15 Store-Bought Honey Mustard Brands, Ranked Worst To Best

If you take a stroll through the grocery store's condiment aisle, you'll find no shortage of sauces and dressings. The number of options can be dizzying, regardless of whether you're looking for something to dress up your hot dog, dip your tater tots and fries into, or turn into a tasty marinade. But one condiment in particular has seen quite the rise in recent years and arguably eclipsed the popularity of its non-sweetened base: honey mustard.

Honey mustard's appeal lies in its balance of zestiness and sweetness. Unlike other condiments, which tend to take on one-note flavors across different brands, every brand has its own interpretation of honey mustard. Some craft their recipes with dipping and wing sauces in mind, while others opt to make things a little more fit for salads and marinades (like for honey mustard-glazed ham). Within this spectrum of products, there are also different flavor intensities, levels of sweetness, and consistencies. 

Since the spectrum for honey mustard is so vast, I wanted to get a handle on some of the most widely accessible and popular honey mustard dressings, sauces, and spreads by tasting them and ranking them from worst to best. While their intended uses may vary, I decided to rank each of these products based on their balance of honey and mustard, value, versatility, and overall flavor. 

I'm going to start this ranking with a question: Who the heck is spending $9 on a bottle of dressing? Honestly, I have no clue, and I don't think that a lower price would have redeemed Primal Kitchen in the slightest.

Primal Kitchen's honey mustard dressing and marinade was more like a vinaigrette than a truly creamy honey mustard dressing — which I should have known based on the oil separation. Even though I shook it for a solid minute before pouring it into the small ramekin for tasting, it still separated. Its flavor also read very much like a vinaigrette, and by vinaigrette, I mean just oil mixed with a little bit of what I think is salt but can't really pinpoint. There is absolutely no flavor here besides the oil, and it's impossible to pinpoint it as honey mustard-adjacent. It lacks flavor, creaminess, depth — and very obviously value — making it a shoo-in for the bottom spot. 

When deciding the order in which I would sample these mustards, I went with the approach of trying what I expected would be the least flavorful to the most — which is why I reserved this one for last. And boy, was I glad I did. 

Inglehoffer's sweet hot mustard was the spiciest and most sinus-numbing mustard of this ranking — and perhaps the most overwhelmingly flavorful mustard I've ever eaten in my life. This one is like a five-alarm-hot mustard, reserved only for the most adventurous of eaters and spice enthusiasts. I couldn't concentrate on the sweetness from the honey because I was so overwhelmed by the prickly sensation that moved like wildfire from my taste buds all the way up into my sinus cavity. This stuff is very strong, so proceed with caution. 

However, I will give it some credit where credit is due; I could tell there was honey in it because it had an almost sticky consistency and a beautiful rust-like color. While I personally couldn't imagine ever eating this mustard again, I'm sure someone out there has some use for it. Its consistency is pretty good, but you have to get very creative with its flavor in order for it to be useful.

I knew, by this point in this ranking, that I was certainly going to stumble upon a sauce that was going to be too sweet for my liking. And I found it sooner rather than later with Sweet Baby Ray's honey mustard dipping sauce. I could tell it was creamy by how it poured from the container. It was well-emulsified, though not as much as some of the other brands I sampled. Since there weren't any specks of mustard in it, it looked like homogeneous yellow goop. Appetizing? I don't think so.

The unfortunate news is that Sweet Baby Ray's also had the consistency of very thick and creamy mayonnaise. It's very sweet and oily, and there's very little mustard flavor to report. The bottle depicts chicken and fried fare, and I think that Sweet Baby Ray's is suggesting its intended use is for those bland foods specifically. I don't think it would disrupt the flavor of these foods, but it certainly wouldn't do anything for them, either.

Going into this ranking, I thought I wanted a mustard that was boldly flavored, but I came to realize very quickly that there is a very thin line between mustards that are bold and ones that are unpalatable. I expected that a store-branded product like Stop & Shop would err on the inoffensive side, but I very quickly realized I was wrong. 

Stop & Shop's honey mustard was a little more strongly mustardy than some of the others on the list. While I appreciate that both sweetness and mustard are present and balanced, I think that the mustard flavor here is a little too sinus-tickling for dipping — and it would completely distract from whatever your dipping vehicle is. Otherwise, its flavor is unremarkable, earning it a spot toward the bottom of the list.

Although Guy Fieri touts this Flavortown honey mustard sauce as more of a made-to-dip concoction, I really do think it was a salad dressing in disguise. I tried it right after the Chick-fil-A brand, and it was interesting to see the difference in color and texture between them. This one was very creamy, like its manufacturer had added extra mayo to it. It had a very light color, with little pieces of what I thought were mustard seeds peppered throughout it.

