9 Canned Foods You Should Avoid At Aldi And 5 You Should Definitely Buy

When visiting an Aldi or Trader Joe's, it can be difficult to know whether a particular item you're considering is a quality option. After all, a majority of the goods at each location are private label offerings (which is one reason why Aldi's groceries are so cheap) with little to no advertising but up against plenty of similar choices from bigger brands at big box stores. I've had great success with most of the Trader Joe's foods I've tried, but I'll admit that I'm a little less experienced with Aldi. That said, until I began tasting canned goods for this piece and determining how they fit into the best and worst foods at Aldi, I'd tasted enough good items to suggest that there's some great options. Would canned goods hold up?

What I discovered should help you choose the best tasting, most delicious options on your next grocery run. To separate the purchase-worthy from the shelf-warmers, I selected a variety of canned items, tasted each one, prepared and served them according to the directions on each can, and determined whether each is something you should pick up at Aldi or leave it be. I considered each item's flavor, texture, and whether it held up to other canned brands I've had of similar varieties. While I found plenty of canned goods that are better left on the shelf, I also found a few tasty surprises that may just convince you to make Aldi part of your next errand run — make sure you check out the Aldi finds area that sells out so quickly.

Canned meals are super convenient for situations where you just don't have enough time to make a full meal but want something with a little more sustenance. Aldi has a SpaghettiOs-esque item it calls spaghetti rings with meatballs. The name isn't nearly as cute as Campbell's SpaghettiOs (one of the best canned foods to eat straight from the can), but I wondered if the flavor was similar enough.

One bite in, I knew my answer: Stay with SpaghettiOs. Although the sauce wasn't all bad, the texture of the pasta was too soft. But it was the meat in the meatballs that was the real issue. Rather than tasting like homemade or even frozen meatballs, it reminded me of something that was so highly processed; it had lost nearly all of its flavor or even enjoyable texture. Looking at the meatballs, they look something closer to what I'd seen in wet dog food ads. I can't imagine purchasing this again, and I'm imagining even the most forgiving of canned food eaters probably wouldn't take a whole lot of pleasure in a bowl of these not-quite-SpaghettiOs.

Like many families around the country, as soon as the temperature begins to dip and leaves start to change, my family goes into soup and chili mode. Football Sundays often become all day simmering chili Sundays, and we're left eating chili leftovers for the next week. No one's complaining, but it's a whole lot of chili. In instances where we might not want the whole vat but rather smaller portions, I've been known to get canned chili from the grocery store, and although I certainly prefer the homemade stuff, opting for canned chili for recipes has never been something that I'm opposed to, unless it's like this Aldi chili.

Aldi's Brookdale chili with beans has a few issues. For one, the saucy texture is just too much. It feels like it's mostly chili sauce, and not a whole lot of tasty support. Great chili has beans, meat, and even some veggies, but this was missing seasoned meat and any other flavors I've come to love in chili. In general, I found that other chilis I've had, even canned ones, have been much more enjoyable than this offering. Well it certainly looks like chili, and has a vague taste you'll recognize, the texture and lack of flavors will definitely keep you from wanting to enjoy the whole can. Not to mention, the soupy, goopy texture is anything but enjoyable, again harkening back to something you'd find in Rover's bowl.

I will be the absolute very first to admit to you that I don't do canned chicken. Naturally, something about the way the Brookdale chunk chicken breast smelled as soon as I opened the can just didn't work for me. The very first thing I saw when opening the can was a jelly-like texture. I know this is common for bone broth, and I've noticed it before in meat heavy soups when I pull them out of the fridge for leftovers.

However, seeing it at the top of the can just did nothing for my appetite. The flavor itself wasn't bad, but it was on the saltier side. For sitting in such goop, I expected it to feel a little more moist, but the chicken was even dry. You're just better skipping the canned chicken altogether, and going for a rotisserie chicken or something similar. If you must, go meat free. It's better than this chicken.

My son is rather a picky eater, but he loves fruit. So in restaurants, I have a whole lot of experience ordering fruit cups. I must say, it's always a little disappointing when I order a fruit cup and it comes with far less variety than expected. The most disappointing cups are rich in melon but not much else. While Aldi's fruit cocktail in heavy syrup didn't suffer from an overabundance of melon, it did have far too few cherries and more pears and peaches than I would've liked.

