6 Sauces You Should Always Buy At Aldi, And 6 To Avoid

If you're looking for lower prices than the average grocery store and a no-fuss browsing experience, Aldi is the place to stop for many of your shopping list items. Over 90% of the products in Aldi are private label, according to an Aldi press release. Some of these products are phenomenal. Others, not so much. I've learned that there are some coffees to buy at Aldi and others to avoid, for instance, and I wanted to know the same about the store's selection of sauces. Although you'll certainly find big name brands as you mosey through Aldi's sauces and condiments aisles, the saucy offerings are mostly dominated by its private-label brand, Burman's. For sweet spreadables, you'll see a lot of Berryhill, another store brand. But neither of these names have a reputation like Hellman's and Texas Pete.

I'm no stranger to shelling out for sauces at my town's bougier retailers, but a list of ones worth buying at Aldi (and ones to avoid) would be invaluable in this time of increasingly pricey groceries. I set out to determine which ones deserved the "Buy" label — namely, ones I would truly, sincerely, genuinely buy again. To be honest, I was a little disappointed in the results, while at the same time pleasantly surprised: It was a perfect 50-50 split.

Add this big ol' 12-ounce bottle of Burman's Hot Sauce to the list of flavorful hot sauces to keep in your pantry. This was an instant hit on my taste buds. It's a thin, watery style of hot sauce akin to Texas Pete or Tabasco, though it's a tad thicker and darker than the latter. It's also missing a layer of depth that Tabasco has (I just want to set you up, good reader, with realistic expectations), but I didn't mind this. There's still a lot of flavor in here; it's not a one-note sauce at all. There's a good amount of natural sweetness to it, probably from the peppers, and the perfect amount of tang and salt to complement it.

Spice level is where it will be hit or miss for you. This one is fairly mild-to-medium, which is just enough to give a tickle. If you need it scorching, put this on your personal "Avoid" list, but I'm happy with it, not preferring a mega-burn. I'd use it on scrambled eggs, sandwiches, tacos, and the like — anywhere I want a little heat. Bonus points for the huge bottle.

This one underwhelmed me. I have no reason to think I bought a dud bottle of Berryhill Hot Honey, but reading online how many other people love this stuff, it makes me wonder. There were two main issues with this Aldi sauce. One was that it just wasn't doing much of anything. Sure, honey is honey, but my honey wasn't honeying much in the "sweetness" department. Perhaps it was the infusion of chilies somehow detracting from the sweetness, but even then, the chilies weren't doing much, either. It was a tad spicy and a tad sweet, and that's about it. It wasn't awful, but for $5.29 (at my local Aldi, anyway), you're going to need to pull at least one complimentary adjective out of me to justify a repurchase.

That said, the ingredients list is refreshingly simple. It's got honey, dried chili peppers, and vinegar (which I didn't taste) in it. Problem number two is that none of these ingredients are working together to become a unified whole. The spice is just sitting on top of the sweetness, layered rather than blended. You'd have better luck spreading hot honey hummus on your food if you wanted a cohesive condiment.

Aldi's Burman's Gold BBQ sauce is described on its label as a "tangy and rich blend of sweetness, vinegar, and savory spices." Product labels can sometimes lie, or at least exaggerate, but I found this one to be on the nose. This is exactly as described, and while it doesn't have the wallop of intense, sense-saturating flavor you'd find on the higher-rated grocery store barbecue sauces we ranked, it's still worth a purchase.

With tomato puree, cane sugar, and yellow mustard as its first three ingredients, sweetness and tang are its dominant notes. One point in its favor is the sugar content: 2 tablespoons will give you 10 grams of the sweet stuff. The same quantity of Sweet Baby Ray's contains 17 grams. Burman's Gold gets away with just over half the sugar of the big-name brand, and for me, that's something to love. I enjoy the smokiness of it as well, courtesy of the natural hickory smoke flavor. This is a barbecue sauce that would work just fine slathered on your grilled proteins but which would also be a hit as a dip for more robustly-seasoned items that could compensate for the slight restraint happening here.

The Burman's label at Aldi graces a few stir fry sauces in 14.5-ounce glass bottles. These are, of course, intended to be combined with a protein or veggies for stir fry, but there's no reason you couldn't use them as dipping sauces, too — especially a versatile flavor like sweet and sour.

