10 Sweet Baby Ray's Sauce Flavors, Ranked

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Sweet Baby Ray's Barbecue Sauce is one of the best-selling sauces in the U.S. It works with everything from ribs and chicken to briskets and burgers, so you'll never run out of ways to use it in your kitchen. While there are likely a few facts you don't know about the brand, one might be that it actually has a vast array of sauces; I wanted to test out as many options from Sweet Baby Ray's as I could find — though there were plenty others (including hot sauces) I didn't include here. Some of the ones I did try were barbecue sauces, while others were dips and marinades. 

No matter the label, I wanted to find the best-tasting, most versatile, and most dynamic product that the brand offered. It was also important that the sauce live up to its name in terms of flavor. I tried each with a chicken wing or drumstick to find which met my criteria. Depending on the flavor profile you're going for, you'll easily find a couple of top contenders worth adding to your pantry and using to season meats, veggies, and other dishes.

Don't get my last-place position wrong; the Hawaiian-Style Barbecue Sauce is a solid item for your cooking. It uses pineapple juice concentrate, natural smoke flavor, molasses, tamarind, and other flavors to give it a unique, distinct taste. It offered the wing a complex flavor, which only enhanced the poultry. The Hawaiian-Style Barbecue Sauce can work beautifully with salmon bowls, pork, and other recipes. However, I just don't think the average consumer wants every dish to have a pineapple flavor. Other Sweet Baby Ray's offerings include pineapple juice concentrate, but not as much or as distinctly as in this flavor. 

It's versatile, yes, but not as versatile as the other options on this list. I like the sweetness paired with the acidic depth of pineapple flavor, which can absolutely enhance a range of dishes. The pineapple gives it a fruity twist that none of the other options have, which makes it feel more limiting for daily use. Even the recipes on the Sweet Baby Ray's website made with the sauce tend to include pineapple, from bacon-wrapped pineapple bites to mahi mahi tacos with pineapple salsa.

May I introduce you to one of Sweet Baby Ray's marinades, the Garlic Parmesan Sauce & Marinade? I love garlic Parmesan. It was my top pick in my ranking of Dot's Homestyle Pretzels flavors, so you can feel confident this doesn't rank low because I have some sort of beef with the flavor duo. Instead, in this sauce, the Parmesan seems to overwhelm the garlic. It has an intensely nutty and distinctly Parmesan aroma and flavor. The garlic still shows up, but the Parm takes a lot of focus. 

The texture is a bit runny, which limits its versatility as a sauce. It almost drips off the chicken, whether you fully coat the wing or just dunk it. The other sauces have a more viscous, gluey consistency that sticks to the chicken; this one ran off, so I feel like you might have trouble incorporating it into certain applications. That said, it might be best to stick to using it as a marinade. It's flavorful and slightly more adaptable than the Hawaiian, and I even think it would work well as a salad dressing, to be honest.

Buffalo Barbecue is one of the newest sauces on the block from Sweet Baby Ray's. I simply prefer the brand's other spicy sauces over it. Its flavor reminds me of Lucas candies I used to get from the ice cream truck as a kid. They're a sweet-and-spicy candy, typically flavored with chili powder (but this may vary by flavor).

After taking a five-second trip down memory lane, I looked at the ingredients to find cayenne pepper, paprika, and other "spice." It offers a dynamic blend of sweet and heat, but the spice comes off as one-note and dry on the palate. It also didn't particularly live up to the Buffalo part of its name; it mainly just tastes like you added cayenne to barbecue sauce. Buffalo sauce typically includes hot sauce, vinegar, and butter. But I don't catch much tanginess or butteriness. Of course, the flavor notes may be hidden under the barbecue sauce, but it didn't quite live up to its name. I think there are a lot of uses for it, and I prefer its taste to the Garlic Parmesan Sauce & Marinade, giving it the eighth spot on the list.

From here on out, I really like each sauce and could easily work through the bottle in various cooking applications. The Mild Buffalo Wing Sauce is slightly spicy and has a rich mouthfeel that envelops the taste buds. It has the vibrant orangey-red hue you associate with Buffalo sauce, but it has a lighter kick. It's a tasty balance, complete with notes of vinegar, aged cayenne pepper, and other ingredients, and would be good to use when something ultra-hot doesn't work. There's more balance here with the addition of vinegar, whereas the sweetness of the lower-ranked Buffalo Barbecue seemed imbalanced with the cayenne.