Like a salad dressing, this isn't very bold at all. It has more of an oily mouthfeel than anything. Well, there is some sort of mustardy flavor in the background — I'm more focused on the texture than I am the flavor. This distracting texture really is what sank the sauce in my ranking. While it would probably be passable with nuggets, I didn't get enough mustard or enough honey flavor to convince me that it's indeed a honey mustard.

Great Value products are notorious for being very hit or miss. Unfortunately, I think that this honey mustard was a miss in most respects.

While the texture was better than some of the more premium and higher-priced brands like Sweet Baby Ray's, its sweetness was a little too overwhelming for my palate and really altered my perception of the sauce as a whole. It's definitely not as oily and as greasy as other brands, namely Flavortown and Sweet Baby Ray's, but it just doesn't have the right consistency for a standard sandwich mustard. It's almost sticky and is quite heavy on the palate.  The honey is more saccharine than I would have liked, and it completely eclipsed the mustard flavor. It might be fine in a pinch, but it's not a mustard I would go out of my way to purchase, even at its low price point.

It seems like comparing Aldi's Burman's honey Dijon mustard to some of the others on this list is a bit like comparing apples to oranges, seeing as it's very chunky, textured, and packed with mustard seeds. However, I was so distracted by the texture of the mustard that I missed out on the honey flavor entirely. 

When I went to taste it, I was hit over the head by the punchy Dijon notes and was very focused on the little pieces of mustard seeds that lodged in between my teeth like quinoa. It's really not a bad-tasting mustard, and if you can look past its texture and flavor, you might like it. However, while I liked its price tag – Aldi is on average one of the cheapest grocery stores in America – I missed out on too much of the honey flavor to rank it any higher.

You might be wondering how the heck two Great Value honey mustards got onto this list, and honestly, I'm a little perplexed too. Their colors are very similar, but their uses couldn't be any more different. This one is designed with salads in mind, and I think it is leaps and bounds above the thicker mustard product Walmart stocks on its shelves.

The one thing I noticed was that when it came out of the bottle, it was very, very watery. If you had tossed it with salad, it would probably struggle to stick to the lettuce. However, the primary reason why I ranked it above the other Great Value mustard was because it had a really excellent balance between sweetness and mustardiness. It's not spicy or unapproachable by any means, and it's clear that Great Value does, in fact, know when to dial back on the sweetness. 

Wish-Bone is another popular salad dressing brand, so I wasn't surprised to see that it also stocked a sweet and spicy honey mustard. This product was much bolder in color than many of the other brands and had very obvious specks of color in it. I don't think that color was from the mustard, though; it seemed like there were some other spices and seasonings added to this honey mustard. As such, it didn't really read as a honey mustard. It almost has a creamy Italian-meets-mustard vibe going on; the mustard flavor took a backseat, as did the sweetness. While there are some very faint Dijon notes in the background, I don't think that Wish-Bone can entirely pass this dressing off as being honey mustard, per se, and I didn't really detect any of the spiciness that it suggested on the label.

However, I will say I did enjoy eating this dressing; it didn't really fit the definition of what I was looking for, so I couldn't rank it any higher. If you're willing to step outside of honey mustard territory, you might really appreciate it. 

If Chick-fil-A's honey mustard had a more mature older brother, it would be Nance's original honey mustard. While the label suggests that this mustard is supposed to have just "a touch of honey," its texture is very reminiscent of whipped honey. It's very thick and very sweet, though it doesn't skimp on the mustard component, unlike some of the lower-ranked products on this list. 

I was honestly really conflicted about where to place Nance's honey mustard in comparison to Chick-fil-A. However, I ultimately settled on placing it lower just because its almost-peppery mustard flavor may not be approachable to most. There's also not enough acid here, as it doesn't have the tart back-of-the-mouth punch that some of the higher-ranking honey mustards offered. It's far from a bad honey mustard; you just have to be a fan of bold mustards to enjoy it.

Going into this race, I really thought Chick-fil-A was going to be a very mild-tasting and otherwise unoffensive condiment. I mean, Chick-fil-A has made its fortune on chicken sandwiches, so why would it want to hide the taste of it with a spicy mustard? 

This was the first time I had tried Chick-fil-A's honey mustard. I was honestly surprised by how punchy it was. It was very sticky and honey-like in terms of its consistency, though the mustard flavor stood its ground. It was like a roller coaster of flavor; the spicy heat built the longer it lingered on my palate. 

