9 Canned Sardine Brands Ranked Worst To Best

Canned sardines are a great snack to whip out if you want to spark a reaction amongst your company. It's either love, or hate. Some can't fathom dipping into a can of tiny fish, while others enjoy this old-school snack on its own or in various dishes.

If you don't like fish, you're probably not coming anywhere near a can of them, but if you clicked on this article, my suspicion is that you're likely a fan. With so many brands of sardines available, though, you might be wondering if there are any you're missing out on. Specialty or import stores carry variations from other countries and continents, and even the average grocery store has more than a few brands available. 

I'm a huge fan of sardines. Not only are they flavorful and delicious, they're also a great source of protein and omega-3s. The convenience of buying them in a can makes for easy preparation, and there are a variety of ways to dress them up into tasty snacks. I was pleased to try several brands and compare the flavors, textures, price points, and quality of the oil they were soaked in, and was surprised to find that some were unquestionably better than others. Read on to discover the best brands that any sardine-enthusiast would be happy to have in their pantry.

Sometimes first impressions are hard to forget, and opening Chicken of the Sea is like passing gas at an office party and then hoping your coworkers will forget. The smell smacks you in the face the moment you split the top off, and I shouldn't be surprised — they are the cheapest can at $1.99.

Beyond the smell, which is hard to move on from, the flavor isn't ideal. It just falls flat and there isn't much to it. The olive oil these crumbling, sad little fishies lie in tastes more like canola oil, which doesn't do you any favors in the flavor department. They don't even look appealing — there was maybe one whole, body-intact fish in the can and the rest were broken apart into pieces. The texture was a bit mushy, and getting a bite out of the tin proved a challenge as the fish crumbled off my fork repeatedly.

While Chicken of the Sea may be a popular brand for easy tuna salads, the sardines don't stack up. This is not a brand I would purchase again for this particular tinned-fish category, and were it the only brand available to me, I may skip the sardines altogether.

Unlike skate fish whose skin you shouldn't consume, the skin of sardines is tender, delicious, and perfectly safe to eat. I didn't realize just how much I enjoyed the skin of the sardine, and how important it is to the overall flavor of the fish, until I tried this can of boneless and skinless Cento sardines. The flavor is noticeably lacking, reminding one more of an unseasoned can of tuna than a rich, meaty sardine. The texture, too, also takes a blow from the lack of skin, the meat somehow sticking to your teeth without that layer of fatty goodness to soften each bite. 

You may wonder why, if the skin makes sardines taste so much better, a tin like this even exists. I believe the answer is twofold: some prefer their food to look less like a once-living creature, and removing certain bits like bones and skin seems to achieve that goal, and secondly, if you're making a salty seafood dip and using fish as the base, you might prefer to use a can of sardines with skin and bones removed to eliminate unsavory chunks from showing up on someone's potato chip at a party. 

At $3.96 a tin, the Cento sardines are cheap — and not nearly as shocking to the senses as Chicken of the Sea — but they're still a long shot from being enjoyable. There are much better tasting tins on this list for not that much more money. 

Fishwife has such aesthetically pleasing packaging it got my hopes up — perhaps too high. But before we discuss the negatives, let's appreciate the positive. The first thing I noticed when I opened the can and dipped in was the wonderful aroma of high-quality Spanish olive oil. The polar opposite to the disconcerting assault on the nose that erupts from a tin of Chicken of the Sea, Fishwife sardines smell nutty, herbaceous, and expensive when you open them. And expensive, it is. At almost $10 a tin, it's easily the priciest brand on this list. 

If the oil your sardines are soaking in is the best thing about the sardines, then the brand probably messed up somewhere along the way in quality control. The flavor is just okay, if a little disappointing, but the texture of Fishwife's sardines is just disappointing. They're almost crumbly, as if they've been overcooked. They disintegrate into grainy pieces in your mouth, sucking the moisture away and lingering like particles of sand. I've never had a sardine with such an off-putting crumble, and I hope I never have to again.

While the quality of the olive oil and the halfway-decent flavor saved Fishwife from last place, there are simply much better tasting fish on the market (for a much better price). I'm seeking fish that will melt in my mouth, falling apart like soft butter on my tongue, rather than disintegrate like dried-out coffee grounds.

The bottom three brands on this list were a rough go, but we've now reached the territory of tins I actually did enjoy. Bar Harbor has a lovely aroma of wood smoke when you open the large, oval tin, a characteristic very unique to this brand. The filets inside are impressively large, skinless, and thankfully boneless (given the size, those bones wouldn't go down quite as easily as the smaller fishies). The $7.14 you pay for a tin of this size feels a lot more reasonable given the width of the filets packed into it.

Flavor- and aroma-wise, the smoke is the star of the show. It's an applewood-reminiscent smell that blends seamlessly with the seaside aromas just like campfire smoke by the ocean, mellowing any strong fish smells and smoothing rough edges without being bitter and overwhelming. Aside from the smoke, the fish itself is tasty, but just not as tasty as some of these other brands. The texture, once again, is lacking from the absence of the sardine skin, obtaining a kind of sticky bite that occurs without the fat to smooth it out. While I enjoyed a few bites, these aren't the sardines I'm going to want to eat a whole can of.

