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Our editors almost always prefer from-scratch food, but we make a few notable exceptions: rotisserie chickens, frozen puff pastry, and marinara sauce. Whether you’re making a weeknight chicken Parm, hosting an at-home pizza night, or need a dipping sauce for your favorite appetizer, saving time in the kitchen is as simple as opening a jar.
But to make the shortcut worth it, the pasta sauce needs to taste as good as—if not better than—homemade. From unnecessary preservatives to low-quality ingredients, supermarkets are saturated with disappointing store-bought pasta sauces. A few, however, stand out. To find the best option, we asked four experts to share their favorite marinara sauce brands. And, somewhat unsurprisingly, they all had the same answer.
Rao’s Homemade Marinara Sauce came out on top as the clear winner. This recipe is inspired by the iconic and exclusive Rao’s restaurant in New York City. Campbell’s acquired the brand in 2024, but the beloved sauce recipe remains unchanged.
Part of its popularity stems from its simplicity. “Rao’s north star is the bright, pure tomato flavor, which can only be achieved when the tomatoes are picked at ideal ripeness and cooked long enough to bring out their natural sweetness,” says Ann Ziata, chef at the Institute of Culinary Education’s New York City campus.
The brand starts with Italian tomatoes, slow-cooking them to draw out their flavors. They have a mild sweetness, and the time on the stove also draws out their natural savory flavor. “Unfortunately, many other jarred sauces overuse aromatics to hide low-quality tomatoes or poor cooking technique,” Ziata says.
Hakki Akdeniz, the restaurateur behind New York City’s Champion Pizza, always makes fresh sauce. “But if I had to choose, Rao’s Homemade Marinara is the one that most closely resembles what I would use in my store,” he says.
The brand even won a blind taste test conducted by Francesca Zani, Food Editor and Delish expert on all things Italian food. She prefers Rao’s because the flavor is “full-bodied, complex, and savory like a marinara sauce should be.” On top of that, it has a “nice color and just the right amount of tomato texture,” Zani adds.
Daniel Boczarski – Getty Images
Rao’s is also the preferred brand of Chef Steve Chiappetti of The Albert at Hotel EMC2. As delicious as it is on its own, he loves adding his own spin to give it an upgrade.
“I treat jarred marinara like a blank canvas. I’ll warm olive oil in a pan, lightly toast some sliced garlic, add chili flakes, and let fresh basil infuse into the oil. Then I stir in the jarred marinara and season to taste,” Chiappetti explains. “It’s a fast way to create a deeply flavored sauce that feels totally your own.”
If you don’t have the time or energy to doctor up store-bought sauce, Rao’s Homemade has plenty of flavors that work with almost any recipe. They have sauces flavored with everything from roasted garlic to red wine (a new personal favorite of mine). But you can never go wrong with the OG, which is why you can always find it in the Delish kitchen.
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