What I like about this dipping sauce is that it strikes a really beautiful balance between being sweet and being almost peppery. Since it takes a while for the pepperiness to hit, I don't think it would detract from foods like chicken nuggets or waffle fries too much, making it very well-fit for its particular use. However, that lingering boldness may not curry favor with all eaters, potentially limiting its appeal.

Let's make one thing abundantly clear: This is not a beauty contest, meaning I didn't necessarily place a brand higher because it looked more attractive than the others. However, I do have to make note of the fact that Nature's Promise organic honey mustard salad dressing looks like a mixture of bland baby food and applesauce. There are some specks of what I thought was mustard floating around in it, but its pallid color really reminds me of applesauce, which is, frankly, unsettling.

However, I'm glad I didn't let the look of this one turn me off from it entirely. It doesn't have the same creaminess as some of the other dressings on this list, but it still has a balanced and approachable blend of sweet honey and mustard flavor. It's very approachable, and it is not super thick or dense on the palate. And, aside from its looks, its relative thinness would not make it great for uses outside of salads. When I tried it with a pretzel crisp, it immediately dripped right off.

You know that old adage, "variety is the spice of life?" Well, I think that's something that Ken's Steak House really takes to heart. The brand sells literally every salad dressing under the sun, including this honey mustard flavor. And honestly, I was really impressed by this one. It might not be as competitively priced as the one that scored above it, but it really does have a great marriage between sweetness and boldness.

The mustard flavor here is a little more assertive than it is in some of the other, lower-ranked brands on this list, but it's still not leaning into Dijon or brown mustard territory. If you used a little bit in your chicken marinade or on your salad, you'd probably be pleased by the flavor — even if you aren't a die-hard honey mustard stan. The flavor is approachable yet complex, and the consistency is really good for a store-bought dressing. It's a reliable choice all around.

Tuscan Garden is Aldi's in-house salad dressing brand. Despite the forkful of salad on its label, the brand touts it as "great for dipping" — and I would say that sentiment is certainly true. It has what many of the lower-ranking sauces on this list didn't: versatility. You can truly use it as a salad dressing and as a dipping sauce for almost anything, thanks to its sublime flavor and consistency. It tastes slightly sulfuric and mustardy, but it's not so overwhelming that it hits you over the head and eradicates your sinuses. So, in other words, even if you don't like honey mustard, I think you could get along with this rendition just fine. It's also just thick enough to dip but would just as easily spread and stick to lettuce.

It has both the honey and the mustard elements I was looking for, and their balance is perfect. The one reason why I didn't rank it at the top of this list is because it has an aftertaste reminiscent of Thousand Island dressing; it's a little odd, but it doesn't distract from the two essential flavor components too much.

We all know that French's is the king of regular yellow mustard, so I was really interested to see how its honey mustard would fare. The color of the bottle suggests it's made with brown mustard rather than yellow mustard, but its flavor aligns perfectly with yellow mustard — meaning it's very approachable. 

At first, the mouthfeel was a little sharp and strong, but it was quickly replaced by the perfect balance of sweetness and acidity. This mustard is very thick — thicker than I remember French's yellow mustard being. That said, it's thick in a way that other dressings and dipping sauces in this race are not. Other sauces might use oils and other ingredients to try to bulk up the mouthfeel and make them taste and feel like mayonnaise, but French's keeps it real. I also liked that this honey mustard could be used as an almost concentrated ingredient in sauces and marinades; you can always add more oil or liquid to thin it out or even mix it with mayonnaise to give it more creaminess and body.

The only things I could taste here were yellow mustard and honey — exactly what I want from an aptly named honey mustard. It was delicious both on the pretzel slims and by itself, making it a sure shoo-in for the top spot. 

For this ranking, I sampled the honey mustards on the same day that I purchased them to ensure they were at peak freshness. I tried each one solo with a spoon before dipping into it with a plain pretzel cracker so I could see how it clung to a dipping vehicle. 

Not all honey mustards on this list are made for the same thing, so to stay objective, I focused more on their flavor, consistency, and versatility. As their name suggests, there needed to be, first and foremost, a balance of sweetness from the honey and punchiness from the mustard. While an inherent spiciness or mildness didn't necessarily affect the rankings, the lack of one of the two central flavor components did. 

I also ranked more versatile sauces — meaning they could be used for dipping, sandwiches, or more complex sauces higher than ones that were only fit for one thing (read: the mayo imposters). My highest-ranked choices were very approachable and could be liked even by folks who don't absolutely love honey mustard.