Ranking the Top 10 Worcestershire Sauce Brands from Worst to Best

Chances are you have a bottle in your kitchen, and chances are you can’t properly pronounce its name. Borrowing its moniker from the English county where the savory sauce was first concocted nearly 200 years ago, Worcestershire sauce (pronounced, so says Merriam-Webster, “wu-ster-shir”) has been for many years a kitchen staple, a snazzy addition to hearty meat-based recipes, a weekend bloody mary flavor enhancer, and, a great way to elevate your meals.

Classic Worcestershire sauce — of Lea & Perrins fame — originated by accident in the early 19th century, reputedly as the fermented byproduct of a concoction devised by Worcester-based chemists John Wheeley Lea and William Henry Perrins. The attempt to replicate a recipe from Bengal, India may have at first been a funky failure, but after fermentation, the combination of vinegar, molasses, onions, garlic, cloves, and anchovies yielded a savory, umami flavor the duo began bottling and selling in 1837.

While Lea & Perrins remains a household name, there is a bevy of varieties bearing the Worcestershire sauce description on most grocery store shelves today. How do the other brands stand up against the “OG” Lea & Perrins brand? Or is there only one true Worcestershire sauce?

To tackle these mouthwatering questions, I gathered 10 of the most popular Worcestershire sauces available either online or at the major grocery store chains and subjected them to some discerning palates (namely mine and a few recruits who are family members and Worcestershire sauce connoisseurs) to rank them from worst to best according to taste, ingredients, overall value, and availability.

Pure and mild is how this marinade-boosting condiment is described on its label. It’s also touted as fat-free, gluten-free, low-calorie, and low-sodium. Unfortunately, when stacked against other brands in the Worcestershire sauce category, it compares as relatively taste-free as well. Before you sniff and scoff with disdain, as would a resident of the town of Worcester in the ceremonial county of Worcestershire, let us consider the positives.

First, it is worth noting that Robbie’s doesn’t label its Worcestershire a “sauce,” and it’s not. The delicate liquid is nearly drinkable in its mildness. Second, it’s all natural. This means no high fructose corn syrup and no artificial flavorings or colors. Third, it is vegan, which is why — as do a few other brands in this ranking — Robbie’s replaces the key ingredient of most Worcestershire sauce, anchovy, with molasses. Immediately, the typical salty, briny, anchovy flavor is swapped with the caramelized flavor of the molasses. In fact, the inclusion of alternative ingredients is plentiful: apple cider vinegar instead of white vinegar, molasses, white grape concentrate, tapioca, and garlic and onions in their powdered form. These all-natural ingredients and the fact that Robbie’s is not the product of a mass-market distributor means the price tag is also higher in comparison to others in this listing. While I wanted to love this one and was most excited to try it, it lacked the full-bodied texture of its competitors and wouldn’t be the first bottle I would grab when searching for a true Worcestershire sauce.

It should come as no surprise that marinade giant Heinz dipped its own fingers into the sauce of Worcester and bottles a concoction under its own label, but this one might illicit a thumbs down from the Worcestershire sauce connoisseur. What may come as a surprise is that the ketchup company Heinz actually acquired the Lea & Perrins brand in 2005, making Heinz Worcestershire Sauce a proverbial cousin by marriage of the original Worcestershire creation. Like many half-cousins twice removed, the two sauces retain similar characteristics, albeit with some record-scratching distinctions.

For its Worcestershire sauce, Heinz claims to use its own aging process to combine white vinegar, water, molasses, soy sauce, flavorings, and — trigger alert — high fructose corn syrup. While I won’t get into a debate over the distinctions of high fructose corn syrup, this somewhat watery sauce is immediately sweet and overwhelmingly peppery to the taste. It quickly reminded me that sensory overload is often a characteristic of cheap and mass-produced food products. While it is one of the least expensive on this list, and Heinz says it is fat-free and calorie-free and “great for those keeping Kosher,” I would give this one a pass in favor of other options.

Proudly declaring that it does not contain high fructose corn syrup, Target’s Market Pantry brand Worcestershire Sauce does, however, combine a “bioengineered food ingredient” with vinegar, molasses, and seasonings for its generic offering. I am not sure which of the ingredients is bioengineered, but it’s perhaps the anchovy-esque blend of cured anchovies and defatted soy flour.

Like an illegitimate offspring of Lea & Perrins and A.1. Sauce, the Market Pantry Worcestershire Sauce is a thicker sauce harnessed by the same robust flavor that anchovies lend to “true” Worcestershire sauces. While it falls in line with the cost-effectiveness of a generic product, I was not completely comfortable with the non-specified bioengineered food product description in the ingredients, and I shall remind you that we are comparing Worcestershire sauces, not steak sauces, here.

