Guacamole is probably the best condiment ever. It’s rich, buttery, filling, healthy — a culinary marvel. It instantly elevates any dish it’s involved in. It makes tacos, burritos, toast, salads, and cheeseburgers somehow better than they already are. There isn’t a single thing guacamole doesn’t improve, it even makes salsa better and salsa is already pretty fantastic.
Best of all, it’s incredibly easy to make at home. The hardest part about making good guacamole is knowing how to pick the perfect avocado. Once you’ve managed that (look for firm and balanced but neither rigid nor soft — like a bicep that’s not being flexed), all you have to do is cut your perfectly ripe avo-orb, peel the skin off, throw it in a bowl, and mash it up with some salt, lime juice, black pepper, and a few other seasonings of your choice.
Onions, garlic, tomatoes, cilantro, a chopped jalapeño (or serrano if you’re fun), are all optional. Sure, we can debate all day long what does and doesn’t belong in guacamole (some people swear by garlic powder), but the margin for error here is huge. Screwing it up is unlikely.
Alas… sometimes, you don’t have the time or the will to whip up great guac. We make no judgment on that front (okay, a little judgment — check our easy recipe!). The good news is that there are plenty of supermarket guacamoles to choose from. The bad news? Most are middling. Some are pure trash.
So who makes the best grocery guac? We set out to find out by picking up eight different guacamoles from the supermarket, blind taste-testing them, and ranking them from worst to best.
The Lineup and Methodology
There are many ways to enjoy guacamole, so for this taste test, we went with the most basic of all — as a dip for chips. Out of sight, I had my girlfriend scoop up guacamole from eight different grocery store options and tried them one by one, picking out as many tasting notes as I could. Great guacamole, in my book, should still taste primarily like avocado, fresh, rich, almost buttery, with some added complexity from the additional seasonings and the right amount of lime. So I’ll be looking for that.
I can tell you this straight up, none of these market brands beat even the most basic of homemade guacamoles (avocado, lime, salt), but some come pretty damn close. Here’s our tasting lineup:
- Trader Joe’s — Organic Chunky Homestyle Guacamole
- Herdez — Traditional Spicy Guacamole
- Simple Truth — Traditional Guacamole
- Sabra — Guacamole Classic
- Whole Foods 365 — Traditional Guacamole
- Casa Sanchez — Real Guacamole
- Wholly Guacamole — Classic
- Signature Cafe — Traditional Guacamole
Let’s get to tasting!
Part 1: The Tasting:
Taste 1
Very fresh with a hint of onion on the nose. It’s a bit salty, with a noticeable onion after taste. It’s only two notes, and overall comes off a bit boring. I feel like even a novice would struggle at making guacamole this bland.
Taste 2
Artificial on the nose with a sort of chemical smell. It’s pretty disturbing and what I imagine jarred guacamole is like, if there is such a thing. I didn’t see any at the four stores I visited, which is a good sign.
Oh yeah, about this guacamole… it has bits of tomato in it. I say that because I can see them, not taste them. Overall it has a bitter but empty flavor to it with a sort of barf-y after taste.
Taste 3
Onion on the nose with a hint of fresh avocado. It has a very pungent smell to it. On the palate you’re hit by a strong kick of heat, I love the simmering spice but the end result is a dull and bitter guac. The hot pepper flavor tries to mask the mediocrity but it sadly still cuts through and the whole thing ends up tasting kind of dirty.
Taste 4
This one is really weird. There is a strange pasty smell here, and the flavor actually tastes a little bit like glue. Also, what is with that ketchup-like consistency? On the aftertaste, I got a weird, cool mint flavor, with an off-putting clinical quality to it. Like medicine.
This brand is putting something in this product that truly doesn’t belong in guacamole.
Taste 5
Wow, I’m surprised how good this is. I was about to leave this tasting thinking “maybe I don’t like storebought guacamole,” so I’m glad this one slapped some sense back into me. If I had one complaint, it’s that there is a lot going on here — I’m tasting cilantro, tomato, lime, avocado, none of the flavors stick around long enough to really get a sense of what’s dominant. But I’d be happy to eat dip after dip to figure it out.
What I like is that there is balance. It’s buttery, fresh, creamy, but not overworked, tastes like a perfectly ripened avocado, but has that slight hint of lime, cool cilantro zest, onion, and salt with a hint of tomato umami to really satisfy the palate.
Taste 6
On the nose, it’s really natural. Smells like fresh-made guacamole but it’s way too sour on the palate. It’s dominated by lime and onion and tastes like someone’s first attempt at guacamole. This can be fixed, it needs crushed black pepper to balance it out and maybe even some water to dilute the lime. (Clearly, all this citrus is being added as a preservative but it’s still too much.)
Taste 7
This is the most noticeably chunky and fresh-looking guacamole of any of them so far. It’s a bit heavy on the onions at the nose, but the chunky blend of avocado, tomato, and onion looks delicious. On the palate, it’s… pretty bad. Bummer.
It’s weirdly sweet with a cheap and dull onion flavor on the aftertaste. It’s almost as if this one was made with fresh onions and onion powder.