The oils likely contribute to the mouthfeel, since there's no butter in the recipe. I like the acidity from the vinegar paired with the light heat of cayenne. I think the mildness works, but it isn't as exciting as the other sauces, so it gets a somewhat lower-middle ranking. I could see this being a versatile kitchen sauce for meats and would be good for incorporating it into creamy dips for veggies. It enhanced my chicken, but it wasn't a standout.  

One caveat is that the plastic part that dispenses the sauce got stuck to the inner part of the lid and effectively came off. I didn't realize it until I'd dunked a quarter of the bottle onto my single wing. This happened with two bottles (both the Buffalo wing sauce varieties, actually) and is something worth noting. 

The regular Buffalo Wing Sauce gets a slight lead over the mild version because it has many of the same notes but with more intense heat. It envelops the tongue and lingers there well after I took a bite of chicken. In this regard, it better lives up to its Buffalo moniker, which I associate with being a bit spicy, tangy, and buttery. Of course, we don't see actual butter, but there's still a bit of that creamy mouthfeel because of the soybean and vegetable oil.

More importantly, though, the cayenne comes in strong. I wouldn't say it's the most authentic Buffalo wing sauce, but it certainly heightens the flavor of chicken or whatever you want to put it on. While I like the mild sauce for its versatility (particularly for entertaining guests who might not want the full-strength Buffalo sauce), this Buffalo one is considerably more flavorful. Better yet, it is still versatile enough to make it a great pantry staple. It would be excellent in Buffalo sauce meatballs.

Honey mustard is such a fantastic combination of flavors, and it shines in this Sweet Baby Ray's offering, too. This Honey Mustard Dipping Sauce uses a tasty medley of ingredients. There's that bit of zing from vinegar, an ever-so-slight touch of heat from mustard (in this case, Dijon and mustard flour), and of course, the sweetness from both sugar and honey. There's a creamy coating that I can feel in my mouth, likely from egg yolk and soybean oil. Since it is specifically marketed as a dipping sauce, I just dipped my cooked chicken into it.

Wow, it is incredibly tasty. I found myself licking my fingers to clean off any drippings. The flavor is multi-dimensional and truly enhances the chicken. It was easy to gobble down the whole wing, even though I was tasting so many of them for this review. It doesn't hurt that it stands out from the pack, as it's neither barbecue sauce nor spicy. Sweet Baby Ray's version of this classic sauce is certainly worth a spot in your kitchen. I could see myself using it more often than the Buffalo Wing Sauce. You can dip vegetables in it, use it as a salad dressing, add it to chicken salad, and more. While it hits the flavor and versatility mark, I don't want honey mustard for every dish; this bottle might take a while to finish compared to the next one.

We are getting down to the wire here, and the next three sauces are very similar iterations of each other; they are all barbecue sauces, each sweetened with a different ingredient. My fourth-place pick out of all the sauces is the Honey Barbecue Sauce. Before trying everything, I was concerned about how I would describe their differences because they seemed so similar. However, after actually consuming them alone and with chicken, I can confirm that they are all extremely distinct. 

Interestingly, this Honey Barbecue Sauce uses high-fructose corn syrup, honey, pineapple juice, molasses, and sugar to achieve its complex, sweet flavor. But it's still very tomato-forward with a vinegary tanginess. It has a very honey-forward flavor that is much different than your standard granulated sugar-based sauce. It's a lot more nuanced and slightly more delicate. 

This ranks high because it is very similar to the classic Sweet Baby Ray's Barbecue Sauce but with a memorable character. It has many of the same uses, but you might feel compelled to use a honey-forward option for certain dishes. The first thing that comes to mind is a honey barbecue chicken sandwich. It's positively bursting with flavor and would be good for when you want a more honey-forward profile. I'd select it over the Honey Mustard since it has such a unique, memorable taste, but I can't rank it higher since I find the next three more versatile in flavor.