Perhaps the most surprising of the sauces I reviewed, particularly in the mindset of anyone with prejudice against generic brands, Walmart’s Great Value Worcestershire Sauce presents a surprisingly smooth yet complex flavor profile that balances the sweet and sour nature of the tamarind fruit extract with rich molasses and tangy vinegar. I was surprised at how well this sauce stood up in the flavor category when tasted alone, as well as when sampled with a steak complement.

However, this generic Worcestershire sauce equivalent does contain the great no-no ingredient: high fructose corn syrup. Perhaps that is where my Gen X taste buds find a homey familiarity, but for the purposes of this exercise, it’s a demerit. That corn syrup is complemented by white vinegar, molasses, salt, onions, anchovies, garlic, paprika, sugar syrup, and “natural flavor,” planting the tasty yet questionable sauce in terms of healthy or quality ingredients lower on this ranking.

At least the folks at French’s put the pronunciation on their bottle; I appreciated the suggested pronunciation of Worcestershire as “wus-ter-sher.” They also take a bold step in the direction of taming this tangy condiment, calling it “the everything sauce.” There is something to be said about brands that produce every kind of sauce, including everything sauces — something like being a jack of all trades and a master of none, but French’s does a fairly decent job with its Classic Worcestershire Sauce.

The mustard brand stepped out of its lane in 1941, introducing its own blend of vinegar, molasses, spices, and anchovy to rival Lea & Perrins under the French’s name. I definitely appreciated the adherence to the original ingredients and intention of Worcestershire sauce here. The sauce was full-bodied with the amount of depth that I was desperately seeking after tasting and re-tasting so many Worcestershire sauces. I also appreciated that the brand has stayed away from any artificial flavorings. This sauce definitely packs a powerful, tangy, and peppery punch, but at the end of the day, the vinegar taste was overpowering, making French’s Classic Worcestershire Sauce something I would advise a budget-conscious chef seeking a quick marinade to select only in a pinch.

On the Worcestershire sauce spectrum, the Wan Ja Shan Organic Worcestershire Sauce shares a similar profile to soy sauce with one key distinction: soy sauce is based upon fermented soybeans, while Worcestershire sauce is derived from a more complex combination of anchovy, vinegar, and molasses. On the shelf, the Wan Ja Shan Organic Worcestershire Sauce may either be overlooked or mistaken for a soy sauce. It is vegan and gluten-free, yet for the vegans in the audience, this is a refreshingly authentic Worcestershire sauce that retains the fullness of flavor without the anchovy.

Wan Ja Shan’s list of all-natural, organic ingredients includes organic vinegar, organic and gluten-free tamari, organic sugar, organic garlic and onion powders, and organic spices. While there is a somewhat overpowering initial vinegar taste when not curbed by a complementary food, there is an overall lightness to this sauce, with sweet balanced with sour. I think this will make a great marinade and rate this vegan option higher for its authenticity to the original Worcestershire intention as well as its all-organic ingredients. 

Touted as “America’s Worcestershire,” this sauce is a recent entrant on the Worcestershire sauce scene and comes in around $7 a bottle at most grocery stores. Bear & Burton’s W Sauce was established in 2021 and derived from a 100-year-old family recipe. Immediately noticeable is that W Sauce is both lighter in color and much more viscous in texture than its counterparts, suggesting that this sauce has a lot going on. Indeed, the ingredients tickle the tastebuds like a great midwestern barbecue sauce: vinegar, tomatoes, brown sugar, onions, spices, anchovy paste, garlic, green serrano pepper mash, and spices.

While I greatly enjoyed the rich combination of these ingredients and appreciated Bear & Burton’s founders’ decision to share this family recipe with the world, the immediate tangy-sweet tomato flavor makes this sauce deviate sharply from any other Worcestershire sauce. It is here that you may begin to realize, as I did with the initial taste testing, that the term “Worcestershire” is about as loose of a definition as one can bestow on a vinegar-based sauce. As for Bear & Burton’s W Sauce, the serrano peppers invite an element of heat, and for this, I do appreciate the “America’s Worcestershire” distinction.

The Japanese Bull-Dog Worcestershire sauce is yet another zig in the endless zig-zag of Worcestershire sauces. Informally known as “Japan’s BBQ sauce,” Bull-Dog was not intended as a marinade or cooking ingredient but rather as a palatable sauce for Japanese taste buds to pair with Western food. 