Taste 8
Interesting, this is the only guacamole in this blind taste test that has a noticeable garlic smell to it. This is either going to be really good or really bad.
And… it’s bad. The flavor is dominated by onion and garlic and it drowns out all the fresh and interesting nutty and buttery qualities of avocado. Too bad.
Part 2: The Ranking:
8. Wholly Guacamole — Classic (Taste 4)
Price: $4.98
Don’t ever buy this stuff. Seriously, it doesn’t taste anything like guacamole. That might be because Wholly Guacamole puts vinegar in their guac to help keep it shelf-stable. So this is essentially jarred guacamole, but they sell it in this small tub to fool you into thinking it’s fresh.
The Bottom Line:
Don’t buy it, don’t eat it, don’t even look at it. Guacamole has never and should never taste this bad.
7. Casa Sanchez — Real Guacamole (Taste 7)
Price: $8.79
Guacamole this expensive has no right to taste this flavorless. Whole Foods sells this brand alongside their own in-store guacamole for a premium price. I’ll admit that this guacamole looks good, it’s chunky, colorful, deeply green, everything good guacamole should be, but the flavor is just wrong. That probably comes down to the ingredients which include cucumber and lemon juice which are both weird ingredients to put into guacamole.
No lime? But you said this was “real guacamole!”
The Bottom Line:
Expensive and strangely sweet. Skip this one.
6. Herdez — Traditional Spicy Guacamole (Taste 3)
Price: $5.99
I love spicy guacamole, but this just isn’t it. While it legitimately brings the heat — even people with a high spice tolerance would have trouble with this one — the dirty and bitter after taste just isn’t worth it for that pleasing burn.
The Bottom Line:
If you want to make your store-bought guacamole spicy, just buy a serrano, chop it up yourself, and mix it in. It’ll be better than this.
5. Simple Truth — Traditional Guacamole (Taste 2)
Price: $2.99
I can only guess by the label of this guacamole that it’s attempting to be some sort of healthy guacamole option as if guacamole wasn’t inherently healthy. I was curious about that barf-like after taste and I’m going to go ahead and credit that to the use of white pepper.
The Bottom Line:
White pepper in guacamole? Get out of here.
4. Whole Foods 365 — Traditional Guacamole (Taste 8)
Price: $3.99
Whole Foods sells two different fresh guacamole options and both are bad, which means if you shop at Whole Foods and you buy guacamole, you’ve only ever had bad guacamole. It’s not even really a matter of opinion, this guacamole isn’t good. There is no world where a single avocado, some salt, and a quarter of a lime don’t get you better guacamole than this. You don’t even need to taste it while you make it to do better than this wretched attempt.
What is with all the garlic and onion powder Whole Foods? What did guacamole ever do to you?
The Bottom Line:
The best guacamole you can get from Whole Foods starts with buying a ripe avocado.
3. Sabra — Guacamole Classic (Taste 6)
Price: $2.98
From the label: “Wondering why this has an extra hint of lime? Might be because it tastes like delicious homemade. Or it might be because the lime helps stay green longer! We won’t say more”
It’s definitely the latter. The overuse of lime is almost criminal here. Lime and onion is about the only thing you taste here. It’s telling that we are this close to number one and I still have yet to find guacamole I really like.
The Bottom Line:
Sabra tastes like the fast-food version of guacamole. Depending on who you are, that’ll be a good or bad thing.
2. Signature Cafe — Traditional Guacamole
Price: $3.99
I’ve hated most of the guacamole brands in this ranking so far, but Signature Cafe’s Traditional Guacamole gets the job done. It’s simple, with a nice fresh flavor. The label says it has tomatillos and jalapeños in it but I honestly taste none of that. It at the very least, doesn’t taste like garbage.
The Bottom Line:
Surprisingly good for market-made guacamole. It lacks complexity and flavor, but it tastes like avocado. It’s a low bar, but it’s a bar.
1. Trader Joe’s — Organic Chunky Homestyle Guacamole
Price: $3.99
This surprised me. I’m not a Trader Joe’s stan. I think it’s overpriced for what you get and has excessively wasteful packaging. It’s a weird sort of Disney version of a small neighborhood market. Having said that, they actually know how to produce delicious guacamole. It’s complex, fresh, the consistency is on point — it’s the closest you’re going to get to the magic of homemade guacamole from a grocer (unless you go to the Mexican grocer where they often just home. make. guac and sell it.).
Trader Joe’s uses all the right ingredients, Hass avocados, freshly chopped onions and tomatoes, lime, cilantro, and garlic. It lacks the charm and deep flavor of homemade guacamole but doesn’t taste too overworked or factory-produced.
The Bottom Line:
Really the only store-bought guacamole you should ever actively seek out.
The Big Takeaway
Just make it yourself. Honestly, the grocery options are convenient, but the flavor doesn’t compare. Even the best of the guacamoles on this list are lifeless in comparison to the real thing. Start simple. Avocado, a touch of salt, a crack of black pepper for earthiness, and a squeeze of lime. Taste it as you make it — not only will it be a more rewarding experience, it’ll be a more delicious one, and that’s the most important thing.