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Forget Rao's, Costco Has A Fan-Favorite Pasta Sauce For Less

While making your own marinara sauce is pretty easy, there's something to be said for the convenience of having a jar of the shelf-stable, store-bought stuff on hand. One kind that's been super-trendy in recent years is Rao's, a sauce that really does taste homemade but tends to be somewhat pricier than many of the other brands on the market. Some Costco shoppers, therefore, have been pleased to see a similar brand of marinara sauce called Victoria sold as a lower-priced alternative. Some redditors said they liked the flavor of Victoria's marinara better than Rao's as well as preferring its lower price point.

Unlike Kirkland Signature, Victoria isn't a Costco house brand, although its distribution does seem to be more limited than that of Rao's. Some Target stores may sell this product, however, and the Giant grocery chain carries it, as well. It can also be purchased from Amazon where it again costs slightly less (about a buck a jar) than Rao's.

The real secret ingredient is a missing one

The main thing that sets both Rao's and Victoria apart from a sea of other store-bought marinara sauces is the fact that neither sauce contains added sugar. Many store-bought brands including Ragu, Prego, Bertolli, and even Newman's Own are surprisingly high in sugar, and yes, plenty of homemade marinara recipes also call for this ingredient, but it's entirely unnecessary.

If you like sugar in your sauce, by all means, use it. You can also make your marinara more umami with fish sauce or jazz up your store-bought sauce with extra aromatics. But anyone who insists that sugar is a must for pasta sauce is flat-out wrong. The usual claim is that this addition counteracts the acidity of the tomatoes, but neither canned nor fresh tomatoes are particularly tangy, and adding sugar to the sauce can only exacerbates digestive effects like reflux.

Some speculate that sugar was adopted by Italian immigrants to hide the taste of low-quality American tomatoes, but this, too, is nonsense. My great aunt Rosie, born in New York's Little Italy to immigrant parents, never heard of San Marzano tomatoes and wouldn't have shelled out for the pricey product if she had, but she never, ever sugared a sauce. In keeping with family tradition, I, too, use cheap canned tomatoes and wouldn't dream of adding sugar, and up until recently, I assumed all store-bought pasta sauces were too-sweet, nasty, and to be avoided at all costs. While I'm still more inclined to make my own marinara, the existence of Victoria, Rao's, and similar sugar-free sauces has led me to soften my stance.

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