We Tried And Ranked 12 Canned Corn Brands So You Don't Have To

Growing up in the Midwest, seeing large fields of sweet corn was very common. The colloquial rural Midwestern phrase, "Knee-high by the 4th of July" helped me know just how far along the corn should be by Independence Day, and sweet corn was a common and beloved side dish (that you can even make in the microwave to enjoy all year 'round) during dinners. As a teen, corn mazes were the Friday night fall activity of choice with large fields of corn full of drying stalks cut out in particular designs to create a maze challenge. So, it's safe to say I'm familiar with corn.

Today, I use a lot of corn in casserole preparations or throwing together quick appetizers. One of my absolute favorite snacks to serve at gatherings is corn dip. It's apparently the most popular Super Bowl party dip in Texas, but I've never lived in the Lone Star State, so how it made its way to my rotation, I'll never know.

When ranking each canned corn brand, I tasted each brand right out of the can. There's plenty you can do to upgrade your canned corn, but I wanted to get the most accurate image of each brand, so I tasted the corn as it was. In this ranking, I considered taste, texture, and price. These three factors helped establish an overall ranking of corn that is not very appetizing all the way to some of the best corn you can buy.

As a kid, I loved eating canned veggies (even the type of canned vegetables I probably should have avoided). So, whenever the school lunch ladies would throw down veggies on those rectangular lunch trays, I was here for it. Typically, the canned vegetables were extra soft but they tasted generally as you would expect the vegetables to taste. When I began searching for canned corn brands to taste test, I was surprised to find that I could only locate the Hanover brand in super large cans that are surely stacked in school kitchens across the country. As a result, I expected it to taste something like what I used to enjoy from my elementary school days, but that couldn't have been further from the truth.

Most of the corn tasted generally similar from can to can, but this brand stood out quite a bit. There was an odd, unexpected flavor that I got that wasn't anything particularly enjoyable, but also very hard to pin down. It wasn't bitter or overly watery, it just tasted simply gross. It reminded me of the kind of corn you might see used in animal feed of some kind. I couldn't take more than one spoonful of a bite, and even that was hard to get down. The can was so bad, that I'm willing to consider the fact that I may have gotten a bad batch, but between the floating bits of smashed corn and other unidentifiable parts at the top, this was definitely one brand I could not recommend pulling unless you are in a starvation sort of situation.

Libby's has been putting canned vegetables on family tables since 1868. The brand name itself feels nostalgic, like you picked up the can from the grandma down the street during her yearly canning weekend. Looking at the label, it gave all the feel of a small, family operation with the barn on the front label. Unfortunately, even with all of these feel good vibes, the flavor of Libby's corn made it one of my least favorite varieties.

The texture here wasn't an issue, but the flavor of the corn had this thin, watered-down taste. It was as if the corn itself had been sitting in the corn water for so long, the corn wasn't flavoring the water, the water was flavoring the corn. Since it also included no added salt or sugar, there was no real fixing the overall flavor. I hoped for so much more with the design on the can, but that's a good lesson to not judge a, well, can by its labeling.

I typically shy away from the Great Value brand at Walmart (even though its a great grocery store chain for budget shoppers) because I find that even with the low price, the offering tends to have a low quality feeling. Unfortunately, canned corn produced by Great Value fell right in line with this expectation.

When I looked at the different varieties of canned corn, very few factors were different between the different brands. That's why the ingredient label on Great Value's corn was so interesting. Instead of simply listing corn or golden corn or, if we're organic, stating organic corn, the label actually listed super sweet corn in the ingredient label.

Even though the corn was designated as super sweet, Great Value corn didn't really lead the pack in terms of sweetness. The flavor itself wasn't bad either, but there was more of a visual aspect of this brand that was off-putting. As soon as I opened the can, I noticed a little bit of a darker discoloration, almost black, at the bottom of some of the corn pieces that were sitting right on top. It's never the most appetizing thing to see as soon as you open a can, and although the corn texture and flavor was mostly fine, it's this discoloration that really pulled Great Value's overall corn ranking down.

When I was in college, the Amazon Kindle came out. I purchased the very first generation Kindle off of Amazon, and it was the first item I had ever purchased off of the e-commerce website. Today, it seems that my family has an Amazon order coming to our door at least once a week. It's become as much of a go-to store as any of the others we frequent on a regular basis. Even still, it still feels strange to order food from this previous exclusive bookseller, especially since it seems Amazon is still figuring out how to do grocery. I don't see Barnes and Noble selling corn in its cafes.

In any case, the Amazon Fresh branded can of corn arrived right to my door in perfect condition; no nicks or dings in the can. Upon sampling, it initially tasted pretty similar to some of the other corns, but I noticed something a little bit strange. With each bite, the actual flavor of the corn seemed to dissipate very quickly. It had that initial spark of flavor, and then it fizzled into nearly nothing, leaving just a texture of canned corn behind. It was an odd phenomenon, but I noticed it with every spoonful. Amazon Fresh fell toward the low end of my ranking because of the flavor's disappearing act, but the texture was pretty solid overall.

When my family and I moved from the Midwest to Central Florida, we were pretty quick to adopt Publix as our new grocery store. What we didn't realize until a couple years in is that Publix is quite a bit more expensive than other grocery stores in our area, and now Target has become our default. Publix acts as our clean up grocery store, filling whatever holes still exist in the grocery list after shopping at Target. In any case, I found it interesting that even with the store brand label, the Publix canned corn was one of the most expensive of any of the other store brands. Good and Gather, Great Value, Amazon Fresh were all less expensive than Publix.