True to its roots, Bull-Dog firmly embraces the glutamate-ish fifth flavor of umami within a unique yet secret combination of fruit, vegetables, and spices. Vinegar remains the base of the Bull-Dog sauce, followed by concentrated apples, tomatoes, prunes, onions, lemons, and carrots. Anchovy extract plants the Bull-Dog sauce firmly in the Worcestershire realm. While Bull-Dog is a much less viscous sauce, certainly than its predecessor on this list, it gives a light and fruity sweetness yet retains a complexity that allows it to pair well with fried foods such as fried fish and tempura. It also comes in a bit higher on the price list, available for roughly $8.49 a bottle on Amazon.

I was really excited about this one, perhaps because it was tasty on its own, and its thicker consistency and savory sweetness slightly reminded me of fish sauces I had enjoyed on the streets of Paris. However, the sweetness of the apple strayed too far from the Worcestershire sauce realm for me to include it as the top contender.

By far the most costly of the sauces on this list — coming in at $10 directly from the brand’s website or nearly $14 per bottle on Amazon — the Savory Spice Worcestershire sauce is very attractively packaged and immediately lists its selling features on the bottle: It’s vegan, it’s gluten-free, and it’s “bottle-aged” for 60 days. I know that most of our Lea & Perrins bottles have been in our refrigerators for at least five times that amount of time, but just go with it. 

Like Bull-Dog, the Japanese predecessor on this list, the Savory Spice Worcestershire sauce was inspired by traditional Worcestershire sauce with an umami kick. The absence of anchovies lets the stronger ingredients, such as molasses and tamarind, do the work — and they do so successfully. Cider vinegar ensures a more subtle first-impression vinegar experience, while molasses, tamari, tamarind, water, rice vinegar, and spices, including garlic and onion, round out a smooth yet rich and savory taste that is a welcome Worcestershire complement to sophisticated dishes. I felt that this sauce did the trick of holding true to the Worcestershire sauce intention while playing on the combination of sophisticated ingredients. In fact, the caliber of ingredients alone makes this one a worthwhile addition to your pantry, as a “Worcestershire Sauce Reserve,” if you will, when you are willing to pay the price.

You know it from the beige paper wrapping, which, for some reason, none of us ever fully remove from the bottle. As the bedrock of the Worcestershire sauce institution and self-acknowledged as the one truly authentic Worcestershire sauce, Lea & Perrins does keep secret the exact spices used to round out its list of ingredients, which comprise white vinegar, molasses, sugar, water, salt, onions, anchovies, garlic, cloves, and tamarind extract. 

Because it is the only true Worcestershire sauce in the Worcestershire story, Lea & Perrins is tough to beat, so for this purpose, I must include the caveat that it is, in many ways, the control in a grand experiment of vinegar, anchovy, and molasses combinations. Uniquely, Lea & Perrins ferments not only its anchovies but also garlic cloves and whole onions, which gives this sauce a balanced depth of flavor that is noticeably absent in other sauces that use powdered spices or powdered garlic and onion. 

The Lea & Perrins sauce sidesteps the thickness of a steak sauce but holds its own as a complement to steaks, fish, or hamburgers. Of course, I’ve also used this as a marinade for meatballs and meatloaf and other recipes where creative inspiration called for a savory harness to give the dish that perfect je ne sais quois. In short, Lea & Perrins is balanced. It’s savory and sweet, thick but not viscous, and uniquely, for lack of a better word, “Worcestershire.”

While there seems to be no exact standard or list of ingredients to which a Worcestershire sauce can claim authenticity, unless you prefer to make your own sauce, the brands and types of “Wuss terr sherr” or “What’s this here” sauces available on the market today are as individual as your pronunciation of its name.

Worcestershire sauce’s identity crisis lies in the broad spectrum of products bearing the Worcestershire description. The Worcestershire sauce pendulum swings in flavor and consistency from soy sauce-ish to steak sauce-ish to barbecue sauce-ish, making this particular condiment a conundrum of flavor and texture. That being said, should you send someone to the store to grab Worcestershire sauce and they bring back one of the bottles on this list, you may have to pivot your dish and expectations accordingly.

To properly rank the swath of products using the Worcestershire name, I had to carefully select by taste and choice of ingredients incorporated to yield the original flavor intention, which is tangy, umami (not salty), and complex. I also considered ease of availability and price point in this ranking. 

I purchased 10 of the most accessible Worcestershire sauce products available through Amazon, at national chain stores such as Walmart and Target, and at chain grocery stores. I then sampled these in random order, both plain and paired with steak. I must note that I defaulted to the taste and consistency of the plain taste ranking, particularly because while the intended usage of Worcestershire sauce is debatable, it would be unfair to pair a brand intended for marinade or as a complement to fish, for example, with steak. The taste testing was conducted over a period of one hour, and I later returned to re-test the top three compared with the bottom three to be sure of my opinion.