After tasting the fruit though, it seems the lack of variety didn't matter for much more than color, for every fruit within this fruit cocktail tasted the same as the next bite. They all had a kind of homogenous bland fruit mixture taste that didn't feel fresh in any respect. Granted, it is fruit from a can, but the texture of the pieces didn't do much for flavor, either. Between the lack of flavor profile and squishy texture, this fruit cocktail isn't going to be passing the sniff test for many, even as a fruit over cottage cheese.

Canned baked beans were a frequent side dish in my home growing up. Naturally, I'm familiar with the different varieties out there. Dakota's Pride original baked beans were below par with other baked beans that I've had in the past. There was a balance of sweet with the brown sugar and savory with the bacon, but there was a lingering aftertaste, which tasted sweeter than I expected.

These felt like they were sweetened to really enhance the flavor, but it may have been a little too substantial. While these beans aren't the worst out there and might do in a pinch, if you're looking for a tasty BBQ side, look elsewhere in the store. Chips, for example, make a great BBQ side and would certainly be more enjoyable than these beans.

Nearly every adult has memories as a small child taking sides with a demonic adversary: vegetables. You may be able to imagine the white and blue floral print crock now, holding that most gruesome veggie of all: peas. Although I've grown to enjoy peas, the canned ones warmed in the crock still haunt my culinary nightmares. Although it's been many years since I've been at odds with a veggie, Happy Harvest medium sweet peas definitely felt like those villainous canned peas I was served. The biggest issue? Texture. They had a feel that ended up coating most of the inside of my mouth in an unpleasant way that fresh (or other canned) peas don't do.

All told, I would skip this one, even if the flavor of the peas wasn't too terribly bad. Most of the cans that I recommend skipping at Aldi have more to do with a flavor than anything else, but for these peas, the problem is definitely with texture. Instead, I recommend opting for the frozen peas. For less than a quarter and dime more, Aldi has a bag of frozen peas that are still budget friendly, but will offer you more flavor and better texture.

I feel like everyone has that one food that's just a little bit weird that they ate as a kid on a regular basis. For me, it was canned carrots. I used to enjoy a can of carrots for random lunches here and there, and I always enjoyed when school lunches rolled out with them piled in one of the little square segments. So, I've had my fair share of canned carrots.

While I've had some good canned carrots, I've also eaten some not so good canned carrots, and Aldi's Happy Harvest sliced carrots have company with the latter. They had a very strong flavor that reminded me of an exaggerated carrot flavor. Oddly, they taste more carroty than other carrots, which might be your thing, but I like more of a milder carrot in my can, so for me, this was a skip. That said, I did like that the carrots were rather big slices.

Sometimes, I like to make macaroni and cheese with tuna. It's another one of those comfort meals from my childhood and was a weekend fixture in our home. It may be that my favorite part was sharing the empty can with our cat, but I remember it fondly anyhow. Growing up, we always used StarKist, so Aldi's Northern Catch solid white tuna was still pretty new to me.

One thing's for sure, my cat would have loved it because if the canned chicken smelled bad, the canned tuna was far worse. Since scent is such an essential part of cooking and eating, and the smell here was excessive, no matter what it tasted like, this one was not going to win anyone over. Tasting it, regardless of smell, it was very salty, and I was barely successful at choking down the smallest bite that I tried; it was that terrible and definitely among the worst canned tuna brands I've tried.

I love olives. You'll regularly find me enjoying them on pizza or even ordering them as an appetizer. As a kid, olives were my favorite food at family gatherings. My grandmother always put out a bowl of olives that I would gleefully place over my fingertips and wiggle them about. Suffice it to say, being able to pop a black olive atop my finger is a near requirement for any black olive.

Aldi's Tuscan Garden large pitted ripe olives somehow missed this mark. Between the lack of structure and too-small opening, they didn't fit. The flavor is exactly what you expect from black olives, but for texture, they're lacking. They're too soft to really be sturdy enough to be enjoyable, unless you're using them in a recipe rather than a charcuterie board or something similar.

My dad has long enjoyed corned beef hash as an easy morning breakfast, and many Saturdays, I would wake up to the smell of cooking corned beef hash wafting from the kitchen. Misty eyed in the early morning, I'd wander downstairs and be greeted with a plate of toast, corned beef hash, and eggs. I always enjoyed the saltiness of the corned beef as it played with the eggs, and Aldi's Brookdale corned beef hash holds up to other brands I've tried.