The Honey Barbecue Sauce is really delicious, but I find that Hickory & Brown Sugar Barbecue Sauce has even greater flavor intrigue. The hickory-smoked flavor really shines through and pairs nicely with the tomato and vinegar, but there is also a distinct, caramel-like note from the brown sugar (and molasses) component. This is one of the most well-rounded sauces I tried. It's sweet, smoky, and tangy, making it one of the most versatile that Sweet Baby Ray's has to offer. 

I kept finding myself coming back to this sauce. It works really well with chicken, of course, but it would be perfect on ribs. It has everything I was looking for in terms of complexity, versatility, and overall delectability. The biggest thing to consider here, if you want to buy a sauce for your collection, is your affinity for smokiness because it's a major part of its flavor profile. Because of that strength, I think this would be a fantastic addition to any food where you want a smoky profile but may not have access to a grill. You can certainly use this if you have a grill, but I'm merely pointing out the convenience and the delightful flavors. The flavors are fantastic, but I don't want smoky brown sugar notes all the time, leaving this as my third-place pick.

I thoroughly enjoyed the previous two sauces and had a tough time ranking them, but ultimately decided my No. 2 pick had to be old reliable: Sweet Baby Ray's classic Barbecue Sauce. It is the quintessential sauce to stock up on, as it's truly tasty and wonderfully complex. I can taste a hint of tomato, a zingy jolt of vinegar, a whiff of smokiness, and plenty of sweetness to go around. Everything works together to create a fantastic sauce you'll keep coming back to. 

I'd always recommend starting with this traditional barbecue sauce, even before trying my top pick. That way, you get a better feel for the brand without investing in some of the more complicated flavors. If you don't know how the original tastes, for example, you probably don't want to just leap into the Hickory & Brown Sugar Barbecue Sauce. This sauce is clearly the most versatile, as you can use it on anything from pizza to wings to pulled pork sandwiches and more. And yet, I preferred one sauce above it since it has a better-balanced flavor that would compel me to reach for it over the classic.

When you want something slightly more elevated than the regular Barbecue Sauce, the Sweet 'n Spicy Barbecue Sauce shines through in all its glory. This sauce is the most interesting, dynamic, and versatile of the ones I tried. It has everything that the Barbecue Sauce includes, but there's a touch of heat from jalapeño pepper that makes every bite more drool-worthy. It's not especially spicy since the corn syrup, molasses, vinegar, and tomato paste add a lot of dimension, giving your taste buds a range of notes to work with. 

You can taste all the ingredients without feeling overwhelmed by any one thing. Here, the sweetness feels the most balanced because the heat only shows up at the end of the bite and gets more noticeable as you eat; it's a slow burn, so to speak. It's not super spicy, though. Instead, the peppers just add to the overall intrigue of the otherwise sweet and tomato-y sauce. And yes, it can easily be applied in the same dishes you'd use the regular sauce in, particularly when you want more dimension. 

The jalapeño offers a more well-rounded heat, too, whereas the cayenne in the Buffalo Barbecue Sauce felt duller and drier on the tongue. I'd pick up this bottle time and again, and it's the first bottle I reach for when I have some fried chicken and fries leftovers that needed some saucing up. I reckon it'll be the first bottle to get finished out of all the ones I tried, too. 

To conduct my taste test, I tried each option with chicken. For the barbecue sauces and the marinade, I simply coated the chicken in sauce after baking. For the dipping sauce, I dunked the air-fried chicken rather than fully coating it, like I had done with the others. Since none of the sauces had glaring issues, I ultimately ranked them based on how well the flavor came through and whether they tasted as advertised.

I was seeking a really flavorful sauce that could be used in a wide range of dishes, and it was important for it to complement the chicken. I tried the sauces alone and with chicken wings, but the final ranking is based on how each one worked with poultry (because most people probably aren't just pouring the sauce on a spoon to eat it alone). Therefore, it was important that the sauce enhance whatever it touches. 

Spicy barbecue sauces taking first place in taste tests seems to be a trend here at Tasting Table; Stubb's Spicy Barbecue Sauce took the lead in a Stubb's ranking, as well. Ultimately, some of these may be a result of personal taste, but I attempted to be as objective as possible.