4 Steak Sauces To Buy And 4 To Avoid

Many that love making steak at home don't even consider using steak sauce, but there are times when using steak sauce isn't a faux pas. In my house, we don't regularly stock steak sauce. Instead, I find that the best way to enjoy steak sauce is by making my own. Even still, in a pinch, there are times when this just isn't an option. In these cases, leaning on a store bought version is perfectly acceptable if you simply must offer steak sauce. I sampled several sauces you'll find on your grocery store shelves and through major online retailers to help ensure the sauce that ends up on your table is worth pairing with steak.

You'll notice quite a range in sauces, with some being pretty expensive for a condiment. As I came to find, expense doesn't exactly equal quality in these sauces. Simplicity is often better, and it'll save you a bit, too.

To ensure I separated the tasty sauces from the ones that ruined my steak, I sampled these in a blind taste test atop a ribeye. I considered important factors like flavor, texture, and ingredients, but the overall flavor definitely takes the majority of the weight for each sauce. Prices may vary.

In my time sampling a variety of products from grocery stores, I have found that Target's private label Market Pantry is very hit or miss. Either the products are as good, if not better, than more expensive brands, or they fail just miserably. In the world of steak sauces, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Premium Market Pantry sauce was one of my favorites.

In terms of ingredients, the sauce's overall makeup was pretty similar to A1, but it's missing some of the more unique ingredients. In fact, overall, the sauce had a very generic composition compared to other sauces that I tried. Sometimes simple and generic wins out, and in the case of steak sauce, it seems simpler might indeed be better. Plus, this was the most inexpensive of all the varieties I tried. You can pick it up at Target for $2.99.

Market Pantry had a delightfully tangy taste that had a little of a sour feel in the back of my throat, almost like you get when you drink orange juice too quickly. My only real complaint is that I would have liked the sauce to be a little less runny, and if you're choosing to have this on your plate during a steak dinner, you might opt for a little saucer to hold it in so it's not going to flavor the rest of your meal.

Primal Kitchen has been consistently bad in my experience, offering a negative experience in the store-bought barbecue sauce market, too. While Primal Kitchen offered something of a tangy flavor, this was overly sour, as a result of the included balsamic vinegar. It was not like sucking on a Warhead, but more like drinking straight vinegar. It was as if Primal Kitchen bottled the lingering smell you get when walking into a room where vinegar was recently used to clean.

The very first thing you notice when looking at the ingredients is that "organic" is repeated over and over again. Those who prize organic foods above nearly all else may find this to be a huge benefit, but I found a different organic steak sauce that's much tastier than this one. Plus, at $6.99, it's also more expensive than my preferred organic steak sauce.

With the overly vinegary flavor, I can imagine some people wanting to use this as a fry sauce. It may be enjoyable in such a pairing, but I sampled it here as exclusively a steak sauce. The only reason to pick up the Primal Kitchen steak sauce is if it is your absolute last resort in the organic world and you must obtain a clean label style sauce.

Thankfully, those seeking organic don't need to settle for a subpar sauce. The brand 365 from Whole Foods Market makes more affordable spices and an organic steak sauce that was equal parts unique and better than Primal Kitchen's contribution. Plus at $3.39, it'll also cost less than the Primal Kitchen offering. The Whole Foods Market closest to me is very busy and rather difficult to get to, so I was happy to see that I could order the sauce over Amazon.

Like Primal Kitchen, I noticed that the ingredients all began with an organic descriptor. It was definitely attempting to speak to people who really strive to keep clean labels in their kitchen. There was also quite an array of spices, including allspice and ginger. All of these contributed to an ultra seasoned sauce. While it seemed a majority of the flavor from the Primal Kitchen came from vinegar, much of the flavor with 365 is from spices.

That said, I found the overall flavor a little bit more on the mellow side, but it was definitely a better organic option than Primal Kitchen. I tend to prefer a little bit more zip in my sauce, and this one had a much more toned down flavor. It was rich in herby deliciousness, and it seemed to fit for those looking for a smoother sauce experience rather than anything with too much bite.

When choosing which steak sauces to include in my sampling, it was sometimes more difficult than I anticipated to pull together the offerings. For instance, I was hesitant to include Heinz 57 sauce as a steak sauce, but Target advertised it as such. In fact, the store included language on the label that showed shoppers that this would work as a steak sauce, so it felt important to pit it against other options.

That said, Heinz 57 is a fair amount different from other sauces. Visually, it was much more orange, largely due to the fact that it had a tomato puree base that seemed less overpowered than it was with other sauces. The combination of flavors, including malt vinegar, led to a too tomatoey steak sauce feel. It felt somewhere between a mixture of ketchup and barbecue sauce rather than something I would regularly want on a steak.