When opening the can, the very first thing I noticed was just how absolutely bright yellow it is. And while the can calls out that it is a sweet corn, on the ingredient label, sugar is added to the corn. While I can't necessarily fault Publix for adding sugar to something that claims to be sweet corn, it does feel just the slightest bit misleading. The ingredients list included both sugar and salt, and I think it's these additions that made the can have something of a fake quality to it. The flavor itself wasn't bad, it just reminded me of times that I've had a fruit flavored sucker and it tastes like a fake version of that fruit rather than actually tasting like a bite of fresh fruit. This fake quality, though not necessarily bad tasting, is the reason Publix was in the middle of the canned corn range.

When I think of Goya, I typically think of canned beans. But of course, it sells canned veggies as well, corn being among them. In terms of flavor and texture, Goya fell very squarely in the middle of my ranking.

There wasn't too much exciting going on negatively or positively, but it's a very solid option. It might be odd to imagine anything being memorable about corn, but some of the brands do stick out for one reason or another, and while Goya is fine, it just doesn't stand out in any kind of a way. When you think of canned corn, Goya is probably the exact kind of quality corn you think about. For the price, considering the options above it in the ranking, it's a pretty good option for your money.

I don't live particularly close to a Whole Foods Market, but I was able to purchase 365 by Whole Foods Market from Amazon. Online, I found it for $2.39 for the can. As one of the more expensive options I tried, I expected it to be better than it was. The brand claimed that the 365 private label is one of the "splurgiest way[s] to save." Given that the can is pretty expensive for canned corn, that claim doesn't quite hold up, and there are less expensive options that tasted better too.

In the variety I tried, there was no added salt, so the corn had a really pure taste to it. In terms of texture, I noticed a nice crunch, and with an ingredient list consisting of just sweet corn and water, it was really nice and simple. The can also called out that it's made without BPA in the lining, which is always nice to see. The biggest issue with this corn is that for the price, there should be something extra good to it, and there just isn't. It's perfectly good corn, and if it's the least expensive option that you can find while shopping at Whole Foods, it's a pretty good get.

It might seem like all corn is created equal and that any corn you pick from the canned food aisle would work just as well as others. But some can corn brands are a little bit more flexible and more attuned to working in certain instances.

The biggest thing that stood out to me with Del Monte corn is the crunch. There's a really substantial texture to this corn that may not be for everyone, especially if you're looking for a softer corn. What's more, each kernel felt like it was carrying just a bit of the cob with it. It seemed as if the corn removal process might be a little too aggressive to the point of these little bits coming out too. While eating the corn on its own wasn't necessarily problematic, I can imagine including this specific kind of corn in a casserole or something else that is meant to be very soft and cohesive might present a little bit of a texture issue. It's this concern that brought down Del Monte corn a little bit.

Over the different tastings that I've done, I'm consistently impressed with GreenWise products. And in the canned corn world, it was no different.

The texture of GreenWise corn was very pleasant. It had that middle ground of being just a little soft and harder at the same time, and it felt like it would be enjoyable in salsas, casseroles, or just heating it up as a side dish. The flavor was pretty basic, but it did have sea salt added to it, and this added a little bit of something extra. The texture was really the shining piece here and what put GreenWise closer to the top of my list.

While GreenWise is a good brand at Publix, one of my favorite private labels at Target is Good & Gather. I haven't found many varieties of food by the brand that I haven't enjoyed, and at $0.55 for the can of corn, you really can get the price. In fact, Great Value was the only canned corn less expensive than Good & Gather, and this brand is much better than Walmart's private label.

While I generally expected the corn to taste pretty similar, I was very pleasantly surprised by what came out of this can. The salt had been added, but it was a very bright flavor that tasted vibrant and extra in ways that I didn't expect. Between the price and flavor of the corn, this is absolutely the pick. It's going to work as well in a casserole as it is in anything else you would want to do with it.

I am easily swayed by a product label. So, because Green Valley recommended salsa on the side of its can, that's all I could think about when I sampled Green Valley. I must say, Green Valley's texture had a substantial crunch to it that felt exactly like you would enjoy in a quality corn salsa. I could imagine this corn working well as a base flavor with everything else layered on top of it.

However, there are certainly situations where this might not be the most ideal corn for your recipe, and it's for this reason that it wasn't my absolute favorite canned corn I tried. Even still, that you get this level of crunch and flavor from something that comes out of a can is quite impressive. There's a definite fresh taste and feel to it that many of the other brands lacked.

Growing up in the Midwest, I've noticed that there were certain brands that were much more common than they are in Central Florida. Green Giant is apparently one of them. A brand I remember from my childhood, it baffled me how difficult it was to find in my local grocery stores. However, when I looked on the side of the can, I finally understood why. Green Giant is distributed in Janesville, Wisconsin. This is a town not far from where I grew up, so it's also not a big mystery as to why it was such a mainstay in our pantry.

Even still, I was really curious to see how Green Giant would hold up against the other brands, and I must say, of all the canned brands I tried, this was easily my favorite. The sweet corn has a very authentic Midwestern taste to it, and although the kernels were a little on the small side, the texture has the mixture of softness and sturdiness that you want, and the flavor is substantial.

To get the best picture of what I was dealing with for each can, I sampled each brand right out of the can. I didn't even microwave or heat them up because I really wanted to know exactly what it would taste like just grabbing a scoop from the can itself. Then, I assessed the texture and taste of each brand. In ranking them, I took these two factors into account, while price also played a part if it was interesting in some way.

For example, overly expensive options but with a low quality flavor or texture would impact my ranking, just as rather inexpensive corn but a high quality would possibly impact the ranking. I looked for a balance in texture between a hard kernel and a soft one and really aimed for something that would be versatile in its use. For flavor, it should taste like a vibrant, fresh corn. Ones that were too boring or watery didn't do very well.