Taste Test: Best Ready-to-Use Filipino-Style Spaghetti Sauce

Before discovering the vongoles and marinaras of the world, one’s first memories of pasta were as sweet as childhood—spaghetti served with bright red hotdogs and tasty ground meat cooked in a flavorful red orange sauce.

For many Pinoys, Filipino-style spaghetti was our first pasta dish. Meaty, tasty, and—most importantly–sweet. Very sweet. Whether we had it at home or at Jollibee, it would never miss out on that crucial element.

With nostalgia and birthdays on our mind, we decided to take a trip down memory lane with this iconic Pinoy dish, by trying out some popular ready-to-use Filipino-style spaghetti sauces.

How we tested

We purchased six available Filipino-Style spaghetti sauces from different supermarkets. We then grouped them into two categories: Frozen Sauces and Packed Sauces.

The team tested each brand based on the following criteria:

• Sweetness Level. What is Pinoy spaghetti without the sweetness? The answer: Italian. What we’re looking for here is a sweet taste that’s prominent, but not too overwhelming that it ruins the entire sauce.
• Versatility. The sauce’s ability to be used not just as spaghetti sauce, but as substitutes or components to other recipes (e.g. marinades, dips). This can be a good or a bad thing, depending on the sauce’s overall flavor.
• Sauce Readiness. Overall performance as a spaghetti sauce of a spaghetti dish. Does the sauce work well enough with the pasta to make a perfect bowl of Pinoy spaghetti, or does it simply coat the pasta with sauce and move on?

Based on our results, we’ve assigned each brand a respective superlative that helps describe its best use.

Packed spaghetti sauces

These sauces are the most accessible spaghetti sauces on the market. They come in a wide range of sizes at very affordable prices.

After testing, however, we realized that once paired with spaghetti noodles, these sauces just weren’t enough alone. We suggest a little more cooking plus additional ingredients, like ground meat and hotdogs, to truly create a more complete (and better tasting!) dish.

Not Just For Spaghetti: UFC Sweet Filipino Style Spaghetti Sauce

UFC’s foray into spaghetti sauce ended up being a reminder of a whole other birthday party staple. We found that the sauce’s smoky, peppery flavors make it a perfect building block for a marinade or Pinoy barbecue sauce.  Surprising, given that the packaging proudly advertised Parmesan cheese as an ingredient.

Once it was mixed with spaghetti, the UFC sauce simply slipped onto the noodle, and tasted more like a spaghetti sauce component than a finished, ready-to-eat product.