $72 is the price for six jars, not one.

And the "my own is better" crew, OP asked about jar sauce.

[quote]I like Michael's of Brooklyn, tasty

Watery. Don't ever freeze a pasta dish with Michaels.

R33 Yes! Someone mentioned Bove’s! I agree.

I prefer a simple tomato basil sauce...most jarred start with tomato paste so its already too heavy and usually too sweet.

I make my own with a big can of roma tomatoes and a small canned of diced

[quote] $72 is the price for six jars, not one.

You’re right.

I make my own and always have some in the freezer. I also live near an amazing Italian deli and restaurant supplier that sells homemade pasta, frozen entrees, and pints and quarts of fresh sauce. I'll buy theirs if I am getting fresh ravioli.

The basic tomato basil marinara from Trader Joe's tastes just as good as Rao's at a fraction of the cost.

I doctor whatever jar sauce is on sale.

I love when the "I only make my own" crew shows up. When I make sauce it's an all day event and I don't have that kind of time regularly.

1 jar of sauce, chopped fresh Roma tomatoes, tomato paste and red onion chopped chunky. Simple, easy and delicious.

Why does it take you all day to make sauce, r42?

I usually add a little red wine (or use it to rinse out the jar). Sometimes mushrooms sautéed in white wine and garlic.

Why on earth would anyone not make their own sauce? I don’t mean to be a jerk, but no one in their right mind would buy these products. I suppose someone elderly or extremely sick could use them if they had to.

Real sauce takes the gathering of fresh ingredients, chopping (onions & tomatoes) sauteing (garlic and Basil) and hours of simmering.

And then you get to clean it all up.

Exaggerate much r46? Even if you’re using fresh tomatoes that need to be peeled, unless you have some sort of disability, it shouldn’t take you more than a half hour to put together sauce. You use one pot, one spoon, a cutting board and a knife. Simmer it for a couple hours. Wash the pot when you’re done.

Or keep buying expensive jars of salt and high fructose corn syrup and god knows what else.

From a quality and healthy ingredients perspective, it's a tie between Rao's and 365 Whole Foods.

Victoria if you don't want to spend the money on Rao's.

We’re talking about sauce from a JAR. Start another thread for homemade sauce that even disabled people can make. In fact make 2 threads: one for peeled tomatoes and one for unpeeled tomatoes.

You should use whole tomatoes not crushed or pureed. Crush/puree them yourself. They use the best tomatoes for the whole ones for visual appeal and the crappy ones for crushed/pureed because you can't see how crappy they were before they pulverized them.

My cute little neighborhood place has Bello, Isola, Da Giulia, Mezzatta, Victoria, Carbone, Sunday's with Joe, Delallo, and Armanino. Any feedback on these?

Home made is so simple to make. A basic Marinara is much better than anything in a jar.

OMG you can make Rao's at home. Super easy and you can freeze it and make about 50 bucks worth of Rao for 8 bucks.

I REFUSE to entertain this poll! Instead, I will reveal my POMPOUS FAT WHORE credentials with a silly pronouncement about pasta sauce.

I make my own at home. The key ingredients are salt, corn syrup, and bruised tomatoes.

Anybody aware of a decent low sodium pasta sauce?

R57, Gia Russa, Victoria’s, and Silver Palate low sodium marinara (in that order). But if you have access to a cooktop it is so easy to make your own and control the sodium level. Tuttorossi makes cans of tomatoes with no salt added.

Pro Chefs taste and rate supermarket marinara sauces.

Timestamp, Brand

0:21 Bertolli

2:20 Ragu

3:59 Rao's

5:34 Trader Joe's

6:58 Carbone

8:49 Prego

10:10 365 Whole Foods Market

11:49 Newman's Own

13:25 Mutti

14:49 Classico

15:51 Judges' picks for top 3

Cook’s Country did a blind taste test of spaghetti sauces a couple weeks ago and Rao’s won.

It's really not that hard to make your sauce that is 10x better than any jar (at least a Mariana). For about 10 dollars in ingredients you can make about four jars worth of Rao.

Patsy’s is not bad.

R61, do you see the difference between "not that hard" and "super-easy, couldn't be easier"? That is the difference between making your own and opening a jar, dumping it in a pot and heating it up. Even if you doctor the jar of sauce, it's still easier and much faster than homemade.

As for making a batch of homemade ahead of time and freezing portions of it, not everyone has the time, interest or freezer space to do that. (If I froze everything food mavens told me I could be making myself or buying in quantity and freezing, I'd need a restaurant-sized freezer.)

The Italian Mutti is probably the best tomato sauce brand on the market. It's not easy to find, but worth it.

