Best Pasta Sauces

No matter how you like your pasta sauce—from garlicky to spicy to those flavored with herbs like basil—you can find it on a store shelf. Here are four of the pasta sauces (listed in alphabetical order) that nabbed top marks overall in our tests, each highlighting a different flavor profile. 

These four attributes are important things to consider when shopping for a jarred pasta sauce.

Ingredients
Most jarred pasta sauces are full of healthy ingredients, with few artificial additions, but you should still check the list. “Tomatoes should be the first listed, meaning the sauce is mostly made of tomatoes,” Linsenmeyer says, followed by ingredients that add flavor, such as olive oil, garlic, onions, and spices.

Nutrition
The cooked tomatoes in these sauces can offer big health benefits. “Tomatoes are rich in vitamin C, potassium, vitamin K, and folate,” Linsenmeyer says, “and a serving of marinara—a half-cup—absolutely counts as a vegetable serving.” 

Tomato sauce is also one of the best sources of lycopene, a potent antioxidant that may help reduce the risk of heart disease and certain cancers. A sauce, in fact, is likely to have far more lycopene than the fresh tomato slices that are in a sandwich because cooking breaks down a tomato’s cellular structure, releasing more of the nutrient.

The 41 pasta sauces we tested have little or no saturated fat. We found that even the sauce with the highest overall fat content, Fody Easy to Digest Easy to Love Marinara (13 grams per half-cup serving) had just 2 grams of saturated fat. The rest comes from the heart-healthy fats in olive oil.

Some tomato sauces contain added sugars but in small amounts. In fact, you have to drop down to No. 24 in our ratings (Bertolli Tomato & Basil) to find a version with added sugars—and that one has just 2 grams (or a half-teaspoon) per serving. For comparison, the American Heart Association advises that women consume no more than 25 grams (6 teaspoons) of added sugars per day and men no more than 36 grams (9 teaspoons).

“Sodium is the main thing you have to be sure to check,” Keating says. Our 17 recommended sauces offer both a good balance of flavors and reasonable amounts of sodium. Those toward the top of our ratings have about 300 mg of sodium or less per half-cup serving. But 15 of the sauces—including Ragú Simply Chunky Marinara, Good & Gather (Target) Organic Marinara, and Prego Traditional—contain 460 mg or more per half-cup. That’s at least 20 percent of the recommended daily limit of 2,300 mg, Linsenmeyer says. “If you pick a higher-sodium sauce, you want to be conscious of how much sodium you’re eating in other foods.”

Taste
While individual preferences vary, a few factors can make the difference between a mediocre sauce and a truly delicious one. “A great-tasting sauce will have a bolder, fresher tomato taste and fresh-tasting, well-balanced seasonings,” Keating says. No one ingredient—say, a huge amount of garlic or an overabundance of basil—should overpower the others.

The most flavorful sauces in our tests are made primarily with whole tomatoes. “Whole tomatoes simply taste better and give the sauce a tangy, bright tomato flavor,” Keating says. Brands with tomato purée or tomato paste as the main ingredient tended to score lower for taste. For example, Prego Traditional and Ragú Old World Style Traditional were sweeter, with a less fresh tomato flavor than those made with whole tomatoes. Sauces that contain dried or dehydrated spices and seasonings instead of fresh also ranked lower in our taste ratings. “Dried spices can be harsh or bitter, as they were in Great Value [Walmart] Organic Tomato Basil and Simply Nature [Aldi] Organic Tomato & Basil,” Keating says.

Price
The prices of our tested sauces varied widely, from 30 cents to a bit more than $2 per half-cup serving. Generally, we found that the higher the price, the better the sauce. Most of our recommended picks cost $1 to $1.60 per serving, with only two outliers: Hoboken Farms Basil Marinara at $2.02 per serving and the Monte Bene Tomato Basil at 94 cents per serving.

A few sauces scored high for taste and cost less than 75 cents per serving. But they received lower nutrition scores, mostly because of their sodium count. Per half-cup serving, Bertolli Tomato & Basil has 350 mg, Newman’s Own Marinara has 480 mg, and Great Value (Walmart) Marinara has 490 mg.

While many of the pasta sauces we tested are delicious as is, you can easily add more flavor if you like. “In not much more time than it takes to heat jarred sauce, you can create some really special flavors,” says Celine Beitchman, director of nutrition at the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City. Here are some of her favorite hacks.

Enhance the texture. Save a little of the starchy water your pasta was cooked in and mix it into your sauce. The liquid will release its starch molecules and add body and creaminess.

Repurpose leftovers. In a skillet, heat cooked ground meat, pork, or chicken (or fresh or cooked mushrooms or other veggies) in olive oil, then stir them into your sauce.

Boost flavor with wine. Sauté garlic and onion; add ¼ cup of wine, cook for 2 to 4 minutes, then add to the sauce. Or combine sauce with a cooked-down mixture of vodka, cream, and red-pepper flakes for a spicy vodka version.

Spice it up. Stir fresh herbs such as basil into your sauce as you heat it up. If you only have dried spices, sauté them in olive oil for 30 seconds to enhance their flavor, then add to your sauce.