The Best Kraft BBQ Sauce Outshines All Others By Keeping Things Simple

Barbecue sauce is pretty ubiquitous. Most brands that make any type of sauce have some kind of barbecue in their product line. There are big hitters, including the famous Sweet Baby Ray's, the best-selling barbecue sauce in history. Then there are mainstays, including brands such as Kraft, that have whole lines of barbecue sauce. With seven sauce options, Kraft has plenty to offer, so we decided to taste and review all seven and rank them from worst to best.

Our favorite sauce kept things quite simple. Kraft's Original Slow-Simmered Barbecue Sauce was the definite winner, and offered a more balanced overall barbecue flavor than the other six options. It's a traditional sauce without any add-ons or gimmicks, composed of tomato paste, apple cider vinegar, mustard, pepper, molasses, and other ingredients.

You might first think of using Kraft's Original sauce on a rack of ribs, but it's versatile enough to give tons of flavor to slow-simmered meatballs, a frozen pizza, pulled chicken sandwiches, or a Southwestern-style salad featuring Romaine lettuce, corn, black beans, and tortilla chips. Don't report us for heresy, but we even thought Kraft's Original Barbecue Sauce was better than Sweet Baby Ray's award-winning sauce. Kraft's wasn't as sweet, in addition to being more versatile and more reasonably priced than Sweet Baby Ray's.

Online reviewers of Kraft's Original Slow-Simmered Barbecue Sauce tend to think favorably of this product. In a taste test of Stubbs, Sweet Baby Ray's, KC Masterpiece, and Kraft Original, YouTuber Regular Dude Reviews rated Kraft second behind Sweet Baby Ray's. Walmart customers give this barbecue sauce a 4.7 out of 5-star rating with over 900 reviews. With 2,800-plus reviews, Amazon customers also gave the sauce 4.7 stars.

While the Kraft Original was our favorite of Kraft's barbecue sauce line, the Hickory Smoke and Spicy Honey versions were also standouts. Both are flavorful and balanced without being too overwhelming, and each is definitely worth buying when you want something a little different than the Original sauce. We suggest avoiding the Sweet Teriyaki sauce; it's way too tomato forward and corn syrupy in texture to be considered a good teriyaki sauce.

Consumers have plenty of excellent barbecue sauce options these days. Grocery stores have packed shelves devoted to many of these brands. Among these options, Kraft's Original is certainly a more basic, traditional sauce, but it's still a standout. If you've never tried the Kraft Original Slow-Simmered Barbecue Sauce, it's worth a purchase next time you're at the grocery store.