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I love ketchup so much that when I came to work at this site years ago now, I felt it was important to align myself with the condiment near-immediately, including this little admission on my bio page when it first was published:
A bold move, in hindsight! I stand by it.
In fact, I’ve never understood people’s aversion to-meets-commitment-to hating ketchup. It’s synonymous with some of the universe’s greatest joys: Cheeseburgers! French fries! Barbecue sauces! SANDWICHES! What’s not to love about a perfectly sickly-sweet thing that makes life’s best and saltiest offerings better?
Still, when I suggested a ketchup taste test as the latest installment in our taste-testing series, I was met with skepticism: “We have to eat straight ketchup??” “What kind of ketchup do we have to eat?” You know—the kinds of things people who don’t truly adore ketchup say upon learning they are mandated to consume it. Undeterred, I gathered five big brands of ketchup that you’re likely to find at your local supermarket and forced the team to partake in a blind tasted. (Hey, I also gave them fries, so there were fewer complaints than I expected.) We methodically, empirically, scientifically! tasted its way through them all in a quest to identify the very best. And joke’s on my coworkers, because I am deeply pleased to report that they loved every minute of doing it!
…We all like ketchup! Some more than others, sure, but enough that I’m going to change everyone’s bio pages to include mentions of such right after I publish this piece.
Without further adieu: the ketchups.
The Contenders
- Annie’s Organic Ketchup
- Heinz Tomato Ketchup
- Hunt’s Tomato Ketchup
- Primal Kitchen Organic Ketchup (Unsweetened)
- 365 Tomato Ketchup
The Criteria
It’s not easy to agree on what makes A Good Ketchup. That’s mostly because everyone thinks they hate—or are better than?? Yikes!—the condiment. Or as previously mentioned, if they don’t actually hate it, they’ve doubled down to a polarizing opinion of it online (and that opinion is: “KETCHUP IS ONLY GOOD THE WAY I USE IT.”). That’s so silly! Like everything else, there are good ketchups just as much as there are bad ketchups, and a really, truly good ketchup serves to make your go-to savory staples better with its proper balance of sweetness, acid, and spice.
That balance is crucial, we found over the course of the tasting. If too sweet, ketchup can eat like chewable juice. If too acidic, it gives vinegar-based salad dressing. If too spicy, it simply does not contribute to the sacred experience that is eating french fries.
In addition to smell, taste, and color, I asked our team to evaluate the ease of—and I’m so sorry—squirting. I duct-taped the bottles to remove all identifying labels and qualities and asked each person to shoot each ketchup at a singular french fry in order to gauge how seamlessly they could control the flow of ketchup to get the exact quantity they wanted. This ended up being an excellent gauge of ketchup looseness (bad! Loose ketchup is bad! Do I have to tell you why loose ketchup is bad?), as well as a ridiculous team-bonding experiment. Who else gets to play “hide the ketchup bottle?” at work? If you do, are you required to take it very seriously? OK. Let’s ketchup.
The Rankings
Heinz Tomato Ketchup: 4.45/5
Imagine opening this taste test and finding a different result! The notes from this test are delightfully predictable. “This is the red I think of when I think of ketchup,” Amanda wrote. “What I think of as the classic American ketchup flavor (which I like!),” Megan noted. “A clear spice profile,” Daniel said. I didn’t participate in this test (trust me, I’m a reliable narrator, etc., etc.), but watching other people enjoy this moment made me want to skip off to the nearest McDonald’s for a large Diet Coke and a meal of medium fries.
Hunt’s Tomato Ketchup: 3.63/5
Not only was Hunt’s offering the easiest to squirt (…I really am so sorry, I’m actively pursuing a good synonym—spurt? Eject? Oh god. Squeeze?? Maybe squeeze?!), but it also boasted the group’s favorite color and spice profile. Genevieve wrote: “[It’s a] pretty vibrant red. [It] reminds of canned tomatoes if sweetened and slightly acidified.” It was distinctly more savory than Heinz’s version, hitting you with a gentle clove-y aroma before the french fry and sticking with you a while after the fry is gone.
365 Tomato Ketchup: 3 / 5
Onions! Unclear if they were dried or sautéed and tossed all up in everything (just kidding: ‘organic onion powder’ is the fifth of nine ingredients listed on this bottle), but it tasted like a bunch of both all in one bite. TL;DR: It was also a more savory, smellier offering. Better for sauces than for straight dipping.
Annie’s Organic Ketchup: 2.94/5
Each tester noted a clearer vinegar tang in their Annie’s bites. In a fun way! Megan opined the ketchup was “tart and vinegary but with a nice balance of sweetness, yielding a bolder, slightly more complex flavor than some of the others.” Where they also agreed, though, was that managing the squirt (sorry, squeeze) was more difficult: It’s a thinner ketchup, one meant to already exist in a dipping container rather than be squirted squeezed for dipping, if that makes sense.
Primal Kitchen Organic Ketchup (Unsweetened): 2.88/5
Alright. A few things here: Firstly, we made all efforts to secure the sweetened version of this offering, but could only procure unsweetened versions, and, wouldn’t you know it, the group noted it was decidedly lacking in sweetness. Secondly, it was brown. And…wouldn’t you know it…it turns out we prefer ketchups that are red. Regardless, squirts (sorry, squeezes) of Primal Kitchen held their shape well, allowing for nicely contained (brown) dipping pools for fries, and all the sample fries went anyway.
Our Testing Methodology
All taste tests are conducted completely blind and without discussion. Tasters taste samples in random order. For example, taster A may taste sample 1 first, while taster B will taste sample 6 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 for various criteria that vary from sample to sample. All data is tabulated and results are calculated with no editorial input in order to give us the most impartial representation of actual results possible.