The Ultimate Ranking Of Pickle Brands

One of my very first jobs was working at a small Chicago style hot dog restaurant. While Bun Puppies — such an odd name — didn't last long, suffering from lack of advertising and location, the hot dogs were fantastic. It's where I fell in love with Chicago hot dogs to begin with.

In the back, we had this huge vat of large pickles that we cut for the sides of meals and hot dogs. I would sometimes daydream about opening the pickles and biting into one of them; they always just looked and smelled so tasty. You might say I'm a little obsessed with pickles.

Naturally, rating pickle brands is a delicious undertaking, so I eagerly took on this responsibility to help you find the very best pickles on your grocery store shelves. I'm pretty confident I have uncovered some real gems.

In my tasting and ranking, each pickle brand got a score out of 11, though the maximum score I awarded to any brand was 10. I rated them on their flavor, texture, cleanliness of ingredients, and presence of visible floaters — seasonings, herbs, or veggies — in the jar. In general, I found that the pickles with the cleaner ingredients and presence of floaters were my favorites. Texture was a little all over the place, but the mixture of a quality texture and enjoyable flavor always led to an outstanding pickle (and pickle juice, which has a lot of uses).

As one of several store brands Target offers, this was my first encounter with Market Pantry, though I have some experience with some of the other brands. Those experiences have been generally positive, so I was optimistic about Market Pantry's pickles. However, one bite quickly proved this optimism was poorly placed.

According to the numbers, Market Pantry scored the lowest of all pickles I sampled. The first thing I noticed is that this pickle is an actual chore to bite into, and I felt like my teeth were just sinking into it for what seemed like a strangely long time. This one suffered from a real texture issue in ways that completely override the basic taste. Though not bad, the flavor itself was largely basic, with little interesting to offer. It earned the lowest rating of all pickles I tried because the texture was just so off. That, combined with an uninteresting flavor, made it my least favorite offering on grocery store shelves.

Scoring just a half a point higher than Market Pantry, and we meet Great Value, Walmart's store brand. While Market Pantry's pickle had a strange challenge in chewing the actual pickle, Great Value was just very mushy to bite into. The skin of the cucumber did present a little bit of a bite, but it wasn't enough to compensate for the mushy interior.

The flavor itself was not interesting or remarkable. The best way I can think to describe it is to say that it tasted like it's trying to be a pickle rather than actually succeeding. Similar to artificial flavors, this just didn't taste like it actually represented a pickle. If you were to capture the flavor of a scratch and sniff pickle sticker, you'd end up with a Great Value pickle. All told, the combo platter of a mushy pickle and lack of enjoyable flavor kept this one down.

I found it hard not to like a brand that has a great mascot that's identifiable and fun, like Vlasic. I've never understood the connection between a stork and pickles, but maybe it's not for me to understand. In any case, the pickle loving stork doesn't help the pickles. It would increase the likelihood of my choosing the pickle off the shelf, but that's about it. Don't be fooled. Even with a cool mascot, Vlasic is better left on the shelf.

Vlasic's pickles weren't boring, they were actually overly vinegary. The texture, though, was the real issue here. As I ate it, pieces of the pickle were actually getting stuck in my teeth. I didn't think that a pickle should get stuck in one's teeth, so that didn't earn Vlasic (or its stork) any points. What really put this one over the edge, though, was the fact that the label calls out the pickle's crunch factor. This must be mere decoration because Vlasic's pickles were not crunchy by any means.

I have found, through researching and tasting many brands of various foods, that some of the basic brands I knew as a kid are actually some of my least favorite offerings I've sampled. I find that true again with Mt. Olive.

One bite, and it immediately took me back to the pickle I would get on the side of a burger plate or hot dog as a kid. Compared to the other pickles, this one had a very tart, nearly sour flavor to it. It's recognizable to me, but it wasn't a particularly enjoyable pickle flavor. The low ranking here had everything to do with the oddity of the flavor and the slightly mushy, but still a little firm texture.

I recently discovered that Publix is one of my favorite store brands out there. If you're looking for a great frozen pizza, the Publix premium pizzas are fantastic. Therefore, I had high hopes for its pickles, and while they were okay, they were nothing that you would want to choose over an option higher on this list.

