9 Canned Chicken Brands Ranked Worst To Best

Canned meat has, for many years, been the butt of culinary jokes. It seems like an odd concept: Why would you stick a food that's perfectly good, fresh, and wrapped in Cryovac into a can? Despite seeming like an oddity suited only to doomsday preppers, canned meats and tinned seafood have seen a renaissance in recent years. Niche markets and grocery aisles are filled with kitsch seafood tins just waiting for a spot on your charcuterie board, and there are more than enough creative ways to use Spam published on the internet. But one canned meat that hasn't quite gotten the same positive press? Canned chicken.

As someone who has recently put the plant-based lifestyle in the rear-view mirror (for the most part), I have wholeheartedly embraced canned chicken. It might seem like an odd outlook to have, given that most of my years have been spent eating tofu, fresh grain bowls, and all of the delicious vegan baked goods that I can stomach, but I can appreciate the affordability and ease of the can's contents. I don't have to re-learn the right temperature to cook the chicken at (yet) because it comes pre-cooked and just needs to be drained before it can be spruced up with seasonings, dressings, and more.

However, as I've quickly come to realize, there is a massive disparity in the quality, flavor, and price of canned chicken. So I wanted to see which brands did this canned staple justice and are worth buying. To do so, I sampled a whole bunch of brands and ranked them based on their water content, flavor, and consistency.

Prices are as of the date of publication and may vary based on region.

I saved Keystone for last in my taste test because, well, it's a beast. It was the largest can available at my local Walmart and the only one without a pull tab (though I didn't let its shortfall here dictate its spot on my list). It's what's on the inside that counts — right? Well, luck would have it that the inside of this canned chicken was worse than the outside.

The label touted that there are only two ingredients: salt and chicken. No water was added — so I wondered how there was so much liquid left over in the can. Sitting on the liquid and the single piece of meat was a fat clump, staking its claim on the top of the cylindrical whole piece of chicken. It was really unsettling to look at, and after a few pokes around the contents, I decided to pull the fat out and throw it away so I didn't have to look at it anymore. 

The single piece of meat, suspended in its own juices, was, as I suspected, very bland. The center of the chicken was much better colored than the filmy, white exterior of the meat cylinder, but it was still very dry and very undersalted. It may have been better if it had been broken up into small pieces, which would have allowed the salt to permeate it. But I will give Keystone this: It did taste like chicken ... just not good chicken. I have no doubt I was not the intended audience of this product — it would be better in the hands of a doomsday prepper — but it just didn't have enough flavor to rank any higher.

I tried Great Value after some of the larger national brands, since its products tend to be really hit-or-miss. In all fairness, though, many of my reviews of this brand's products have been solely for plant-based offerings; this was the first meaty offering I tried. And in all honesty, if its meat products are at all similar to its canned chunk chicken breast with rib meat, I would recommend looking elsewhere. 

Before the negatives, I have to mention some of the pros. The first is that each can is pretty inexpensive; at $1.24, it was the cheapest of all the brands that I sampled. There was also about the same amount of chicken in this can as was in the others I sampled, meaning that it didn't use a ton of water to drive its costs down further. However, my pros just about end there. 

This can was packed with very small pieces of meat, rather than large, sizable hunks like the higher-ranked brands. While you might think that size standardization is a good thing, it meant that all of the pieces had the same rubbery texture and that there were very few of the succulent, juicy pieces that I was vying for. The 5-ounce can contains notably more protein than brands like Swanson's: 23 grams of protein with 100 calories, but with 700 milligrams of sodium. As you can expect, the flavor of this meat was pretty salty and almost tuna-like.

I tried Stop & Shop's rendition of chunk chicken breast in water after sampling Great Value's, and even I can admit that it's leaps and bounds above its store-bought brethren. When I popped open the can, I was pretty astonished to see that the chicken chunks were uniform. Now, I thought after trying Great Value's that I knew what uniform was, but Stop & Shop truly takes it to the next level. The larger pieces are cut into precise cubes, making it very clear that it's canned chicken rather than cut fresh by hand. 

