7 Canned Salmon Brands, Ranked Worst To Best

Before shopping for this article, I don't know if I'd ever glanced twice at canned salmon. Canned foods seem to bring out my choosy side. I was blessed to grow up very close to the water, so I have a good taste for seafood, and unless I'm making a tuna melt or a poor man's tuna casserole with unexpected ingredient pairings, I'm not usually looking for canned fish. Still, I've been surprised before by these rankings. Just because something is canned does not make it an inferior product.

I like salmon. In fact, I really like salmon. When I'm in charge of dinner, I love whipping together some salmon fillets — this 1-pan recipe has come in clutch for me. It's a nice deviation from chicken, and not as heavy as a burger night. All that to say, I know what I'm looking for in salmon. It's supposed to be moist, tender, and flaky, without being overcooked and dry. I'm most well-versed in pink Alaskan salmon, though I've heard good things about red salmon as well. Whichever salmon is being canned, I have high standards to meet and am determined to outline for you which canned salmon is worth sending upstream and which cans should've been left out in the cold.

The lowest-ranked product on any of these taste test articles is not an enviable spot to find oneself in. What surprises me the most is when a brand I generally swear by falls from grace and lands all the way down here. Stop & Shop, and its associated Stop & Shop store brand, has done me so well in the past few years. It scored the highest of all the non-baked-from-frozen pies on a pumpkin pie ranking, and generally finds itself in the middle of the pack for other products like Worcestershire sauces. I think this is the first time that Stop & Shop has well and truly failed me.

The Stop & Shop brand canned salmon is the only one that failed on all the categories I was rating it on. Not only was the initial flavor very bland, but it then went on to have an egregiously bitter aftertaste. Like the low tide found its way into the can and waited until I was a bite and a half in before it sprang itself on me. The fish had a powerful smell to it, and the texture was dry; quite the accomplishment for such an oily product. Chewing the fish was a chore; it was stodgy, dry, and clumpy. Absolutely nothing you want from salmon, canned or otherwise. Stop & Shop failed this one badly. Avoid, avoid, avoid!

Salmon is a tricky fish to cook properly. There are a lot of easily avoidable mistakes you can make while trying to whip together a decent salmon dish. It seems that when it comes to canned salmon, a lot of brands didn't particularly care to test their cooking method before committing it to store shelves. Bumble Bee has a good ranking record here, especially for crab meat. Bumble Bee is also behind the Kirkland brand canned tuna that Costco shoppers seem to love. So it was a real shame when the Bumble Bee canned salmon turned out to be such a bumble bummer.

When the only positive note I have on a product is that its packaging has a convenient pull tab, you know there's trouble. The Bumble Bee canned salmon was so bad texturally that I underlined each word thrice. Dry. Clumpy. Chewy. None of the words you should use to describe good salmon. The flavor wasn't helping the poor texture any. It was, at best, bland. At worst, the aftertaste left me feeling like I'd licked the can tab a few times. In other words, processed and metallic. Not to call it cat food, since I would hope I'd feed my cat a better quality fish than this, but that was exactly what it felt like I was eating. No thanks!

It is commendable in this day and age to have a brand actually reaching for sustainability. In a world that has been overfishing for decades, Wild Planet proudly touts that it uses "sustainably caught" salmon. It supports small, local fisheries and comes in a completely recyclable can. How wonderful. I was interested to see the quality of such a healthy, Earth-conscious brand.

Well, I still think it's an admirable cause, but instead of buying the fish next time, I may just make a donation instead. The salmon came out of the can in a puck. A solid, unbroken puck. It reminded me of those tablets you can drop in the bath as a kid and get a towel or foam toy out of. Thankfully, it yielded to my fork easily enough. The fish itself was just as dense as the puck shape led me to believe. It was chewy and dry. I don't have any real complaints about the flavor of Wild Planet canned salmon. It was a fairly straightforward salmon flavor, though there was a subtle metallic aftertaste that quickly faded. Mercifully. It seems like a lot of these brands neglected to actually learn how to cook a tender, flaky salmon before slapping it into a can. Sorry, Wild Planet. I love your messaging, but your actual fish left a lot to be desired.

Chicken of the Sea is a brand I'm fairly familiar with. Since I was a child, it has been my family's go-to tuna brand. I don't have any bad feelings towards Chicken of the Sea in general. Despite its low ranking on our canned tuna taste test, I'm familiar with the brand (knowing for a fact there are at least two cans of tuna in the cupboard as I type). That is a long-winded way of saying I know what Chicken of the Sea's tuna tastes like. If you had plopped the Chicken of the Sea salmon down in front of me without letting me see the label, I'm not sure I could have told you the difference.