My first bite, I noticed that the pickle is squeaky when you bite down. It almost felt like I was biting into the cheese curd, which also squeaks, provided to this reasonably fresh. It also had a rather thick bite to it, making the squeakiness all the more odd. In terms of flavor, it was pretty boring, but not necessarily bad in any way. It had a better flavor than some of the lower ranking ones, but still nothing that I would crave on a regular basis. This one fell toward the lower middle end of my ranking because it was okay, but far too basic for it to find its way to the top.

I may not be able to say many wonderful things about Market Pantry's pickles, but the Good & Gather grocery line from Target was better. I found that it was crunchy all the way through, which was a nice departure from some of the other lower ranking pickles. There's nothing worse than a mushy pickle, and from here on forward, the texture definitely becomes better in these brands.

That said, even though it wasn't mushy, the Good & Gather pickles actually felt like they went too far in the other direction. Rather than having a nice snap in the skin of the cucumber, the crunch went all the way through this pickle. Or flavoring, it was a little bit vinegary, but not in an overwhelming way, and the flavor in general tasted slightly better than what you would expect from a store brand pickle. If you're looking for a slightly elevated basic, Good & Gather is a pretty reliable brand to go to, even if the crunch and vinegary flavor put it toward the bottom of the middle in my ranking.

Since my husband and I both work from home, we go through spurts of hyperfixation lunches. For a time, we frequently purchased Boar's Head pickles to have with sandwiches. It was one of my first refrigerated pickle brands from the deli, and I fell in love pretty quickly. Since then, I have found other fresh pickle brands that are even better.

Boar's Head fell in the middle of my rankings because the skin was just a little tough to get through. The flavor and balance of spices was quite good in this one, it was really just the texture holding this back. Thankfully, it's not a mushy issue, but more of a crunchiness one, but it prevented this pickle from really being something quite excellent.

This was also the first pickle brand in my listing order that had what I'm calling "floaters" in the container itself. These might be peppers, veggies, spices, or herbs that flavor the pickle and just give it an elevated flavor. Looking at the listing, it became clear that most pickles with floaters in the container were good.

Thinking back to my favorite snack food as a kid — a jumbo pickle — the OH SNAP! brand brought me right back to those flavors. Although I didn't necessarily get the same texture as a whole pickle would, the flavorful OH SNAP! is exactly what those jumble pickles in the jar taste like.

My only complaint, and the reason for the middle ranking, for OH SNAP! was that the texture wasn't quite where I wanted it to be. While the cucumber skin had a nice texture, the pickle flesh on the inside was a little mushy, with the pickle chips even seeming to wrinkle on themselves some. But if you want mushier pickles with a good taste for some reason, these are a solid pick.

Famous Dave's was one of those restaurants that my family frequented when we were looking for a semi-fancy meal. At the age of the franchise restaurant ruling the roost, Famous Dave's was our more upscale option. In those days, I never really took note of the pickles, and this was definitely a mistake for this pickle loving kid.

Rather than a condiment or dressing, the Famous Dave's pickles felt like more of a side at a barbecue. They were a very good snacking pickle. For flavor, I got a really delicious mixture of tart and sweet, all wrapped up in a pickle that was a little darker in color. A brooding pickle, if you will. I also thought there was a nice crunch that really added to that feel that this is a pickle you could sit around and snack on. I loved this as an addition to an appetizer plate, perhaps even a charcuterie board.

That said, I can't wrap up my discussion of Famous Dave's pickles without mentioning one more thing. These pickles had high fructose corn syrup in them. In fact, it is the only brand that has high fructose corn syrup. If you're especially cognizant of what kind of ingredients you like in your foods, this might be a pickle you want to avoid. I wasn't deterred by the high fructose corn syrup, and in fact, I liked the flavor, so this didn't necessarily impact my overall feeling of this pickle, though it did affect the brand's ingredient score.

One of the more interesting aspects of tasting these pickles was noting just how different they were. For instance, Cleveland Kitchen pickles were actually fermented, so they had more of a bite in flavor and crunch, and the overall look of the pickle is quite green. It felt like more color beyond other pickles, nearly a neon-ish green. Not Chicago's neon green relish, but just a little lighter. However, I enjoyed the crunchiness of these pickles and the almost sweet flavor.

This was a very standard pickle, and even though a fermented pickle might have seemed a little out of the ordinary to you, if you like a crunchy, dilly pickle, this might be the ideal choice. Although the pickle rated very close to the overall high scoring pickles, I didn't quite get there in flavor because there wasn't anything too exceptional in all its dilliness.