Italian spaghetti sauce is made from tomatoes from China, they don't eat tomatoes in China, but export the most mainly to Europe. Don't trust anything Italian, the Mafia runs Italy.

Why are you fat whores eating so much pasta anyway? They should sell sauce in baby food size jars because that’s a serving size for one serving of pasta.

R63 Let me re-phrase it then. You can make a batch of sauce better than Rao for less money, freeze three of the jars, or hell just put them in zip loc bags and freeze them. You can make four times the amount of Raos for less than the cost of one jar. Make it ahead of time, Keep on in the fridge, freeze the rest. Just as easy to pull a zip loc bag out of the freezer dump it in the drained pasta heat it all up. I am the last person to make my own anything but Mariana is stupidly easy to make good sauce.

Not everybody is retired with time to do all of that.

R68 lol it takes maybe 20 mins, 30 if you go slow.

Campbell’s Tomato Soup!🥫

Heinz Ketchup

We all agree that Rao's is way overpriced. Prego, Ragu, and others are loaded with salt and sugar. I like Mezzetta. It's a Northern California brand, but I think it's distributed nationally. It's made in Napa County - not that that automatically makes it better.

Of course, there's nothing like homemade - especially if you live near a farmer's market. In Summer and Fall, I get the most flavorful heirloom tomatoes. It's easy but takes a couple of hours. Great for getting stoned on a Saturday afternoon.

Even easier, if you can find these canned San Marzano tomatoes:

Cheaper, you say. All prices come from my local grocery.

1 28 oz can of San Marzano tomatoes 5.49 i T of tomato paste 3.49 for the tube 1 white onion ,99 2 garlic cloves 3/1.99 springs of fresh basil 1.99 olive oil, dried oregano, red chile flakes--I have.

This makes 3 cups or 24 oz of sauce. Rao marinara is on sale for 7.49 for 24 oz. Homemade is probably better but not cheaper if you use quality ingredients.

Chef John's recipe doubles the quantity of San Marzano tomatoes and add celery, vinegar, anchovies, sugar and parsley. A delicious recipe but not cheaper.

I tend to buy Rao's when they are on sale. I'll buy 3-4 to stock up.

Rao's is OVERRATED. I am sure it's in every NYC Queens pantry. It's the Kardasian of pasta sauce, everyone knows the name, people buy it because of status. it's related to a tiny restaurant in NYC that is impossible to get into and it's 3 times the price of most brands. Therefore it must bet the best right? Nope.

HOMEMADE is best

Rao's is good because it's unadulterated with only natural ingredients. Basically peeled tomatoes, olive oil, onions, salt, garlic, basil, black pepper, oregano. Most of the jarred tomato sauces have reconstituted pureed tomatoes.

Campbells bought Raos. So pretty much on it's way to cost cutting chef boyardee land.

R79 I did not know that. Some companies allow the products of companies they acquire to remain, at least for the near future, some alter them to make them cheaper for bigger profits. Let's see what Rao's fate is.

Here's a Washington Post review and ranking of 12 of the top-selling bottled marinara brands. For those without a subscription:

Rao's was the winner, by far. This is what the article says about it.

[italic]This sauce is often lauded by cooks who wouldn’t usually deign to dump a jar of store-bought sauce on their pasta, a couple of our tasters among them. It even has the seal of approval from Ina Garten, the queen of “store-bought is fine” — so long as it’s the “good” stuff. And so its performance was a big question in this blind test. Would our brand loyalists still love it amid the sea of samples? The answer turned out to be an enthusiastic “Si!”

Rao’s was the only brand to get a perfect score (it got 10s from three judges!) and flat-out raves: “Delicious,” one said. “I’d be proud to serve this,” said another. Our panel liked its fresh-tasting herbs and flavorful bits of tomatoes and onions, as well as its brighter hue. “Just chunky enough,” said one.[/italic]

The ranking, from worst to best, is below. Some of these brands have been mentioned in this thread.

12. Hunt's Traditional.

10. (tie) Ragu Old World Style

10. (tie) Classico Marinara

9. Prego Traditional

8. Newman's Own Marinara

7. Great Value Marinara (Walmart house brand)

6. Mezzetta Marinara

5. Carbone Marinara

4. 365 Organic Marinara (Whole Foods house brand)

3. Bertolli Traditional Marinara

2. Trader Joe's Tomato Basil Marinara

1. Rao's Homemade Marinara

OP: hey genius. it's "jarred" pasta sauce.

What? You shop at your grocery for can vegetables and can fruit?

I bet you do ... .

I had to use a jar of Raos a few weeks ago. It smelled horribly while warning; one whiff made me fear it would taste like stomach bile. It didn't--it was okay. But that smell was horrendous. Never again.

Surprised Great Value was only halfway down?

