The Best Store-Bought And Gluten-Free Alfredo Sauce Comes From A Beloved Restaurant

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A classic homemade Alfredo sauce is a simple yet magical blend of cream, butter, parmesan cheese, and garlic. So, Alfredo sauce is inherently gluten-free. And while some jarred Alfredo sauces use thickeners that contain gluten, we sampled store-bought Alfredo sauces that are specifically gluten-free. We ranked 8 store-bought gluten-free Alfredo sauces based on consistency and specific flavor factors like cheesiness, creaminess, balance of sweet and savory, and aftertaste.

Our favorite store-bought and gluten-free Alfredo sauce comes from Carbone, a beloved restaurant that made the smart choice to mass-produce its popular pasta sauce recipes. We should first warn gluten-free customers that Carbone's Alfredo sauce isn't certified gluten-free because it's processed in a factory that manufactures gluten-containing products. That said, it's short, high-quality ingredient list of cream, butter, egg yolks, parmesan, and romano cheese is decidedly gluten-free and utterly delicious. Its smooth, velvety consistency is as close to perfect as Alfredo sauce gets, clinging beautifully to the pasta we poured it over. As if the butter and cream weren't rich enough, the salted egg yolks added a layer of richness to upgrade the flavor and texture of the sauce.

Carbone also outperformed its competitors in every realm of flavor. The combination of nutty parmesan and sharp, salty pecorino romano complemented each other and brought infinitely more depth of flavor to pair with the creamy dairy richness from the butter and cream. This sauce was robust and bursting with flavor from start to finish, with a balance of cheesiness, creaminess, and peppery aromatics.

We taste-tested all of Carbone's many pasta sauce flavors and loved them all. We even argue that Carbone is better than Rao's, another beloved restaurant turned pasta sauce brand. This rings true in our ranking of Alfredo sauces, as Rao's comes in second after Carbone. Both are considered "fancy" brands based on their relatively high price points when compared with other popular pasta sauce brands.

Carbone's Alfredo is a very rich sauce, so you can always thin it out or temper its intensity with a ladle or two of starchy, salted pasta water. The best types of pasta for classic Alfredo sauce are flat and broad pasta shapes like pappardelle and fettuccine, but tube-shaped pasta like penne and rigatoni are also good options. If you want to keep with the gluten-free theme, we've got a ranking of gluten-free pasta brands to try; our favorite brand, Taste Republic, offers fettuccine. Make your Alfredo pasta a more well-rounded meal by adding a protein like chicken or shrimp and veggies like broccoli or mushrooms.