We taste-tested 14 brands of applesauce you’re likely to find at your local supermarket. To find the very best one, we sampled each without knowing which brand was which. Our winner is Wegman’s Organic Applesauce, but we also crowned one runner-up.
Applesauce is essential in any kitchen. A spoonful, hot or cold, tastes like fall in a bowl. It’s soft, sweet, and soothing, and makes sick days much more bearable. I enjoy cooking with it, too: It’s delicious in oatmeal, sorbets, baked goods, as an accompaniment to latkes and pierogies, and, of course, just plain. Sure, you can make your own applesauce, but that requires seasoning, simmering, and puréeing pounds of apples. Fortunately, applesauce is readily available at many grocery stores. The question is: Which brand is worth buying?
To find the very best store-bought applesauce, our editors sampled 14 different brands that you’re likely to find in your local grocery store. We opted for unsweetened applesauce without any added sugars. We placed each in an unmarked bowl, then sampled them in random order without knowing which was which. After snacking our way through many, many applesauces, we tabulated the results and crowned an overall winner we’d be happy to eat with yogurt, ice cream, or simply plain. We also found an admirable runner-up.
Serious Eats / Amanda Suarez
The Criteria
Great applesauce should be pomaceous: Like homemade applesauce, store-bought versions should taste like fresh apples that have been cooked and broken down into a purée. It should be smooth and thick, not watery or overly chunky. It should be gently sweet, never cloying, and should (obviously) not taste rancid, bitter, or sour. Its color should be somewhere within the range of light yellow and reddish-brown, depending on the apple variety used, and should never be green, purple, or blue, which would indicate spoilage or contamination. (It does happen—I found one of these in my local store!)
Serious Eats / Amanda Suarez
Overall Winner
Wegman’s Organic Applesauce
“This is pretty good, just lacks a little bit of depth,” wrote our editorial director, Daniel. “Tastes like applesauce!” wrote our senior editor, Genevieve, who thought the texture was a bit mushy but liked that it wasn’t too sweet. Our associate visuals director, Amanda, thought it was “fine,” but found the flavor a touch too sweet. Our senior social media editor, Kelli, found the texture “decent” and also enjoyed the more well-rounded flavors. Though I thought it was a bit watery, I did enjoy its pleasant apple flavor compared to the rest.
Runner-Up
365 by Whole Foods Market Organic Unsweetened Applesauce
“Good apple flavor, but tastes a little oxidized,” wrote Daniel. Both Amanda and I enjoyed the pleasantly sweet apple flavor and thought the sauce was nicely puréed. Meanwhile, Kelli thought the texture was a bit fibrous and grainy, but enjoyed the “fine” flavor nevertheless. Genevieve felt similarly OK about the flavor: “Don’t love, don’t hate.”
The Contenders
- 365 by Whole Foods Market Organic Unsweetened Applesauce
- Annie’s Fruit Friends Organic Apple Fruit Sauce
- Eden Organic Applesauce
- GoGo squeeZ Apple-Apple (Unsweetened)
- Good & Gather Applesauce
- Kirkland Organic Applesauce
- Mott’s Original Applesauce
- Musselman’s Unsweetened Applesauce
- Nature’s Promise, Unsweetened
- North Coast Organic Applesauce
- Santa Cruz Organic Applesauce (No Sugar Added)
- Stop & Shop Applesauce, Unsweetened
- Trader Joe’s All-Natural Unsweetened Applesauce
- Wegmans Organic Applesauce
Serious Eats / Amanda Suarez
Key Takeaways and Conclusion
Most applesauce is made with apples and water. Some brands incorporate ascorbic acid, a preservative that prevents oxidation and browning and can give foods a tart flavor, while others have only one ingredient:apples. But ascorbic acid doesn’t make or break applesauce; brands made with it scored both high and low in our tests. Our winner, Wegmans Organic Applesauce, is made from apples, water, and ascorbic acid. Meanwhile, our runner-up contains only organic apples.
Applesauce is often sold in jars, plastic cups, and squeezable pouches. Curious to see if applesauce sold in a pouch would taste different from applesauce in a cup, we conducted a side-by-side comparison from one brand. Overall, our editors preferred the pouch and noted its well-rounded flavor with a pleasant sweetness and smooth texture. Unlike applesauce sold in jars or cups, the pouches generally omit water, resulting in a product with a more concentrated flavor.
Our Testing Methodology
All taste tests are conducted with brands completely hidden and without discussion. Tasters taste samples in random order. For example, taster A may taste sample one first, while taster B will taste sample six first. This is to prevent palate fatigue from unfairly giving any one sample an advantage. Tasters are asked to fill out tasting sheets, ranking the samples according to various criteria. All data is tabulated, and results are calculated with no editorial input to provide the most impartial representation of actual results possible.