Not only was its product more uniformly cut, but I also felt that Stop & Shop did better in both flavor and texture. After going back and forth between the Great Value can and this one, I quickly realized that Great Value's can was a little too lean for my liking. Stop & Shop had a better balance of higher-fat pieces, which had a little bit of a squidgy texture between my molars, rather than ones that just shred and break off into pieces. I do think the fat contributed to the flavor of this canned chicken as well. Once I read the nutrition facts, my suspicions were confirmed; it had more calories and fat than Great Value. I think that's a worthy price to pay for flavor, though. 

Aldi continues to prove it is the absolute master of affordable, value-packed products. This was the fullest can of chicken I sampled, across both nationwide and store brands, making it the best value of all. I was almost giddy when I opened the can and saw that it was filled to the brim with more chicken than it was broth. However, it would appear that I set my expectations a bit too high for it, because the crash back down to Earth was a little too painful, even for me.

This chicken is so bland, it almost made me mad how flavorless and lacking in salt it was. The salt not only flavors the meat but also masks some of the tinny flavor that canned goods are all too familiar with. As such, each bite is borderline metallic. When I read the nutrition facts, I was intrigued to see that the 2-ounce serving contained 220 milligrams of sodium. So my next question was: Where does all that salt go? Is it just more diffused in the meat because there's more of it? I was admittedly left with more questions than answers here. That being said, I think that discounting this product solely because its taste is lacking does it a disservice. There was very little fat, so you'd need to do a ton of dressing up to give this canned chicken a competitive edge against some of the other brands on this list.

Good thing we're not running a beauty contest here because I would be sending Bumble Bee packing. This brand is well-known for its canned tuna, which I'll say is okay but not the best brand out there, but I can't say the same for this can, which looked positively dreadful before draining. It had more water than the other brands I sampled, and it was rife with fat globules floating on the top, like the surface of the ocean following an oil spill. 

The chicken underneath, which I exposed after draining the water and pressing the meat, was relatively dry and flavorless. After trying some of the saltier brands, I was glad to have something a bit milder, but even I can admit that its flavor wasn't nearly as punchy or as briny as it should have been. The chicken was also a little more like shreddable chicken, rather than soft chunks, and I think the lack of fat has something to do with it. The brand touts that it's 98% fat-free on the can, and I suspect the remaining 2% got washed away when I drained the can. 

I do think that you could break this chicken up, add your favorite barbecue sauce, and toss it on a bun for pulled chicken sliders, but you'd be really relying on the sauce to carry the weight of the flavor — and recreating that fat would be difficult. Considering that it's not as price-competitive as some of the other brands on this list, I had no choice but to give it a middling spot.

Valley Fresh's white premium chunk chicken breast was the definition of "nothing to write home about." The can had marginally more chicken than Bumble Bee, and I thought it had a slightly fatter mouthfeel and even more succulent, soft chicken, meaning it outpaced Bumble Bee in the flavor and texture race as well. However, this can has a ways to go in order to compete with the brands I placed above it. 

The meat in this can, while softer than some of the others on this list, didn't really have as soft a bite as some of my top picks. The fat seemed better dispersed in the broth than in the meat itself, leaving my lips with an almost oily sheen as I sampled the pieces. I will say there was a nice balance between large and small pieces of chicken, which made it feel less overtly processed, but the chicken still had a dry, low-moisture mouthfeel. 

Another place of potential improvement was the salt content. While it had a better base flavor than Brookdale's can, there was still room for a brothier flavor to carry those chicken notes a bit. If I closed my eyes and had a bite, I would say it reads generically "poultry," not specifically chicken rib meat. It's not a bad can if you needed something for, say, a triple anise chicken salad, but there are better options out there for sure.

I tried Swanson's premium chunk canned white chicken first because I figured it was the most well-known of the non-store brands, meaning I could use it as a baseline to compare the others to. Maybe it's been a while since I've had canned chicken, but I didn't anticipate how mushy it would be. However, after I got a couple of pieces of chicken, I quickly realized that the pieces I wanted were the smaller ones; they had more toothsome edges and didn't turn to poultry-flavored mush on my gums quite as much as the large pieces. The can was filled with pretty sizable pieces of chicken, though part of the issue was that none of those pieces were the same size. These inconsistent chunks were swimming in a brothy, salty bath of water, which was slightly murky. There were some pieces of fat floating along in the abyss, though they lacked flavor and instead had a weird, squidgy mouthfeel that didn't really pair well with the chicken. 