Burman's sweet and sour sauce doesn't diverge too far from basic recipes for this classic condiment (it's got sugar, vinegar, tomatoes, and pineapple juice concentrate, among others), and its texture is workably viscous without being overly sticky. But somehow, it almost tastes like candy. It's just sweet; there's not enough sourness to balance things out. It doesn't have soy sauce in it either, so it's also missing that umami element that adds sophistication to a good sweet and sour sauce. The aftertaste retreats into something kind of weird and artificial despite the ingredients list not containing any synthetic elements (at least to my eyes). This sauce is a mystery, albeit not one interesting enough to figure out.

Burman's Korean Style BBQ Sauce is described as sweet and savory, containing soy sauce, sesame oil, mirin wine, red miso, pear juice, and sesame seeds. That's a flavor-inspiring lineup, but I sampled this one after another sauce that contains similarly ambitious ingredients, but didn't quite make the grade for me. Naturally, I was skeptical. However I am pleased to say that this barbecue sauce mostly delivered on its promises.

While the flavor didn't utterly "wow" me, it's certainly pleasing. Brown sugar is one of the first ingredients, but this sauce isn't cloyingly sweet at all. If anything, the soy sauce was the predominant flavor note. Everything happening here, from the salty umami to the delicate, subtle fruitiness, is balanced, though I'd love it if the dial on the entire effect was turned up a notch. The sauce itself is a little bit thin, and doesn't really coat my tongue much. I'd have to try it in a recipe to see how it actually clings to a protein. I can see this working well not only with just barbecue but also in an Asian-style bowl with rice and stir-fried vegetables. I'm also considering experimenting with is as a dipping sauce for fried cheese curds.

What a promising idea: a medium heat, creamy hot sauce with cayenne peppers, garlic, and spices. The ingredients list contains all the accouterments of a flavorful sauce, including some umami hard-hitters like dried onion and anchovies — though these occur in lower quantities than things like canola or soybean oil, water, and vinegar. The texture of Burman's Spicy Garlic Hot Sauce is great, too; it has a medium-thickness with optimum spreadability. I had visions of drizzling this artfully over omelets, slathering it on a sandwich, and dunking whatever snacks I felt like into it. I will likely still do these things, but I won't be buying this Aldi sauce again.

While it's a promising idea, the overall execution is lacking. It just comes across as more tart and sour than anything else. I suppose that could be due in part to the tamarind (that's what the best pad thai hinges on), but this tropical fruit is the last item on the ingredients list, so who is to say? Sure, the spice level is definitely the medium promised on the label, and that texture is versatile, but it's just unbalanced. I don't even really get a satisfying punch of the garlic, either, and if you're putting the word "garlic" on a product, it better be vampire kryptonite as far as I'm concerned. There is a very slight sweetness to it, but it's still a one-note sauce for me. With all the aforementioned ingredients, it promises a complexity that it just doesn't deliver. It certainly doesn't taste bad, though.

In case anyone ever asks you to explain the appeal of Aldi, this 30-ounce jar of Burman's Real Mayonnaise is a perfect example of the value for money you can get from the store's private-label brands. A 30-ounce jar of Hellman's mayo runs about $6 at my local Walmart, while this Burman's condiment costs $3.19 at Aldi.

Burman's mayo isn't quite as intensely flavored as Hellmann's or Duke's mayo (Duke's is about $5 at Walmart, by the way), but I didn't realize that until I tasted a spoonful of each for a big-brand to private-label comparison. I don't eat mayo every day, and maybe if I did (or if I was super-picky about mayo, as some people are), the difference would have mattered. If you don't, though, or if you actually find one of these big brands' tanginess a tad too much, Burman's Real Mayonnaise should go on your Aldi shopping list. It's very creamy, and it's got that slightly sweet, slightly tart, eggy-rich flavor that makes mayo what it is.

This is most likely true for all but one sauce in this review, but my feelings about Burman's Chicken Dipping Sauce need to come with a disclaimer: Some people love this stuff and were distraught when Aldi seemed to discontinue it for a while around 2024. It's supposed to be kind of a dupe for Chick-fil-A sauce — a creamy, sweet, and savory blend tailor-made for chicken tenders or nuggets. The idea is great, but for me, this is one to avoid.

The consistency was what it should be — not watery, very dip-friendly — but the flavor is where it goes wrong. There's just something off-putting about it. True, it's a little sweet, a little tart, and it's creamy and rich, but none of these effects feel integrated. They're just sitting next to each other on my palate, not cooperating: three flavors who dislike each other but are forced to do a school project together. Nobody's picking up the slack, either, and it shows. Even worse, there's an indefinable weirdness behind the flavor (maybe a synthetic quality that I'm picking up) that makes me grimace and wiggle my shoulders. That's never a great response to food.

