The Absolute Best Frozen Ravioli To Add To Your Grocery List

It's hard to beat the convenience of a freezer meal, but so often you're left sacrificing flavor for speed. But don't we deserve to live in a world where you can have flavor and convenience at your fingertips, faster than it takes to order takeout?

If you're craving comfort food, it's hard to top pasta, and nothing is quite so cozy as ravioli. For the nights when you can't wait for water to boil, there's frozen ravioli — but they are not all created equal. Tasting Table's Judy Moreno tested 11 frozen ravioli brands to find which box should make its way to your shopping cart, and there was a clear winner: Rao's Homemade Four Cheese Ravioli With Marinara Sauce.

The goal of the taste test was to find the perfect balance of comfort and convenience. No hand-rolling pasta or long-simmering sauces. Sure, your freezer is a great tool for meal-prepping and food preservation, but a packaged freezer meal should be a one-stop-shop (which is why Wegman's sauceless frozen ravioli were in the middle of the list). There's no surprise, then, that the one-two punch of ravioli and Rao's sauce topped the list.

As one of our go-to marinara sauce brands, it's no surprise Rao's pastas are winners, too. Moreno loved that the ravioli dough was "pillowy and doughy," the trademark of well-made pasta dough. And then there was the filling, which is the real reason you're eating ravioli, right? Filled with a blend of soft ricotta, creamy mozzarella, and salty Parmesan and Romano cheeses, there's plenty of flavor inside each dumpling. Compared to the lowest-ranked ravioli, where you couldn't even taste the cheese, the simplicity and balance here were a triumph. Plus, the bright tomato flavor of Rao's marinara sauce transforms this frozen dinner into something that feels decadently homemade. Other brands' sauces were too watery or too thick, too sweet or too salty, sour (yuck!) or just bland. 

Rao's doesn't mess with a good thing. And we're not the only ones who loved it. One Sprouts shopper said the product had very good flavor and excellent marinara sauce, while another requested that Rao's start selling the ravioli in larger-sized packages. On Amazon, where you can get the frozen ravioli via Amazon Fresh, reviewers echoed Moreno's love of the generous, cheesy filling and praised the dish as high quality. Could you pass it off as Nonna's? Probably not, but it will definitely have you feeling nostalgic in the five minutes it takes to cook — way faster than a long-simmering Sunday sauce.