This brand wasn't overtly salty, which I really appreciated. The chicken is toothsome enough to shine in a chicken salad or a wrap. There are 12 grams of protein, 60 calories, and 270 milligrams of sodium per 4.5-ounce can (drained), making it a pretty nutrient-dense and sodium-conscious choice. Besides the weird, very-clearly-canned texture, there wasn't much else notable about this brand. It's a good choice for most uses, but there are a couple of better-textured cans worth buying.

I tried Nature's Promise canned organic white meat chicken in water after Stop & Shop's. Yet again, I was surprised that a brand sold by the same store could vary so much. The organic and natural foods wing of the grocery giant's operation, Nature's Promise, touts that its chicken is free-range without prohibited synthetic ingredients and added hormones. However, I didn't let these food claims dictate how I placed this brand on my list: Its color, texture, and flavor told me enough. 

I guess I didn't realize how pale the other canned chickens were until I cracked Nature's Promise's can to reveal pink-colored chicken. However, this wasn't a sign that it was undercooked, but potentially a sign that it was fresher than some of the other brands. The quantity of chicken inside it was about the same as its competitors', though there was some variation in flavor and mouthfeel. This chicken was not at all fatty; it was like biting into a very dry breast meat from a Thanksgiving turkey. There was very little fat in this can, which translated to both very little flavor and a texture that was a bit too dry for my liking. In fact, it was so dry that I think if you removed all the water and told someone it was carved up from a chicken breast you roasted yourself that morning, they would believe you. Normally, I wouldn't place a canned meat product sold in water at the top of my list for being dry, but I felt that being able to be passed off as "real chicken" warranted a high spot.

Tyson's chicken looked like Swanson's — just in a bigger can and with a far better color. This canned premium chunk white meat chicken breast had a much better color than many of the other brands I sampled (excluding Nature's Promise, which was on par). While Nature's Promise focused on small pieces of chicken, this one was rife with large chunks and small bits in the same can, along with some floating pieces of chicken fat swirling around the surface. While I don't think the chicken fat was particularly appetizing, it did more for the meat's flavor than Nature's Promise did, earning it a higher spot in the ranking. 

The broth that these chicken pieces were submerged in was plentiful and very salty. However, the salt seemed to infuse into the chicken pieces, softening them just enough to not make them as dry as Nature's Promise. Since Tyson's chicken was very salty, I don't think anyone would be able to pass it off as a homemade chicken dish, but I will say that its moisture made the pieces more pleasant to eat than was the case with Nature's Promise. 350 milligrams of sodium per 3-ounce drained serving is a lot, though, and I don't know if that would make it appealing to many people.

No matter how you square it, chicken lacks flavor — the extra sodium makes it palatable. So, you may need to tweak your recipe and add less salt to compensate for the brininess, but I think it's a worthy concession.

I opened and sampled all of these cans on the day to ensure peak freshness. While I highly doubt anyone is eating canned chicken straight from the can — sans seasonings or other ingredients — I wanted to try it as plain as possible so I could get a better idea of its flavor. Once I cracked open each can, I first assessed the amount of water and chicken in each. Although canned chicken is affordable, at least by most meat standards, no one should feel like they're being shortchanged by getting a can that's 99% water. 

Once I drained the liquid, I tasted the chicken pieces. The first thing I considered was flavor — which encompassed both fattiness and salt. Canned meat is salty; there is no doubt about it, and my highest-ranked cans boasted a level of saltiness that elevated the bland chicken without sending me gasping for a glass of water. While canned chicken is lean — most brands boast being no more than 2% fat — I also expected any remaining fat to add some amount of flavor to the chicken. Cans with off-putting or tinny flavors didn't stand a chance against more neutral-tasting ones.

I also considered the texture of each canned chicken brand. Submerging chicken in brine for any length of time is going to alter its flavor, sure, but the chicken should still be moist and flavorful, rather than overtly dry or mushy. My top-ranked brands overall maintained a toothsome texture while also boasting excellent flavor and value.