Aldi seems to know what it's doing with its private-label mayonnaises. Like its Hellman's Real Mayo sibling, Burman's Spicy Mayonnaise immediately earned itself a "buy" rating at first taste. Okay, "immediately" may be an exaggeration. I'm so used to the (admittedly) bare-bones Sriracha mayo that I whip up when desperate for spice and fat that it took me a second to get used to this. It's rich and balanced, and there's a complexity to it that my own sauce — and the Burman's Spicy Garlic Hot Sauce — were missing.

There's some good spice in here, and it doesn't obscure the tartness of the traditional mayo base, and vice versa. Like any good spicy mayo, there's also a light sweetness to it despite that fact that it contains no sugar. I'm going to use up this bottle on sandwiches, eggs, and chicken breasts — and when I run out, it will go in my shopping cart again.

Considering my love for punching up mayo with a splash of Sriracha, it seemed to me that this Burman's Sriracha Aioli would be a no-brainer of a "buy." The ingredients list offers a few items one finds in mayo, namely soybean oil, distilled vinegar, and egg yolks, in addition to Sriracha's red jalapeño puree. There's also a variety of garlicky ingredients, among others.

Like some of the other contenders, though, this sauce comes up short in the flavor department. It mostly just gives an unpleasant, sour tartness, along with a mild spice. There's no depth. If this was a sauce at a restaurant, I can't really see people saying, "Let's get a few extra ramekins of that!" Speaking as a former restaurant server, customers tend to love anything that combines spice and creaminess. That's not to say this is particularly creamy either; it's actually a bit thin. Maybe it could work on a sandwich that already has a lot of tasty stuff on it, but for me, there's just no reason to buy it.

I know some people who condemn any condiment that's labeled "spicy" if it comes up short of scorching the senses, but I prefer not to have tears running down my face as I eat. Some spicy brown mustards can come on too strong, but Burman's version happens to hit just right for me. The mustard seed in it isn't overpowering at all, either. It's got just enough of a kick to deserve its name, and the tang is on point, too.

The ingredients list is simple: distilled vinegar, mustard seed, salt, spices, and turmeric. That's a fairly standard lineup for spicy brown mustard, but the price tag is another fine feature of this product. I got my 12-ounce bottle for $1.49, and while mustards aren't typically one of your pricier condiments, it bears saying that a bottle of Great Value or French's product of the same size costs $1.62 and $1.97, respectively, at my local Walmart. You might as well save the cents and grab a spicy mustard that gets the job done just fine.

It says a lot about Aldi's private-label sauces that most of them — not even the chicken dipping sauce that made me wiggle in a bad way — were what I would have called "yucky" in my less eloquent years. Note the "most" there. Alas, this was the sauce that rendered me nearly speechless for a second. When my verbal faculties returned, "yucky" was the first word that came to mind.

I don't know what happened here, but I gave Burman's Poblano Hot Sauce every chance to impress me, and it had the nerve to taste terrible. I shook the bottle thoroughly, and aside from that and a hefty dose of eagerness to try it, there wasn't much else to do besides sample it with a tortilla chip that might have masked the flavor and helped me ignore the wateriness. There was a weird, synthetic, plasticky taste to this hot sauce that overwhelmed everything the ingredients could have done. These include vinegar, water, jalapeños, poblanos, rice wine vinegar, salt, and sugar. Doesn't that sound great in theory? Too bad it's not in practice. 

The worst part is that I grabbed this sauce in place of the Burman's Avocado Serrano, which my store didn't have. Aldi shoppers on Reddit appear to mourn the loss of that particular hot sauce, leading one to wonder why on earth Aldi dropped it and swapped in this bottle of "nope."

Aldi carries a fairly wide variety of sauce types, so I chose a representative sampling among its selection. For this review, I didn't compare pasta sauces, salad dressings, thick dips, and sweet sauces since those are a whole other world unto themselves. 

I sampled each sauce plain to get an unvarnished sense of its flavors without any extraneous ingredients backing it up. A sauce achieved the "buy" label if it was literally a sauce I would buy again: Did it taste (and promise to perform) great enough to usurp a product of its type that I already buy? If it didn't, it earned the "avoid" label. Some people may not agree with my assessment, so I encourage shoppers to buy what they love, but hopefully my review can offer you some guidance if you can't decide what to spend your hard-earned cash on at checkout.