17 Honey Mustard Brands, Ranked Worst To Best

Mustard isn't exactly the most popular condiment out there, with some people loving its pungent flavor profile and others avoiding it at all costs. While plain mustard may be a bit polarizing, there's one thing we can (almost) all agree on — honey mustard reigns supreme when it comes to all things dipping and dunking. Need a sauce to accompany your fresh batch of chicken tenders? Honey mustard is an obvious go-to. Looking for something to dunk that pretzel into? Honey mustard will provide the perfect sweet-sharp contrast to all of that soft, bready goodness.

While all honey mustards might seem equal at first glance (after all, isn't it just honey mixed with mustard?), I've discovered that this sentiment couldn't be farther from the truth. Thanks to my sampling of multiple honey mustard brands — ranging from staples like French's to a plethora of store-brand options and beyond — I've narrowed down the absolute best honey mustards out there so you don't have to. 

Flavor is an important factor in the making of a good honey mustard, but more specifically, I was looking for a delicate balance between the typically sharp, pungent, and vinegar-forward flavor of mustard and the relief of sweet honey (but not too sweet). I tried each mustard alone to get a feel for the flavor, and I also tried each one with a chicken nugget to get the full condiment experience.

Walmart's Great Value honey mustard is your standard honey mustard, so there's really nothing wrong, inedible, or offensive about it. Instead, it's just a bit too plain to stack up against its competitors, and even compared to other very similar store-brand honey mustards on this list, this one just didn't sing in harmonious balance.

This brand leaned a bit too far towards honey and not far enough towards mustard, and like I said, it's all about balance with such a condiment. This would be a good option for those who do like a more honey-leaning mustard, or for those who are dipping and dunking on a budget; this mustard was the most inexpensive option on the list, with a bottle costing $1.58. On the other side of the same coin, you're getting what you're paying for, which simply isn't much, and there's no reason to seek this out unless you shop at Walmart exclusively.

As someone who loves honey mustard and loves hot honey, the idea of a hot honey mustard immediately struck me as brilliant. So, naturally, I had high hopes for this special-edition Maille hot honey Dijon mustard — which boasts its inclusion of Mike's Hot Honey, for those who are familiar with the brand — and was excited for spice to be thrown into the flavor mix.

Alas, this honey mustard let me down, mainly because there wasn't really any spice to be found. I don't need my honey mustard to be so hot that it burns my tongue, but if a product claims to be hot, it should probably pack a little heat. Also, this mustard had an odd aftertaste to it, something that almost reminded me of chickpeas — needless to say, not a flavor you want in honey mustard, and especially not in hot honey mustard.

I was pretty stoked when I discovered that O Organics offers honey Dijon mustard, since it's not too often that you'll come across a whole-grain mustard that boasts a sweet honey flavor. Unfortunately, this mustard just didn't live up to my expectations, and a big part of its downfall was the consistency. This mustard was super runny, which isn't the worst thing in the world, but it's not all that appealing to dunk a nugget into a soupy mess of mustard grains.

The biggest issue with this mustard, of course, was the flavor itself. I anticipated perhaps a stronger mustard flavor from a whole-grain version, but there was little flavor to be found at all. The honey was too faint, the mustard was too mild, and overall this grainy mustard just didn't impress me.

I certainly didn't expect French's — perhaps the most recognizable mustard brand on this list — to rank so low in the honey mustard game, but here we are nonetheless. French's honey mustard isn't bad at all, and for those who enjoy a stronger mustard flavor with just a hint of honey, then perhaps this is the option for you. Truthfully, I simply expected more from such a strong name brand, and at the very least, I expected it to be much better than the store-brand mustards — instead, it was only slightly better.

I wanted a stronger honey flavor to balance out that intense mustard taste. While I could see this honey mustard working well on something like a hot dog, since it's more mustardy than anything else, it just didn't really provide that sweet pizzazz that works so well with nuggets or other dunking foods.

Compared to the other honey mustard brands that boast spice on this list, Melinda's actually delivered on the spicy front. The only problem? It possibly delivered a little too hard, because this stuff is not playing around when it comes to spice. 

As an enjoyer of spicy foods and a fan of habanero hot sauces, I was excited to discover that Melinda's made a sort of hybrid honey mustard/hot sauce concoction. Boy oh boy, does this deliver on spice — in terms of a hot sauce, it delivers just enough. But in the context of being a condiment? It's a bit too much, and I couldn't picture myself dunking a whole order of nuggets in this stuff. The sweet habanero heat does pair really well with honey mustard, however, which is why I couldn't fault Melinda's too hard for its palpable spiciness.

If there's one thing that most honey mustards lack, it's creaminess, and for some, that's not necessarily a bad thing. I found myself favoring the honey mustards on this list that did offer a bit of creaminess, however, like Kinder's creamy honey mustard. Actually, before tasting, I thought that this one would rank much higher than it ultimately has — somehow, however, it's a tad too creamy for its own good.

By too creamy, I mean that the creamy flavor profile sort of overwhelms the actual honey-mustard taste of this condiment, so I was definitely searching for a stronger mustard flavor and that classic bite you'd expect from the condiment. This is a tasty option for those creamy condiment lovers out there, but ultimately, Kinder's likely would have ranked higher if the creaminess was actually tempered down a bit, or at the very least balanced out better with the mustard flavor. 

Much like the Silver Spring mustard, this Mustard Girl sweet and spicy honey mustard boasts a slightly darker hue than the rest of the condiments on this list. And, as it turns out, that darker hue also signals a remarkable depth of flavor for Mustard Girl, as this is a mighty tasty honey mustard through and through.

At first taste, I immediately got notes of sweet honey, followed by a slightly more vinegar-forward mustard flavor. This mustard never felt cloying, nor did it ever feel too pungent or sharp; it's just a really tasty honey mustard, somehow managing to live up to its spicy promise without actually being hot. Instead, this mustard almost tasted spiced, with slight undertones of brown sugar playing up every flavor note perfectly. 

Sweet Baby Ray's ranks among the country's most popular barbecue sauce brands, but as it turns out, Ray knows how to deliver a delicious honey mustard, too. This honey mustard is incredibly rich and creamy, somewhat similar to the Flavortown one, but somehow slightly tastier yet. While I did quite enjoy the Flavortown honey mustard, Sweet Baby Ray's managed to capture a very similar taste profile, yet keep things a bit simpler, which ultimately works well.

There's really nothing bad to say about this honey mustard, and there's not much more you could ask for in a condiment. It's the perfect consistency for dunking, it's nice and tangy, it's sweet but not cloying, and it has the perfect balance of honey-mustard flavor throughout. 

The quality of any condiment is going to come down to flavor, and honey mustard is certainly no exception. When I think of a good honey mustard — or better yet, when I taste it — there's going to be a cohesive balance between the mustard and the honey; not too sweet but not too tangy. So, I ranked the honey mustards on this list accordingly, favoring those that really managed to strike a balance and frowning on the ones that had any odd flavors or that didn't quite find harmony.

Other factors like spiciness and creaminess came into play for some of these mustards, so I didn't necessarily rank them higher or lower because of that, but rather higher or lower if that extra flavor profile worked in the mustard as a whole. Naturally, the mustards that had a little more complexity ended up ranking higher, whereas those that were simply fine but forgettable didn't bode quite as well. And, though I did try each mustard on its own, I also considered how well the mustard paired with actual food — in this case, chicken nuggets — since most people likely aren't eating honey mustard all by itself.