Epicurious puts 16 supermarket marinara sauces before three professional chefs—and several familiar jars do not survive the taste panel.
Get your notepads out and take a yummy note for your next pasta night.
Professional chefs Frank Proto, Dan Richer and Giorgia Caporuscio are blind tasting 16 supermarket marinara sauces for a fresh installment of Epicurious’ The Taste Panel.
No labels. No brand loyalty. Just tomato flavor, acidity, sweetness, seasoning and texture standing between each jar and a genuine professional review.
Three chefs taste their way through the supermarket shelf to find which sauces deserve space beside the pasta.
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The panel works through familiar names including Ragú, Classico, Rao’s, Prego, Carbone, Barilla, Mutti, Victoria, Trader Joe’s and several major store brands.
The chefs are looking for one thing above everything else: the tomato should remain the star. Too much garlic, oregano, sugar or acidity can quickly turn marinara into something red that merely happens to be sitting on pasta.
Carbone emerges as one of the strongest jars, earning praise for its tomato flavor, seasoning, texture and homemade quality. One panelist even believed the sauce might not have come from a jar at all.
Mutti also receives serious approval for its real ingredients, balanced sweetness and acidity, and texture that comes remarkably close to homemade sauce.
Then comes the supermarket plot twist: Great Value Marinara.
The affordable Walmart sauce surprises the panel with its balanced herbs, acidity and sweetness. Even the chefs appear slightly confused by how well the budget jar performs—but good sauce is good sauce, and the blind tasting removes any room for brand snobbery.
Cravings Spicy Thai Basil Marinara also earns respect for doing something distinct. The Thai basil and heat may not satisfy someone searching for a traditional marinara, but the panel recognizes that the sauce understands its own spicy assignment.
Meanwhile, the famous Rao’s jar does not receive the automatic coronation many shoppers might expect. Reactions are mixed, with concerns about acidity, salt, black pepper and the overall tomato quality.
And then there is Prego.
The panel reaches rare agreement there. Its processed character, weak tomato flavor and poor balance place it among the day’s least-loved sauces. Good & Gather and Classico also receive some especially sharp critiques.
The chefs do leave us with a useful pasta-night reminder: even a decent jar can improve with a little pasta water, fresh basil, extra-virgin olive oil or Parmigiano-Reggiano.
Still, when a jar is truly good, it should not require a full rescue operation before dinner.
Press play on the genuine reviews of some very supermarket-friendly brands right below.
Watch professional chefs blind taste every supermarket marinara sauce.
Epicurious’ The Taste Panel brings Frank Proto, Dan Richer and Giorgia Caporuscio together to judge 16 marinara sauces without seeing the labels first.
Source: Epicurious presented the blind marinara tasting as Season 1, Episode 22 of The Taste Panel.
