The Grocery Store Salsa Verde You Should Leave On The Shelves

Salsa verde, made from green tomatillos, doesn't get as much love as its nacho dip counterparts, red salsa and guacamole; apparently, you can be spicy or you can be green, but you can't be both. Still, if you've ever stocked up on those neat little green packets from Taco Bell, you can go right to the grocery store and pick up a whole jar of the stuff. We here at the Takeout went to the trouble of trying as many salsa verdes options as we could to discern the best and the worst — and, well, it wasn't too hard to pick the worst of the bunch: Chi-Chi's Mild Salsa Verde.

We were put off by the texture, which was "extremely gloopy — in person, it looked more like a tomatillo purée than a traditional salsa." But while an iffy texture can sometimes be overcome by exceptional flavor, this salsa verde tasted even worse than it looked. "Unfortunately, the taste of the salsa made me gag — its flavor was extremely flat and tasted like nothing more than a watered-down version of a traditional red salsa." We already have Chi-Chi's red salsa, which thankfully fared much better than its green counterpart in our jarred salsa rankings. We don't need another version of it that's worse.

Chi-Chi's already had several marks against it, but there was one ingredient in particular that we found especially troublesome: high fructose corn syrup. Because corn is so heavily subsidized by the federal government, high fructose corn syrup is the go-to sweetener for major food companies, despite a litany of harmful side effects, including an increased risk of obesity and diabetes. (Not that sugar is much better for you, of course, but the point still stands.)

This would be one thing if the corn syrup enhanced the flavor in any way that mattered, but "it didn't do anything to improve the taste of the salsa." In fact, most of the other major companies that make salsa and salsa verde don't use the stuff at all. If you're after salsa verde, go for our top choice, Late July; alternatively, you could try On the Border, our favorite brand of red salsa.