When I looked at the ingredients, there was also a fair number of additives and evidence of being a highly processed product. Although some might not have too much trouble with this, I found that compared to other sauces, even the more simple ones, Heinz 57 had an overall fake feel to it. After all that work making a delicious steak, the last thing you want is to add a sauce that doesn't feel authentic.

For those looking for a different kind of steak sauce that makes it a point to be different, I liked Braswell's Vidalia Onion Steak Sauce. This is a brand that has never failed me. I quite like the pumpkin spice sauce from Braswell's, too, and felt the brand should be far more popular. I found this sauce on Amazon, and though it is a little pricey, it's not the most expensive of the sauces I sampled, $12.53 at the time of purchase.

In any case, Braswell's vidalia onion steak sauce stands out for (as you might expect) the onions. In fact, the sauce contains 1.5% of its weight in vidalia onions, creating a mild onion sweetness that only vidalia can offer. There's some unique aromatics at play here with clove and turmeric. So as not to make the flavor too one sided, I also enjoy the combination of apple cider vinegar with distilled vinegar.

In flavor, I found this to be a little closer to a BBQ sauce than some steak sauces, but still far enough in the steak sauce category to be enjoyable as a steak flavoring. Rather than masking the flavor of your steak, this one will enhance it. For that reason, I like Braswell's for cooks who enjoy a little sauce, but don't want it to cover the hard work they've already done with the steak.

If there's one thing I know about steak, it's that it isn't salad. So why in the world would a steak sauce taste like salad dressing? Beats me, but that's the one flavor I came away from Peter Luger steak sauce with: Italian salad dressing. Flavorful, of course, but not the flavor I was hoping for here. As one of the more expensive sauces I tried ($13.22 at the time of purchase from Amazon), this one was disappointing.

Flavor wise, it was far too sweet. Looking at the ingredients, it immediately becomes clear why. Sugar and high fructose corn syrup are items three and four on the ingredient list. While I was surprised to see high fructose corn syrup in a brand that feels like it should be beyond this kind of sweetener, the flavor profile and ingredient list betrays this expectation. Sure, there are unexpected and appreciated ingredients like grated horseradish, for one, but there's just not enough about this so-called steak sauce to make it feel like actual steak sauce.

It may be considered a faux pas to reach for the A1 sauce at a steakhouse, but there's a reason it's so popular. Most people who are looking for a steak sauce know A1 for its bite and zip of flavor. It's a condiment nearly as common as ketchup, and you'll find it in most places that serve steak (unless the restaurant pushes its own, of course). I've had A1 plenty of times before, and I know the flavor well, but I expected other sauces to perform better. Unfortunately, they just didn't, and A1 was the steak sauce to beat. In the blind tasting we did, I mistook Market Pantry for A1 because they were that similar in flavor. There's a slight difference, but it's largely in texture.

It may not be the most interesting sauce around, but there's a fine balance between tasty, sweet, and basic flavors that just work. Honestly, no reason to reinvent the wheel here. Go with A1 if you want a steak sauce that tastes and feels most like a steak sauce.

I love artisanal products, and they often win out for me. Here, though, that was definitely not the case. As I sampled the sauces in a blind taste test, I figured it must have been one of the less expensive options, but it wasn't. In fact, the St. Elmo Steak Sauce from one of the oldest steakhouses in America was the most expensive sauce on my list with a price over $13 on Amazon, and it was also the most disappointing.

The flavor was so off putting that I couldn't even finish the bite, disposing of it in my napkin. That's a rarity for me. It was so strongly alcoholic that I just couldn't taste any of the other flavors. Looking at the ingredients, it immediately becomes clear why. Brandy is listed among the ingredients, but it's the seventh one in. Water and distilled vinegar are the very first two ingredients, leaving plenty of room for Brandy to be too strong. No other sauce I sampled had water listed as the first ingredient. All told, from the ingredients to the flavor, St. Elmo Steak Sauce was just a flop for me.

My husband and I sampled these sauces over a steak dinner. He made up the ribeye, cutting it into even pieces and arranging the sauces in a particular order that he knew, but I did not, thus the blind tasting. We tried each bite, noting flavors, texture, and enjoyment with the steak. Then, he revealed which sauce was which. I investigated the ingredients, noting aspects that stood out.

Afterwards, I decided which sauces were worth buying and those that should be avoided. Mostly, my decisions came down to flavor and enjoyment of the sauce with the steak, but ingredients and textures helped support the decisions, as well.