If you’re like me, you have a fridge full of condiments. The doors and shelves are filled with jams and jellies, mayos and mustards, and sauces of all kinds. These bottles and jars are key for simple things, like topping hot dogs and hamburgers, but they’re also great to grab when a pan sauce needs a little punch or that sandwich you just made tastes a little ho-hum. If you have a solid condiment stash, you can mix a few things together and make your cooking instantly better.
I’m a fan of lots of condiments, but mustard is probably my favorite. I typically have a range of mustards in my fridge—yellow, Dijon, spicy brown, whole grain and maybe some Chinese or German mustard. And you can’t forget about honey mustard. Sure, you can make honey mustard yourself (it’s just honey + mustard), but with so many options at the grocery store, it’s easy to have a ready-to-go option on hand.
When I was asked to do a taste test to find the best honey mustard, I thought it would be pretty easy because there are only two primary ingredients. But I soon learned that not all honey mustards are the same. Some are thick (perfect for dunking), while others are pourable (great for salads). There are also brands that are silky smooth and others that have a little more texture.
After trying our way through eight popular honey mustard brands, my taste testers and I were able to crown a winner. Read on for what you need to know before your next shopping trip.
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What Is Honey Mustard?
Honey mustard is a simple combination of honey and mustard (usually yellow or Dijon mustard). The result is a taste that’s sweet and tangy. Brands often add their own twist with lemon juice, spices like paprika and pepper, vinegar or even mayo. A classic honey mustard should be mellow and sweet. Spicy honey mustard has more prominent spices, like chili flakes or cayenne pepper, that give it some heat.
Honey mustard is great for spreading on a sandwich and makes the perfect dipping sauce for pretzels, chicken tenders or French fries, or whisk it into homemade salad dressing for a sweet-tangy hit of flavor. The sweetness of the honey tempers the mustard’s bite, which makes it a great option for picky eaters, like kids.
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Courtesy Kellye Fox
How I Tested These Honey Mustards
These eight brands are grocery store staples, but some were hard to locate in my Chicagoland area. In an ideal world, all the brands would be available at the same store, but I was able to find these at my local Albertsons, Walmart, Target and Strack & Van Til.
As we normally do for our Parade-approved taste tests, I covered the labels of each bottle and marked them with a number to ensure that were were tasting them blindly. My team, which includes my husband, son and daughter, tasted the honey mustard first and then dipped a mini pretzel in it. Using food to rank condiments gives us a better idea of how it would fare in real-life situations. In the honey mustard test, we were looking for a well-balanced condiment that wasn’t too sweet or bitter.
Because we used small ramekins to sample each brand, we started to notice a pattern during the tasting. We found that the darker mustards seemed to contain too much vinegar for our taste, while the lighter brown mustards had a better distribution of the two flavors. Keep reading to find out who ranked the best.
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Courtesy Kellye Fox
8 Popular Honey Mustards, Ranked From Worst to Best
8. Inglehoffer Honey Mustard
Courtesy Kellye Fox
Unfortunately, Inglehoffer’s sweet honey mustard ranked last because there was an enormous level of vinegar that almost reminded us of horseradish. Even after multiple tastings, we never found the sweet honey that it boasted on its label.
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7. Great Value Honey Mustard
Courtesy Kellye Fox
Great Value’s honey mustard tasted like plain Dijon mustard. There wasn’t a presence of sweetness, so the initial (and follow-up) tastes were overpowering. This could be fixed by adding honey at home, but that’s not what we were expecting, so we ranked this option near the bottom.
6. Koops’ Honey Mustard
Courtesy Kellye Fox
We found Koops’ Honey Mustard sauce to be bland, but not as bad as Great Value’s version. Overall, it had too much vinegar, giving the mustard too much of a tangy punch. It needed more honey to soften the taste. Looking at the ingredients, vinegar is first, followed by water, mustard seed, sugar, salt and honey, which explains what we thought was an imbalanced flavor.
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5. French’s Honey Mustard
Courtesy Kellye Fox
What I appreciated the most about French’s honey mustard was the short ingredient list and no artificial flavors, but when we tasted this option, we thought it was way too mustardy. The texture was thick, which was excellent for our pretzels, but it needed more honey to balance the tang from the mustard seed.
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4. Market Pantry Honey Mustard
Courtesy Kellye Fox
Target’s Market Pantry brand honey mustard wasn’t quite a winner for us because the mustard flavor was too overpowering and too tangy. It had a one-note taste that needed a honey upgrade to offset the distilled white vinegar.
3. Kinder Honey Mustard Dipping Sauce
Courtesy Kellye Fox
I didn’t care for this honey mustard because it had a smokiness like barbecue sauce. Kinder’s honey mustard sauce is a combination of whole grain and yellow mustard, honey, tomato puree, brown sugar, vinegar and Worcestershire sauce. It would be more suitable for something barbecue-related than a traditional honey mustard for dipping nuggets and fries.
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2. Chick-fil-A Honey Mustard Sauce
Courtesy Kellye Fox
My son immediately spotted the shape of this fast food brand’s bottle, so he was excited to dive in. The sauce was semi-thick with a beautiful golden color, but we were divided about the taste, which was more of a sweet heat. Overall, we liked the mild heat of the mustard seed and the sweet undertones from the honey, but the balance could have been adjusted, so it landed in the runner-up spot.
1. Sweet Baby Ray Honey Mustard Dipping Sauce
Courtesy Kellye Fox
Visually, Sweet Baby Ray’s honey mustard sauce was lighter than the others, almost reminiscent of dijonnaise (a creamy mustard sauce). My mouth literally watered when I smelled it because there was an immediate aroma of mustard and honey. It was thick with a near-perfect balance of honey, mustard and vinegar. This could be used as a sandwich spread, in wraps or as a dipping sauce. Its balanced flavor and versatility helped it earn our top spot.
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