I almost rated this one lower by virtue of it not at all, even a little bit, tasting like salmon. Granted, the smell was correct. When I opened up the can, I was hit with a nice salmon scent. That is where the difference between Chicken of the Sea tuna and Chicken of the Sea salmon ends. I ended up throwing this one dead center in the rating for the fact that it didn't taste bad. Unlike the lower three salmon products on this list, it wasn't a chore to eat. It simply doesn't taste like the correct fish. So, the middle of the pack, and no better.

Dollar General surprises me with its versatility. Dollar General may be the more expensive "dollar" store, but it packs a lot of savings into bulk prices and a wide variety of available goods. The Clover Valley brand is the closest thing Dollar General has to a house brand like Great Value, Stop & Shop, and Signature SELECT. Like those other brands, Clover Valley can be truly hit or miss when it comes to quality. Thankfully, this time I was in for a pleasant surprise rather than an unpleasant experience.

The salmon was a little dry; however, it tasted pretty solid. It wasn't anything I was over the moon for, but it tasted like salmon and didn't leave a nasty flavor in my mouth. That may seem like a pretty low bar, but considering the competition, it already shot Clover Valley into the top three. I wasn't a fan of how many bones were still present in this particular can of fish. Using it in a dish would require some extra deboning, which kind of defeats the convenience of a canned product. While I know, logically, that eating the bones that remain in canned salmon is perfectly fine and safe so long as I don't choke on them, that doesn't mean it's an experience I relish. That's why Clover Valley is not higher. The dry texture and the only okay flavor didn't quite get me over the glut of bones left behind.

I would swear I had never even seen a can of Polar canned fish before this article. At least now I know to look for it when I want a decent salmon experience without having to fight a bunch of bones. This can was the most convenient and least messy of the bunch. It was, however, the most expensive salmon per ounce that I picked up for this article. In this case, the price seems worth it.

The salmon inside was instantly wanting to come apart; it was flaky, moist, and tender in all the right ways. It was incredibly difficult to handle this fish without it disintegrating under my care. At first, I was distraught when I popped the first bite into my mouth. In a surprising twist from some of the lower-ranked cans, the aftertaste for this brand of fish was immaculate. While the initial bite left a lot to be desired, it eventually blossomed and grew into a note-for-note perfect salmon flavor. It was so good that this was the only can I retained for myself. If it weren't for the price and initially off-putting flavor, I would have ranked this number one. I think if you took a can of Polar salmon and threw it together with some solid seasonings, you would have people begging you for a recipe.

Signature SELECT is the house brand for all Albertson's branded supermarkets. Shaw's Marketplace, Safeway, Balducci's, etc. It has been in the hot seat in these sorts of articles before, ranking dead last on butter-flavored cooking spray and frozen breakfast sandwiches. It's one of those fascinating things about generic brands — the difference in quality from one product to the next. Instead of being buried at the bottom of a ranking this time around, Signature SELECT has run away with the whole thing.

The only, and I mean only, issue I had with the Signature SELECT can of salmon was that it more or less contained an entire spine. There were a lot of bones. A whole lot of bones. However, the fresh, light salmon flavor paired with the delicate, tender fish absolutely made up for the entire fish skeleton that seemed to be in the can. There was no tackiness, no chewiness, and no horrible aftertaste. Heck, the can itself wasn't even overly fragrant. I wholeheartedly recommend you get yourself to an Albertson's branded supermarket the next time you're in need of some canned salmon. Just be ready to do some deboning. I promise, for this flavor, it's worth it.

I'm just gonna say it. I don't think I'm a big fan of canned salmon. Although I frequently eat canned tuna, canned salmon didn't win me over nearly as much. I made sure to treat each and every can with the same exact steps. I opened the can, drained it, and then either photographed the fish or the can, depending on how whole the salmon was. I made sure to eat at least three forkfuls from each container and took notes on how each brand tasted, smelled, and the texture of the fish.

I am eternally grateful that my mother is a big fan of salmon. She took the leftovers off my hand and happily turned the shredded fish — Chicken of the Sea, Bumble Bee, and Wild Planet — into Salmon Salad sandwiches. The less-processed salmon went directly into her lunch box, really helping her Caesar salads pop. She even made some Salmon Dill Pasta salad, which was a big hit at the Christmas potluck, so none of the salmon went to waste. Salmon-lovers will rejoice over some of these top brands, but I think I'll stick to canned tuna for my future canned fish needs.