The Wild Planet sardines in olive oil have a more striking, obsidian appearance as compared to the average sardine, being that the scales have been removed to reveal the dark skin underneath. Wild-caught in the North Pacific, these sardines have a delicious, meaty bite and a hearty texture. Having the skin on makes them a step up from the Bar Harbor filets, but there was one thing lacking that held them back from their full potential — salt.

They taste surprisingly under salted, a trait that is typically the other way around when it comes to sardines, which tend to leave your mouth a bit dry if you eat too many. I found Wild Planet to actually be a bit bland due to the lack of salt, making them not quite as enjoyable to eat straight from the tin. They're not abrand to avoid purchasing by any means, and at $4.99 the price is pretty standard, but if you're looking for something ready-to-eat, there were other brands that came closer to the flavor bulls-eye.

King Oscar's wild caught sardines are an excellent middle ground for the tinned fish. They sit royally in their little bronze tin, organized into a comfortable arrangement like eggs in a carton. You can pick one up and eat it without the fish crumbling into pieces, and they don't have any harsh, potent smells or concerning sogginess. All around, a good bite, appetizing texture, decent flavor, and the olive oil tastes fresh and aromatic, just like olives.

This brand was a logical choice for the No. 4 place as I felt it best represented a good sardine, but not a great or impressive one. There were a few brands that simply tasted better, with rich umami notes that stick with you and make canned sardines something worth craving, and buying again and again. While King Oscar is good, and comes at a very reasonable price of $4.99, it's not one of the brands that will pop into my mind when I wake up in the morning pining for sardines on toast, and need a fish spectacular enough to be the star of the show. That being said, if this brand is available at a convenient location to you and you want to give it a try, it's a great place to start. 

You heard that right — Patagonia has started making provisions. The brand has branched out from outerwear to offer a variety of tinned fish and meat sticks for all your hiking and adventuring needs — and the brand's sardines, at least, are pretty darn good.

This tin comes with the second-highest price tag of the lot at $8.99, but unlike Fishwife, this one is well worth it. The sardines are robust and chubby, with plenty of meat to go around. I used a pairing knife to carefully split them in half lengthwise and spread them out on a piece of toast, with just two of the sardines covering plenty of real estate. The meat pulls apart easily, yet isn't overly soft, and the texture is neither gritty nor squishy. The olive oil the sardines soak in is also delicious, and is abundant enough that you can drizzle some over your toast or use it in an accompanying salad dressing and still have some left over. 

Given the brand that canned these, whose target audience is all about outdoors, I'd say it hit the nail on the head in terms of a snack that's delicious, healthy, and easily transportable. That being said, although the meatiness of these fish is wonderful, they were still a few other brands that really brought their A-game when it comes to unforgettable flavor. 

Bela offers two different types of tinned sardines at the very reasonable price of $4.99 each. They come infused with either lemon or piri piri, a small (but no less strong) red chili pepper also known as African bird's eye. Being a lover of spice, I opted for the piri piri and was not disappointed. The heat from the chili is perfectly infused into the olive oil, and transfers smoothly and evenly into each bite of fish. While the sardines also have a great flavor, it's really the olive oil and chili that are highlighted when you first take a bite, and that linger on your palate at the end.

As for the sardines, they're chubby and round like a baby's thighs and leave no space remaining in the tin. They have a wonderful texture and bite that, combined with the piquant of the piri piri, is my ideal flavor combo to enjoy on a hearty piece of sourdough bread from the grocery store. When I tried this tin, I thought for sure it would take first place, but there ended up being one brand that simply knocked the ball out of the park with how good they tasted.

Some of these sardines were just what I expected, some made me smile with their added flavors like smoke and heat, others were downright appalling. But out of them all, there was one brand that was a definitive winner: Brunswick. The flavor was simply unbeatable.

The packaging of this tin is a bit odd, with nothing but a flimsy, plastic film covering the circular bottom. While it does allow you to see what's inside, it may not be the most practical for throwing in your hiking bag and taking on long excursions. But if you're looking for a brand that is going to be undoubtedly, mouthwateringly delicious, that will be just as great to eat on its own as it is in salads, dips, and pastas, this is definitely the one.

There's a subtle, umami-loaded flavor that backs up each bite and adds an oomph unlike any of the other brands of tinned sardines on this list. I immediately noticed it on my first bite, and as I kept returning back to this can that flavor didn't fade or disappear. Brunswick was a clear winner. On top of the unbeatable taste of $4.19, the olive oil in the tin is high quality. I have zero complaints with this brand.

When I began buying brands of sardines to rank, I was afraid I'd have a hard time differentiating them, that they'd be so similar I might not be able to say which was the best. Boy, was I wrong. Although at the core they are all small fish that have been cleaned, cooked, and canned, they have remarkably different flavors and textures. Perhaps this is because the method used to cook them can vary quite a bit, or that the particular kind of sardine tends to change from can to can.

Whatever the case, I quickly noticed differences between them. Some have punchy sour-fish smells that smack you in the face as soon as you crack the seal. Others have soothing, smoky aromas that invite you in. Some melt in your mouth, and some crumble and disintegrate. Thus, it was fairly easy to rank based on flavor, texture, and aroma, while also taking into account their price, and the quality of olive oil used in the can.