Best Canned Spaghetti Sauce: We Found the Best Canned Marinara Sauce & Canned Clam Sauce

Canned spaghetti sauce sucks. I’m sorry, but if you’re truly looking for the best store bought pasta sauce, jarred sauce is the way to go. (Check out our rankings of the best jarred marinara, the best jarred pesto, and the best jarred alfredo.) However, tin cans are more durable. So, if you’re stocking a bunker or going camping or don’t want to deal with something breakable for any other reason, you’re going to want the best canned pasta sauce. Or, at least, the most palatable canned pasta sauce.

And that’s where I come in. I tried all the canned marinara sauce from Hunt’s (the primary producer of canned pasta sauce) and all the canned clam sauce, and I found the only two good canned pasta sauces you should buy. Here they are, the best canned tomato sauce for pasta and the best canned clam sauce for pasta.

Best Canned Spaghetti Sauce

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Best Canned Marinara Sauce

Hunt’s Roasted Garlic & Onion

Amazon

Walmart

Out of all the Hunt’s canned marinara sauces I tried, this was the least bad, which makes it the best canned marinara sauce. The base tomato sauce is tomatoey and tangy. It’s light on the garlic, but heavy on the onion. And that onion flavor does a good job of covering up the unpleasant canned flavor. Paired with a heavy hit of some powdered parmesan, this would be totally fine on pasta enjoyed in a bunker.

Credit: Merc / Amazon

Rating:

7.5/10

Sporks

Best of the Best

Progresso White Clam Sauce with Garlic & Herbs

Walmart

I tasted five brands of canned clam sauce for best our canned clam sauce ranking and this one from Progresso took the top spot. It also takes the top spot here, in this very sparse ranking of the best canned spaghetti sauce. It’s briny and garlicky—like the onion flavor in the Hunt’s sauce, the garlic helps cover up “can” flavor in this canned pasta sauce. It’s well-seasoned and it’s beautifully oily. It clings to pasta really well. Preparing for the apocalypse? This is the best canned pasta sauce to stock up on. And if you’re allergic to shellfish, I’m sorry, you’ll have to stick with the runner-up.

Credit: Liv Averett / Walmart

Rating:

7.5/10

Sporks

Other canned pasta sauces we tried:

Hunt’s Traditional, Hunt’s Four Cheese, Hunt’s Meat, Dellalo White Clam Sauce, Flora Clam Sauce White, Bumble Bee Clam Sauce, Cento Red Clam Sauce

About the Author

Hi! I’m the editor-in-chief of Sporked. I will never turn down a fresh-shucked oyster but I’ll also leap at whatever new product Reese’s releases and I love a Tostitos Hint of Lime, even if there is no actual lime in the ingredients. Why you should trust me: I have been writing about food and beverages for well over a decade and am an avid at-home cook and snacker. I began my career writing about fine dining and recipes, moved into cocktails and spirits, and now I talk about groceries. If you can eat it or drink it, I’ve probably written about it. What I buy every week: Trader Joe’s dried okra. Appleton Farms prosciutto from Aldi. Some sort of Trader Joe’s cheese (I’m into the aged gouda at the moment). Frozen waffles (usually the Eggo Cinnamon Toast Minis). Spindrift water (loving the Cosmopolitan right now). Favorite ranking: Smoked salmon. Imagine me as Scrooge McDuck but instead of coins I’m diving into a vault of slippery smoked salmon slices. Pure joy. I also found some real steals in that taste test! Least favorite ranking: Canned oysters. I had such high hopes for this but it quickly became a chore. The kitchen smelled like an uncleaned aquarium.