Best Cranberry Sauce: The 6 Best for Thanksgiving Dinner

The best cranberry sauce is sweet, tangy, and adds some variety to your holiday plate, offsetting the saltiness of all those savory sides. But which is the best cranberry sauce you can buy? We broke out the can opener to find out. 

Jellied or whole berry—that is the question. Personally, I’m a jellied cranberry sauce gal. There’s nothing like a fat slab of can-shaped tangy goo to cleanse and awaken the palate when you’re knee deep in turkey, gravy, and a dozen different beige casseroles. I think it would be easy to assume that most canned cranberry sauces—whether they’re jellied or whole berry—are basically the same, but I was absolutely stunned by the variety in flavor and texture in the cans we tried during our taste test. And, I have to say, whole berry cranberry sauce may not be my thing, but I tasted a few that were good enough to convert me. Whether you’re cool with skins and seeds or you want that iconic slimy sameness of jellied sauce, these are the best cranberry sauces you can buy.

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Best of the Best

Stater Bros. Whole Cranberry Sauce

Instacart

Yes, my loyalties lie with jellied cranberry sauce—the kind with no visible relationship to cranberries whatsoever—but this whole cranberry sauce is like a wonderful hybrid of jellied and homemade. Intermingled in its sweet jellied base, Stater Bros. Whole Cranberry Sauce has big pieces of berry that burst in your mouth and it doesn’t suffer from being absolutely packed with skins and seeds like some of the other whole berry cranberry sauces we tried. If you have a Stater Bros. in your area, this is the best cranberry sauce you can buy.

Credit: Sarah Demonteverde / Instacart

Rating:

10/10

Sporks

Best Jellied

Ocean Spray Jellied Cranberry Sauce

Instacart

Walmart

Amazon

Ocean Spray is the the king of cranberries and, perhaps predictably, the brand’s jellied cranberry sauce is completely flawless: tart, full of bold cranberry flavor, and devoid of the unpleasant tinny flavor we detected in some of the canned cranberry sauces we tried. Having tried Ocean Spray’s jellied cranberry sauce alongside multiple store brands, I have to say, this is a situation in which buying the name brand is the way to go. It just has so, so much more cranberry flavor. “This feels like it has depth,” my colleague Naajia Shukri said when she took a bite. Sadly, the same can’t be said for Ocean Spray’s whole berry sauce. The cranberry flavor was just so much more concentrated in the jellied variety—the brand’s whole berry didn’t even make it onto our list! If jellied is your jam, this is by far the best cranberry sauce on the market.

Credit: Sarah Demonteverde / Instacart

Rating:

9.5/10

Sporks

Best Bright

Stater Bros. Jellied Cranberry Sauce

Instacart

I firmly believe that the best thing about Thanksgiving dinner is the leftovers. Stuffing you can eat with your fingers out of a Tupperware container throughout the day. Casseroles that make the next week and a half feel like a hol iday every day. And, of course, leftover turkey for sandwiches. This bright and tangy jellied sauce from Stater Bros. (which I will now be referring to as a cranberry sauce mecca) is just begging to be sliced up and stacked on some bread with thick slabs of turkey breast, stuffing, and gravy. It’s an excellent argument for buying at least a couple extra cans of cranberry sauce when you do your Thanksgiving shopping this year. Especially, if you’re doing your shopping at Stater Bros.

Credit: Sarah Demonteverde / Instacart

Rating:

9/10

Sporks

Best Texture

Sprouts Organic Whole Berry Cranberry Sauce

Instacart

If the slimy nature of jellied cranberry sauce is too freaky for you, give this whole berry sauce from Sprouts a shot. Some of the whole berry sauces we tried were positively packed with seeds. Yes, the seeds add texture, but they also wind up getting stuck in your teeth and staying there until Christmas. This sauce has chunks, but isn’t overly seedy. Basically, it offers texture without any unpleasantness, and it tastes good too—tart and fresh and festive. I also think this one would look especially nice on a holiday table. I’ll be the first to admit that can-shaped cranberry sauce isn’t the classiest thing to have on the table when you’re having company. 

Credit: Sarah Demonteverde / Instacart

Rating:

8/10

Sporks

Best Sweet

Great Value Jellied Cranberry Sauce

Walmart

Instacart

This cranberry sauce from Walmart lacks some of the punchy tartness we loved in the higher-ranking sauces on this list, but it still tastes really good. If you want a cranberry sauce that’s basically like a dinnertime dessert, this is the best cranberry sauce out there. It’s super sweet, but not nauseatingly sweet, and it still packs plenty of cranberry flavor (although not quite as much as Ocean Spray). As generics go, this is a great cranberry sauce.

Credit: Sarah Demonteverde / Walmart

Rating:

7.5/10

Sporks

Best Texture (Runner Up)

Market Pantry Whole Berry Cranberry Sauce

Target

Instacart

So, a lot of cranberry sauces that describe themselves as “whole berry” don’t actually contain many (if any) whole berries! This blew my mind a little. While we actually preferred some of the whole berry sauces that lied about their berries being whole, we have to give props to Target house brand Market Pantry for actually giving us intact cranberries. It’s definitely heavier on skins and seeds for that reason, but if you want a whole berry sauce that really lives up to its promises, then give a can of this a shot.

Credit: Sarah Demonteverde / Target

Rating:

7.5/10

Sporks

Sporked’s Guide to an Easy Thanksgiving

November 9, 2022

Here’s a secret: You don’t have to make Thanksgiving sides from scratch. The key is just knowing which store-bought sides are good enough to deserve a place on your holiday table.