Sam’s Club Vs. Costco: We Tried The Viral Marry Me Chicken

Sam’s and Costco are regulars are being put head to head. When they carry similar products, you’ve just got to know which is actually the better deal. This time, both stores have released a variation of Marry Me chicken ready meals. 

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Marry Me Chicken is a clever moniker given to a creamy, tomato pasta dish with chicken that is meant to be so good that it will get you proposals. Recipes for this vary from person to person, but they generally follow the same guidelines. There’s tender juicy chicken with a creamy sauce with some sort of tomato product―I’ve seen everything from tomato paste to fresh to sun-dried. It just depends on whose recipe sounds the best to you. 

The Differences

Costco and Sam’s took a similar approach as their dishes are rather different from one another, but they still follow the guidelines for what makes a Marry Me chicken dish. The first distinction should be that Sam’s makes theirs themselves. It’s in their ready-made meals section where they’ve got their mac and cheese, potatoes, and other meals. Costco outsourced theirs. Costco uses Rana brands Marry Me chicken. Now there’s nothing wrong with this, but it’s important to note as that’s going to affect where you’ll find it in the store. 

Next, we’ll look at price and portion. Portion for both is about the same. One package or tray is meant to search a family of four. And when I cooked them both up, there was certainly plenty to go around. I will say, Sam’s felt like it had a little more in terms of portion than Costco did. As for price, that is easily Costco’s to win. Their dish runs about $12 (varies slightly and can sometimes be found for less because it’s on sale). Meanwhile, Sam’s will run you about $15-17. It’s not a huge difference, but if you’re trying to eat cheap, it will matter. To that end, since Sam’s seems to have a little more pasta, their value may ultimately even out with Costco’s. 

The Taste

Now for the most important part―how they tasted. The price doesn’t matter much if the food tastes terrible. Now, I’m not sure if I’m just not a fan of Marry Me chicken or if these were just… not that great. But I found them both rather lacking. 

For Costco, it was an easy and fast cook as it was pappardelle pasta. And it just cooked in the sauce. Because it’s a fresh(ish) pasta, it cooks rather quickly so it’s definitely going to be prone to overcooking. If you pick this one, make sure you watch it carefully. I also found that if you didn’t stir it enough, it kind of started to clump together, which is also not fun to eat. Taste-wise, it was just okay. I think it leaned a bit more into a vodka sauce than a Marry Me sauce. 

Sam’s Club, instead of noodle pasta, chose to use tortellini and I love a good tortellini pasta. So I had high hopes for this. They also kept their sauce as a more cream based sauce and added sun-dried tomatoes for that burst of tomato flavor. They also had spinach added, which made for a nice rounded meal. This one also sort of lacked flavor. But the tortellini itself was really good. 

My biggest gripe was something both did wrong―and is really something I’ve found with anything that has pre-cooked chicken in it. And that is that they leave the pieces way too big. When you have a meal with chicken in it, you want bite-sized pieces. Not huge chunks of chicken that you need a knife to cut. With Costco, this was an easy fix as the chicken came in its own bag so I was able to chop the chicken a little smaller. Sam’s Club’s, though, was already fully mixed and so I had no way to separate the chicken to cut some of the larger pieces down, aside from just picking them out as I saw them, cutting, and then adding them back. So that is my biggest complaint and that is shared by both brands. 

The Verdict

So, which one should you get? Well, in my opinion, I would get the Sam’s Club chicken again. They were both lacking in flavor, but I feel like adding a little more garlic and some butter to the Sam’s chicken would have vastly improved it and would have been a simple way to improve it. Costco’s just lacked flavor and because the sauce wasn’t strictly cream-based, it was a little difficult to gauge just how to improve it. Plus, you don’t have long to cook the sauce since the noodles cook quickly. So it seemed like more work to try to fix Costco’s Marry Me Chicken versus Sam’s Club’s Marry Me Chicken. 

Now, neither were bad. But it’s definitely going to want to be something you add a little extra seasoning to. But if you have the choice, and are really itching for that proposal, I’d go for Sam’s Club.