Most tolerable tomato sauce in a jar?

[Anonymous]

Monte Bene was recently on sale at WF. IMO, it is as good as Rao's.

[Anonymous]

OP here. So I tried the Safeway brand garlic and basil. No sugar or corn syrup or weird stabilizers added. Pretty damn good for $2. All their other varieties included sugar, though, so I'll be skipping those.

[Anonymous]

I am not a pasta sauce expert but I have always disliked jarred sauces because I find them too sweet. I have tried some of the more expensive brands, but our hands down favorite is the Simply Enjoy Marinara sauce at Giant. It is not the cheapest, I think it is $4.99, but it is great and we buy a lot of it because DH likes to put it on brown rice too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am not a pasta sauce expert but I have always disliked jarred sauces because I find them too sweet. I have tried some of the more expensive brands, but our hands down favorite is the Simply Enjoy Marinara sauce at Giant. It is not the cheapest, I think it is $4.99, but it is great and we buy a lot of it because DH likes to put it on brown rice too.

+1. It is cheap and good. Rao's ia a bit better, but not worth twice the price. I wait until it is on sale.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I feel exactly the same way about Rao's but I like Victoria Marinara almost as much.

Ditto.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I really like Victoria marinara (the only listed ingredients are tomatoes, onions, olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic and basil).

I buy from Costco (2 big jars for about 7 dollars).

I like this as well.

[Anonymous]

I can work with almost any jarred sauce. We typically use either Trader Joe's Tomato Basil or Bertolli Tomato Basil.

The thing I do is sautee a tiny but of minced onion and garlic (or garlic powder) in olive oil, then pour in the sauce, then add salt, pepper, about a tsp of sugar, and whatever fresh (or dried) herbs I have - usually parsley, basil, oregano. If it has 10 minutes to cook down and thicken it's really really good. If I have 30 minutes, I put frozen meatballs in it and let them cook through (either Morningstar farms veggie meatballs or TJ's frozen ones).

I can do some variation of this while the pasta cooks, so it takes no more time (well, the meatballs do) and it tastes 3x better!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I can work with almost any jarred sauce. We typically use either Trader Joe's Tomato Basil or Bertolli Tomato Basil.

The thing I do is sautee a tiny but of minced onion and garlic (or garlic powder) in olive oil, then pour in the sauce, then add salt, pepper, about a tsp of sugar, and whatever fresh (or dried) herbs I have - usually parsley, basil, oregano. If it has 10 minutes to cook down and thicken it's really really good. If I have 30 minutes, I put frozen meatballs in it and let them cook through (either Morningstar farms veggie meatballs or TJ's frozen ones).

I can do some variation of this while the pasta cooks, so it takes no more time (well, the meatballs do) and it tastes 3x better!

Really, you are almost there. Buy a couple of cans if tomatoes and add some wine and you will have made your own sauce.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I really like Victoria marinara (the only listed ingredients are tomatoes, onions, olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic and basil).

I buy from Costco (2 big jars for about 7 dollars).

I like this as well.

+1. They often have samples of it, just served on slices of baguette.

[Anonymous]

I love Wegmans Grandma's Pomodoro Sauce.

[Anonymous]

Newman's Own tomato and basil non organic. For some reason the organic one isn't as good.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We like Ragu. I saute onion, green pepper and add in a little minced garlic, fresh basil, some Italian seasoning and it could pass for a homemade sauce.

I've never tried Rao's but now I will based on the recommendations here.

I am completely baffled by your Ragu recommendation. I can't get past all the sugar in it. I don't even understand why there is sugar in it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We like Ragu. I saute onion, green pepper and add in a little minced garlic, fresh basil, some Italian seasoning and it could pass for a homemade sauce.

I've never tried Rao's but now I will based on the recommendations here.

I am completely baffled by your Ragu recommendation. I can't get past all the sugar in it. I don't even understand why there is sugar in it.

We've been using Ragu for well over 20 years. We've tried Prego and Newmans but always wind up preferring Ragu. I'm not trying to sell it as the healthiest sauce out there or trying to claim it's "oraganic" or anything of the sort. We like it. If I use a jarred sauce, that's what I use.

I do intend to try Rao's though.

[Anonymous]

I grew up on Ragu and tried it again recently. Nasty. Way too sweet and blah.

[Anonymous]

My jar of Ragu Traditional has 7g sugar. There are definitely sauces out there with more sugar than that. And the ones that have less typically have something like 4g of sugar. So we're not talking MAJOR differences here at least sugar wise.

We use this sauce (at most) once a week. I use dried herbs, chopped/sauteed onion, green pepper, fresh herbs and garlic to give it a little more kick. But it's even o.k. plain in my opinion.