When I started this tasting, I was ready to be surprised by some of the brands I had never heard of, but I wasn't as ready to be surprised by a brand I had known well. Claussen is one of those classic pickle brands you see on nearly every grocery store shelf, so to see it hanging out toward the top of the list might actually be a little surprising.

The flavor of Claussen was really enjoyable because it had that slightly sweet flavor that some people enjoy with just a touch of vinegar. It felt like a gentle mix between two flavor preferences. If you leaned too far one way or the other in your preferences, you might have wanted this one to be a little bit more strongly sweet or vinegar, but I really liked the balance here. The only place this pickle missed was that others simply tasted even better.

From here going forward, it became very difficult to differentiate between overall favorites between the pickle brands. Yeehaw Hot Dills, for example, scored only a half a point lower than the top three, which all had the same overall score. Although I really enjoyed these hot pickles, I could imagine someone not enjoying them as much if spiciness isn't the overall goal. However, if you love some good spice, you definitely need to give them a try.

Looking at the jar, it was very obvious that it was going to be a quality pickle brand; the floaters in this one were abundant. Whole pepper slices were just kind of hanging out in there amongst the cucumbers. The ingredients were also very clean. It felt like something that your uncle had pickling in the back of his fridge from this year's cucumber crop. My only complaint was that the texture wasn't quite where I would want it to be, and it does feel like something that has been hanging out in its juices for almost too long.

Looking at ingredient listings, I got really used to seeing additives and items where I didn't expect them to be. That's why a clean ingredient label was such a breath of fresh air. Wahlburgers pickles, for example, had seven ingredients, and there was nothing on there that you couldn't pick up on your next grocery store run.

Wahlburgers scored a perfect 10, just like the other two above on my ranking. I placed these slightly lower only because there was a little extra flavor going on there that I couldn't quite pinpoint. I thought it might be the garlic floating around in the jar, but the taste was mysterious enough to be distracting from the overall experience. However, the thickness of a pickle made it very enjoyable to bite into it. So much so, it earned a perfect three for texture, compared to the next two, which actually scored one point lower in terms of texture.

Before this tasting, I had never had Wickles pickles. However, I will forever be a Wickles pickles fan after this. In fact, even after I finished the initial tasting, I've found myself going back to the fridge to grab another pickle chip here and there.

Wickles are perfectly snackable and make a delicious addition to a snack board. The only reason they were not in the No. 1 spot is because their flavoring felt a little misleading to the customer. While I absolutely am obsessed with the flavor, they are unexpectedly spicy. The balance between sweet and spicy was not advertised anywhere on a label, and because of this, if you don't like spicy, these are going to catch you off guard.

Other than this absolutely minor issue, the flavor mixture itself was fantastic. That said, Wickles were a little bit soft on the bite, even if everything else is near perfection. If it weren't for the label not really saying anything about the unique flavor of these pickles, they would be my number one choice.

Full disclosure, here: My first Grillo's pickle was a few months ago, and I've been obsessed since. In a lineup of pickles, they were easy to spot because they were bright in a way that was such a departure from the old canned pickle that you find in the pantry staples area of your grocery store. They tasted exactly what you want a great pickle to taste like. I found these with the fresh foods, exactly where they belong. Once you have a Grillo's pickle, you'll struggle to purchase any other pickles to have as a side on your sandwiches.

Like the Cleveland pickles, these are slightly fermented, and that brightness might come from this fermentation. I should note too that these pickles' texture can be a little inconsistent from pickle to pickle because there is quite a bit of variance in size, but the flavor is always spot on.

To pit these pickles against one another, I garnered my husband's help to assist in a blind taste test. He prepared the pickles so I didn't have to know which brand was which, allowing me to give fully honest notes and scores for each one.

Together, we averaged our scores for several categories: Flavor for five points, texture for three, clean ingredients for two, and the presence of floaters would add an extra point. Overall, pickles could earn a total of 11 points. While I never awarded any brand a perfect 11, I did score 3 top spots, with the differences between them being quite minimal.

For flavor, I was looking for a fresh tasting pickle with a balance of something interesting, without going too far overboard. Texture needed to be a balance of crunch and soft. Over crunchy pickles can be just as bad as long as those that are too soft, so I looked for ones that were somewhere in the middle. In terms of clean ingredients, I awarded full points to ingredient lists that had items that I could mostly find in the grocery store, and gave one point to those that were a little heavier on the chemical side. The final factor I considered was the presence of floaters or extra ingredients hanging out in the pickles. This could be seasonings, vegetables, herbs, and their presence normally indicated a great pickle.