One Of The Worst Steak Sauce Brands Is From A Top Tier Grocery Store

Many grocery stores are experts at mimicking the flavor of expensive name-brand products and selling them at a cheaper price. These products are often packaged without frills to account for their low cost while others make it a point to stand out from the crowd to entice shoppers to ditch their expensive faves for a new kid on the block. However, some simply miss the mark and are lacking in both character and quality. One such product is the 365 steak sauce from top tier grocery store Whole Foods.

The second worst in our ranking of 11 steak sauces, this condiment had a distinct vinegary character and acidic twang. The initial taste was pretty-close to the savory flavors of A1 petered out quickly into something that was sweet and flat. There was little dimension to this sauce, which was sad considering that this private label condiment could've delivered something new and created its own characterful niche in the market. Instead of showcasing what could've been a hint of potential charm, this sauce veered into generic and had little backbone. While it definitely costs less than brand name steak sauces, its cheaper price point is evident in its overall flavor. You'd be much better off spending a few more pennies on a name brand sauce. 

Take a look at the ingredients list on a bottle of Whole Foods steak sauce and you'll see that it contains many of the same elements in other steak sauces, such as tomato puree, vinegar, and Worcestershire sauce. It also includes molasses and cane sugar, which are supposed to balance out the tartness of the vinegar, as well as organic raisins and orange juice. We're guessing it must be the ratio of these ingredients, rather than the ingredients themselves, that made this condiment taste so vinegary. Having said all this, there is one thing going for Whole Foods steak sauce — it's organic, which might be important to you if you take a keen interest in the provenance and quality of your food.

The worst bottled steak sauce is from one of America's oldest steakhouses, according to our taste test. Peter Luger's steak sauce tasted like diluted ketchup and had a pallid, rather than rich, color. It also had a thin and watery consistency that fell far short of the thick and clingy texture of popular steak sauces, like A1, which we reckon is the best steak sauce you can buy. Tangy, savory, and complex, A1 steak sauce was the ultimate champion in our ranking due to its balance of sweet raisin paste, bright orange puree and acidic vinegar.