The problem with these food sites like R81, is their "testers" whoever the f they are not doing blind tasting, they know which palm to grease. Dont kid yourself, just like infulencers getting paid to talk up a product, so do these other sites that rank food brands. I would like to see real blind taste tests done by a variety of people and not the friends and family like for example America's test kitchen uses. Our "audience" chose this. But their audience is mostly friends and relative with regional tastes I might add. All from Boston, Massachusetts. Their choices for things like Mexican food or Southern food is laughable. Actually even some of their Italian food pics are bad.

R85, the "food site" in question is the Washington Post, and the testers were probably WaPo staffers. That's they way they usually do these things.

They did work from a list of best-selling brands compiled by a marketing firm, so that was a possible source of bias ... but doesn't the list look like a list of best-selling pasta sauces? It's not like it's a list of obscure brands.

There is definitely some East Coast regional bias, but the Post staff is pretty diverse otherwise.

This probably isn’t the place, but could one of you sauce chefs share a recipe? I’ve tried making my own sauce but it just tasted like doctored up ketchup. Maybe that’s exaggerated but it was so BLAND, and there’s stuff in jars that is so much better than mine.

That's the problem with these threads. People who say how easy it is to whip up a sauce that's better than jar sauce. They never post their recipe.

I love Rao's very much, but I like Tutti just a little more -

R87, if it tastes bland, you probably are under salting it. Salt brings out flavor and most new cooks under salt their recipes when compared to what you might get in a restaurant or store.

So tomato sauce out of a can like Hunts is already going to be very salty, and many Italian Americans this was a staple of decades past. But if you buy San Marzano Tomatoes from Italy it will taste totally bland even though they are very good tomatoes because they dont add salt (or very little) to them like American brands. That's the chef's job. Like unsalted butter. Salt to taste.

R90, well said. This is a good point to remember whenever cooking from a recipe: The recipe probably underestimates the amount of salt and fat needed to make the recipe taste good (and to make it the way the person who wrote it does in real life). When you see a recipe for frying something, and it says, "2 T of oil", you know damn well the originator used more than that tiny amount of oil. When it says "1/2 teaspoon of salt", you know they probably used at least twice that much.

People who write recipes like to make them look "healthy", so they reduce the amount of supposedly unhealthy things. The only solution is to taste yourself as you go along and use your own experience to guide how much fat to use for cooking, etc.

[quote]People who say how easy it is to whip up a sauce that's better than jar sauce. They never post their recipe.

I have refrained from posting such a recipe, r88, because some previous poster declared that this is The Thread for Jarred Sauce, and NOT The Thread for Homemade Sauce Recipes. So I chose to respect that.

That being said, for a classic marinara, look up the NYT recipe by Lidia Bastianich, adapted by Julia Moskin. I happen not to like oregano, so I leave it out, but I otherwise follow the recipe as written. More frequently, I make Marcella Hazan's Tomato-Butter-Onion sauce. Each is a simple recipe that yields a delicious pasta sauce in less than an hour.

Sure he goes. Get on a can of San Marzano plum tomatoes. If you can get DOP good but if not "Italian Style" will do. Cento is a good brand and fairly inexpensive. 1 28 oz can of plum tomatoes. 1 can of Cento tomato sauce. One white onion, and two cloves of garlic. 1/4 cup of extra virgin olive oil. Salt, Pepper, and Fresh or Dried Basil.

Prep - Using a grater or micro planer (I prefer a micro planer as the onion and garlic will just melt into the sauce) and grate the onion and garlic. Add the olive oil to the pot and set to medium heat or flame. Add the onions and saute them until they are just starting to turn translucent. Add the garlic and stir (with a wooden spoon). Mix until the garlic becomes fragrant (you should smell it in the room - be careful not to burn the garlic as it will turn bitter).

Add the plum tomatoes slowly as the hot oil may cause them to splatter. With your wooden spoon break the whole tomatoes up to a consistency you like. You can use an immersion blender if you like a smoother sauce, Then add in your can of tomato sauce. and the dried Basil (you an eye it or just use about a table spoon). If using fresh basil save them for the end and go to the next step.

Turn the heat down to med-low to low cover and let the sauce simmer for 15-20 mins Taste it and salt and pepper to taste. At this point, if you are using fresh basil add in the leaves and cover and simmer for 10 more minutes. At this point it should be thick enough but if you prefer it thicker simmer uncovered for 5-10 minutes more.

Fish out the Basil leaves if you use fresh basil. At this point, you can add other spices. Oregano if you want, as well as Parsley but this will give you a great base Mariana.

For Basil - if using dried it goes in at the beginning, if using fresh it goes in near the end. If you like a sweeter sauce you can add a can of tomato paste in addition to the tomatoes and sauce.

God I use at this point a lot.