We're Never Buying The Cocktail Sauce From This Budget Brand Again

When you're grilling shrimp, it's important to have a good marinade (and we have the best and worst marinades for grilling shrimp here for your perusal). Similarly, when you're boiling shrimp, it's crucial to have a flavorful sauce to dunk those babies into. While it's totally fine to eat shrimp without any accompaniments, you're seriously missing out if you don't grab a good cocktail sauce. That's why we've ranked nine store-bought cocktail sauces so you know what to grab and what to swerve. And as far as we're concerned, the cocktail sauce you'll want to leave on the shelf is an otherwise pretty beloved budget brand: Best Choice.

Best Choice is an affordable option for people looking to avoid paying extra cents for a label's promotion and branding, basically. The company values ... well, value, while still providing you with a good quality product. But tragically, Best Choice's cocktail sauce misses the mark here. Despite containing ingredients like garlic and onion powder, the sauce has a disappointingly weak flavor. The tomato puree also somehow manages to overwhelm both the horseradish and white vinegar according to our taster; a pretty impressive feat, given how strong these flavors are supposed to be. We decided it isn't bad, but that it's forgettable compared to the other sauces, with no real zest or flavor to offer. If your sauce is going to be that lackluster, there's really no point in having it at all.

First of all, Best Choice falls short in what we look for in a cocktail sauce's texture: something thick and with a robustness to it. It was pretty thin compared to other sauces. A good cocktail sauce should have a nice, middle-of-the-road consistency that sticks to the shrimp without being impossible to dip into or watery, but this one erred a little too close to the runny side. Then, you have the ingredients. Despite having a strong vinegar-forward smell, the taste itself was, as noted, disappointingly bland. Just a bare whisper of cocktail sauce is all you'll get from Best Choice.

Now, again, that doesn't mean this budget brand cocktail sauce has no place in any kitchen. If you like a subtle kick with just a hint of flavor, and really want the profile of your shrimp to shine, you might actually prefer this. Adding baking soda to shrimp is a game changer; it leaves you with delicious, plump shrimps that you may find yourself wanting to simply highlight with a cocktail sauce, rather than be smothered in tang and spice. In cases like this, Best Choice may in fact be the best choice. But in others, we definitely suggest taking a peek at some of our other top contenders, like Louisiana Cocktail Sauce, which checks all the boxes for us.