Let’s say you want to make spaghetti.
One catch, though. You have to use a canned or jarred brand of sauce, you cannot make your own.
Consequently, you cannot add anything else to the already premade sauces.
So, based on these factors, which natural, “as-is” out of the jar/can, spaghetti sauce do you go with?
Poll to come.
In before the poll, so I get to answer it my way.
Brown some butter, drizzle it over, sprinkle on mizithra cheese and add whatever basil I happen to have on hand (fresh or dried).
(kaylasmom can’t really tolerate tomato-based sauces. If I have to buy a jar of sauce, it will be whatever alfredo sauce is on sale.)
I’m not all that picky about sauce, I usually just look at the selection and pick one that sounds and looks good and try it. Some are great, some are awful, live and learn.
My go to sauce is apparently local/regional enough that I can’t even find a picture of it online.
Another really good one is Giada’s Creamy Tomato Sauce.
Here’s the flaw in your poll. I can only vote for one sauce. Unfair.
The spread on those sauces runs from 1 to 10. So, what’s the use of a flawed poll?
Since you didn’t mention them Mezzetta sauces are not bad, common enough where I am though I don’t know if they distribute outside of California.
But I’ll eat a few of the ones on your list, including Paul Newman, Rao, Classico as well as Mario Batali’s stuff. Prego is a little too sweet for me these days and much as I loved it as a kid, I’ve long since lost my taste for Ragu. Also Barilla sauces have an omnipresent overly olive-tinged flavor I don’t care much for.
Don’t do it much now, but when I made big batches of pasta in the olden days I occasionally combined jars from two different manufacturers together just for the hell of it. Occasionally that trumped the originals ;). It’s rare I make sauces from scratch though - the newer jarred sauces are adequate when dressed up a bit and far more convenient.
I like vodka sauce from a jar, either Newman’s or Emeril’s. I pull the white meat off a supermarket rotisserie chicken, saute some fresh asparagus, add the sauce until the whole mess is hot, and pour it over penne.
Completely unadulterated I go for Newman’s Own Sockerooni Sauce. But it’s hard not to mess with any of them.
I don’t really get the hate for jarred spaghetti sauce. Some of them are fine- maybe not the ones in the can that are like a dollar, but Ragu/Prego/Newman’s Own, etc., are perfectly serviceable. Hell, I see some sauces that are $8-10 a jar. Of course, I’d never spend that much on a jar of spaghetti sauce, but I bet they’re pretty good.
I don’t understand the revulsion for ‘punching up’ the canned/jarred sauce in the original question.
You forgot Hunt’s! 89c a can! Tastes great with a bit of tlc!
Newman’s Own if I don’t make my own. Love the Sockarooni!
Newman’s is the only jarred sauce worth the price.
Ha! You beat me to it! Yep: cheap, and “good enough.” And cheap.
(Did I mention cheap?)
I make huge batches of pasta and usually use Classico, I have 20 something drinking glasses/empty jars thanks to those guys
of course I doctor it, Smoked hot Italian sausage/chicken/portabello’s and some kalmata olives usually added
Always Save meat flavored sauce. Sure, it tastes more like Chef Boyardee than actual spaghetti sauce. But at least Chef Boyardee is good.
The next best is Great Value marinara sauce. Though you have to keep the noodles a bit wet with that one or it’ll be too strong. But the point is that it’s not sweet, which is better than most sauces.
FORGOT TO ADD:
We either don’t have or I can’t afford y’all’s fancy sauces!
Me three; that or Primo or the No-name sauce. I use those as my base for meat sauce, but if I can’t cook or even add seasoning to the sauce any of them would be great just poured straight onto spaghetti. 
I thought Newman’s Own stopped making Sockarooni. It would appear our store just stopped carrying it.
Anyhoo, I screwed up. I voted “other” because my go-to is Hunt’s No Sugar Added, but I always add meat. So…never mind.
We here at Casa Salinqmind aren’t fussy. As long as there is a LOT of it, we will eat spaghets with the 99 cent Del Monte out of a can, or for a real treat the Wegmans store brand (there are several) - or Prego. Also Paul Newman… I like vodka sauce, over angel hair pasta, though the best is bottled by a local restaurant, or the sauce I made myself.
I have in the past brewed up a vat of my own home-cooked sauce (not vodka sauce, the kind with canned tomatoes, basil, oregano, onions, garlic…) and it didn’t go over with Picky Jerkwad. Because it had ‘chunks’ in it, and it wasn’t the same old bottled sauce he had been eating since he had teeth, which is whatever Ragu his mommy poured over his big fat noodles.
So - Prego, Paul Newman’s, or the canned. It can all be fixed up, if needed. I can’t venture too much out of the comfort zone and have been known to put sauce with vegetables in the blender! for chrissake, to make it go down easier. Or I add my own sauteed onions and green peppers…
Prego.
Growing up, when mom wasn’t going to be home in time to make dinner, my dad’s go-to meal was spaghetti (or frozen salisbury steak), and he always used Prego, so every now when I want pasta but am feeling lazy, I’ll buy a jar.
Most of the others I’ve never had. Of the ones I have:
Ragu: way too thin and way too sweet. Ugh.
Classico, Rinaldi’s: not bad. Generally more expensive than Prego. Not that much better to justify the price difference for me.
Barilla: decent flavor, but also too thin.
Other: the generic store-brand sauce in the plastic tub fro the deli section (not the jarred sauce section) is usually good, better than most name-brand jarred sauces, but still overpriced for what you get.
