This Top-Rated Pasta Sauce Outshines Rao's, Classico, And Bertolli's, Per Consumer Reports

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If you've ever wandered down the pasta sauce aisle at the grocery store you know the choices can be overwhelming. There are so many brands to choose from, and within each brand you have even more decisions to make in terms of flavor; there's marinara, roasted garlic, tomato basil, and more. In any case, it's a good starting point to know which brands make consistently good pasta sauce.

Consumer Reports looked at dozens of store-bought sauces and formed a weighted rating (based 60% on nutrition and 40% on flavor) to help consumers find the best jarred pasta sauce for them. One of the top sauces on store shelves, according to Consumer Reports, is Victoria Low Sodium Marinara (which tied with The Silver Palate Low Sodium Marinara). That's right, Rao's (Ina Garten's favorite pasta sauce), Classico, and Bertolli's — some of the most prominent options on store shelves — were outshone by Victoria. For what it's worth, we also thought highly of this brand when we ranked 14 store-bought marinara sauces.

This is a higher-end sauce (a 24-ounce jar of Victoria Low Sodium Marinara sells for $20.48 at Walmart) and the jar proudly claims it includes 100% imported Italian tomatoes, imported olive oil, garlic, basil, onions, sea salt, and spices. For the unfamiliar, Victoria is a Brooklyn-based pasta sauce company which opened in 1929, and it sets itself apart by slow kettle cooking its sauces for 90 minutes to mirror the flavor of homemade. Victoria offers a line of 20 different pasta sauces on its website, including vodka sauce, organic pomodoro sauce (which pairs well with wine), organic toasted garlic sauce, and several low-sodium sauces.

Consumer Reports obviously thought highly of the Victoria brand, but consumers give it strong ratings as well. Walmart shoppers rate the sauce a 4.4 out of 5. One customer says, "The best I ever had, a well balanced sauce. Most other brands are too acidic." Another Walmart shopper adds, "Tastes great even with the huge decrease in sodium from other brands. We order this exclusively now for our marinara needs."

Over on Amazon, Victoria Low Sodium Marinara has a 3.9-star rating with plenty of excellent reviews. "Watching your sodium intake is REALLY hard to do. This is a very tasty pasta sauce, I throw in sauteed onions mushrooms bell peppers and some ground beef and sprinkle with a little Parmigiano and i don't miss the salt at all," says one Amazon reviewer. Admittedly, 17% of the Amazon reviews are one star, but most of them are complaints about the price and packaging which resulted in broken or damaged jars, not the pasta sauce itself.

The world of pasta sauces is a vast one, so it's easy to assume there's not much of a difference from one brand to another, but based on the Consumer Reports rating as well as customer reviews, Victoria Low Sodium Marinara is an excellent choice. If you're willing to spend a little extra on quality and appreciate authentic, imported Italian tomatoes, this is the one for you.