The Worst Rao's Homemade Jarred Sauce Tastes Expired

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Rao's Homemade is a very successful and adored store-bought pasta brand that we ranked second out of 15 popular pasta sauce brands. However, while Rao's offers an impressive selection of sauces, not all of them are worth buying. So, in our ranking of 14 Rao's Homemade pasta sauces, we found that the worst Rao's Homemade jarred sauce was roasted garlic pizza sauce.

We scored each sauce according to taste, texture, and freshness, and the roasted garlic pizza sauce failed on all accounts. A key difference that usually distinguishes pizza from pasta sauce is that pizza sauce is fresher and zestier while pasta sauce is richer and more complex. While we were hoping that the roasted garlic would bring a rich, caramelized aromatic depth to an herby and tangy pizza sauce, the poor quality of the garlic made for an almost rancid flavor. This bottle tasted expired, with a funky, musty, almost sour garlic taste, and about as far from the freshness you'd expect in a pizza sauce as you can imagine. To add insult to injury, the herbs added to the sauce didn't mesh well with the garlic, making for an overpowering clash of flavors that could not be overcome. Suffice to say that after sampling Rao's pizza sauce, we think they should just stick to making pasta sauce.

Rao's Homemade roasted garlic pizza sauce is a new sauce to the brand's repertoire that was meant to elevate its classic recipes. Roasted garlic is usually a sweeter, smoother alternative to the spicy and harsh raw or sauteed version usually used in sauces. However, Rao's Homemade either poorly executed the garlic roasting, or just added too much because customer reviews from Amazon describe the flavor as overpowering. One customer joked that the garlic is so overwhelming that you could ward off vampires. Another said that Rao's Homemade roasted garlic sauce is proof that there is such a thing as too much garlic, deeming the pungent flavor way too strong and the garlic not roasted to the expected sweetness.

While jarred sauce saves you the effort of making dinner from scratch, a traditional pizza sauce is almost as easy to make at home as opening up a bottle of store-bought sauce. In fact, it's usually a no-cook sauce that blends a can of good quality tomatoes (like these San Marzano tomatoes from Amazon) with garlic, olive oil, oregano, salt, and pepper in a blender or food processor. So, why not ditch that store-bought pizza sauce for a few simple ingredients and five mintues of your time and get a better overall result. You could even go the full Italian, and make our recipe for Neapolita pizza dough, too.