Coming out of the can, it doesn't look very appetizing, but that's true for all canned corn beef hash, and it's definitely what I've come to expect. Placing this corned beef hash beside other brands in a blind taste test, I would have certainly struggled to see a difference between the brands. It behaved similarly in the pan, smelled, felt, and tasted all just as I expected it would. This in mind, the corned beef hash is definitely a canned good that I would recommend picking up at Aldi, especially if corned beef hash is one of your family's favorite breakfasts.

When I started tasting these canned items, I found that I was disappointed in more than I enjoyed, so, unintentionally, the bar seemed to get lower and lower with each passing can. That is, until I tried these fried apples.

While my goal for many of these cans was to get at least a similar texture and flavor as other brands, I didn't expect too many to exceed my expectations, but these fried apples with cinnamon definitely did. They tasted great and made a great topping, as I enjoyed mine with ice cream. I can imagine these doing well in a pie or even a cobbler. You can mix in this can of fried apples with some fresh fruit for a really cool texture variance in an apple pie. These are definitely something I would pick up from Aldi and an ingredient I would go back to over and over again for great baked goods or for even just topping ice cream.

I've had canned creamed corn in the past, but it always felt too mushy and on the ultra-soft side. It was frequently missing any variance in texture. Aldi's Happy Harvest cream style corn, however, did not suffer from this issue. Its chunky but smooth-in-the-right-ways texture made it a great choice that exceeds other creamed corn varieties I have tried.

When I'm making a cream of corn soup, and the directions come for blending it up, I always like to leave some variance, and that's exactly what I tasted here. There were mostly full kernels but enough smaller kernels that make it feel creamy. I can imagine offering this as a side dish with some secret ingredients that will take it to the next level, but it also feels like it would be a really good addition to some soups to provide some texture and even thicken it up. I noticed that ingredients included sugar, since it's called sweet corn, but I could've done without that extra sweetener, but overall, it goes well with the flavor.

Since I loved the fried apples so much, I was eager to try other canned fruits from Aldi. Although the fruit cocktail was less impressive, I found the Sweet Harvest pineapple slices were perfect. Although these pineapple slices weren't cooked in the same way that the fried apples were, I found that their fresh texture was the real star here. Since cutting a pineapple can be such a chore, finding an inexpensive alternative to save you money and time is always a great gift.

While some canned goods came out tasting a little bland, these were fresher tasting. The pineapple slices are not sweetened in any way, and there's just citric acid that has been added to the can. The pineapple in the can tastes like the cuttings you'd get from a perfectly ripe pineapple in the store. It tasted super fresh and was also nice and tender, hard on certain places around the edges that really gave it that real, freshly cut pineapple feel. These were the perfect tasting and ideally sized to get for the sides of your pineapple glazed ham, if you don't feel like coring and cutting a fresh pineapple.

Just as a fruit cocktail can struggle with a good mixture of fruit variety, mixed veggies sometimes have the same issue. Certainly, it's hard to get an even mix of vegetables across all pieces, but the amount of carrot compared to everything else in the Happy Harvest mixed vegetables can was rather extensive. It's like a canned carrot and some friends mixture rather than a nice mixture of all of the veggies.

That said, the pieces were rather significant, and had a soft texture to them that you expect from canned vegetables. In terms of mixed canned veggies that you would add to another dish, these were very enjoyable and ones I can imagine returning to for various recipes like a casserole or Shepherd's Pie. The canned veggies will save you a bit of time, and with the size of the veggies, especially the slightly irregular cut of carrots, it won't necessarily feel like canned vegetables for your recipes.

I'll admit that I am not a frequent Aldi's shopper, but I wanted to choose canned goods to compare against experiences I've had with other canned varieties. So, when selecting the cans to try for this article, I kept it to pretty basic items I had tasted previously and ones you might regularly stock in your pantry. Then, I tasted each one, following directions for the preparation process on the back of the cans.

To decide whether a can was worth buying, I considered the product's flavor, texture, and how well it meets or exceeds a similar canned good from another brand I have tried in the past. In general, I wanted something that tasted good and had a pleasing, enjoyable texture.