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Canned tuna is an incredibly versatile pantry staple. You can turn it into tuna melts or fry up tuna patties for dinner (my son loves the leftovers for lunch). Tuna can bolster pasta dishes to make them heartier or be the star of a dinner-worthy tuna salad.
Truthfully, I’ve only come to appreciate canned tuna as an adult—I blame it on too much tuna noodle casserole for my dislike of the stuff for the first 30 years of my life—but now I’m catching up and learning all about what kind of tuna is best for what, and I love finding canned tuna that is delicious and budget-friendly.
Enter any grocery store and you’ll see that there are tons of options from brand-name to store brands, so I set out to figure out which store-brand tuna was the best from six well-known grocery stores. Here’s what I found, and which grocery store canned tuna I’ll be stocking my pantry with from now on.
Simply Recipes / Meghan Splawn
How I Selected the Canned Tuna Varieties
Albacore and skipjack are the two most common species of tuna that are canned. Skipjack has a strong, fishy flavor and can be darker in color. Albacore is well-liked for its mild taste and light color, making it more versatile in recipes and more appealing to tuna haters learning to love the stuff (like me).
Tuna lovers swear by oil-packed tuna—it has a richer taste and is ideal for dishes where tuna is the star, like salad Niçoise. On the other hand, water-packed tuna can take on the flavors of whatever you’re cooking, making it ideal for weekday lunches and quick dinners.
Water-packed tuna also has a leaner and flakier texture, making it a great base for a classic, mayo-based tuna salad or melt. So, for this taste test, I focused on albacore tuna packed in water from six well-known grocery brands: ALDI, Costco, Kroger, Trader Joe’s, Walmart, and Whole Foods.
The Water-Packed Albacore Tuna Brands I Tried
- Whole Foods 365 Albacore Wild Tuna
- Walmart Great Value Solid White Albacore Tuna
- Costco Kirkland Signature Solid White Albacore Tuna
- Kroger Solid White Albacore Tuna
- ALDI Northern Catch Solid White Albacore Tuna
- Trader Joe’s Solid White Albacore Tuna
Simply Recipes / Meghan Splawn
How I Tested the Tuna
After opening the tuna, I noted the texture and shape of the tuna in each can, while also observing how much water the tuna was packed in. After draining off some of the liquid—which isn’t just water in some cases—I tasted the tuna plain, noting its texture and flavor.
I turned each can into a quick tuna salad with a bit of celery, red onion, mayonnaise, and salt. Served on plain toasted white bread, I tried the tuna salads with my husband, my 10-year-old son, and a neighbor who had stopped by to watch a soccer match.
Confusing: Walmart Great Value Solid White Albacore Tuna
Overall rating: 4/10
Walmart’s Great Value tuna was the least expensive can by a whole dollar, coming in at just 80 cents, so I was surprised to open the can to find a pretty decent tuna steak shape and just a small amount of “water” compared to other brands. Out of the can, this tuna was very vegetal in taste, which is when I learned it was canned with vegetable broth—as are four of the other brands! Dressed as tuna salad, we were pleased with the texture but couldn’t get past the vegetable broth’s taste.
Could Pass as Chicken: ALDI Northern Catch Solid White Albacore Tuna
Overall rating: 5/10
ALDI is well known for its budget-friendly canned goods, but this tuna wasn’t the cheapest option we tasted at $1.35 a can. After draining (there was a lot of liquid), this can had a really nice steak inside it. Blind folded, you couldn’t tell me that this wasn’t canned chicken, and even dressed as tuna salad you couldn’t convince me that it was actually tuna. This tuna was also the driest of the varieties we tried.
Forgettable: Kroger Solid White Albacore Tuna
Overall rating: 5/10
At $1.89 a can, Kroger’s White Albacore Tuna is budget-friendly and has a nice tuna flavor while being a bit dry right out of the can. This is another brand packed with vegetable broth, but there was less of a vegetal taste overall. As tuna salad, this was a favorite of my 10-year-old for its tuna flavor and flaky texture, despite the fact that most of the adults agreed it was quite dry, even with a fair amount of mayo.
Simply Recipes / Meghan Splawn
Overhyped: Costco Kirkland Signature Solid White Albacore Tuna
Overall rating: 7/10
I thought Costco-brand tuna would be a big winner, especially as quite a few friends had hyped it up. But it was quite dry, and the fact that I had to buy eight cans for $17.99 was a big disappointment. The only plus side to having seven more cans in the pantry to use up is that this tuna tasted like canned tuna (no vegetable broth), but it is really mild. It’ll be a good candidate for tuna salads, tuna melts, and creamy tuna pasta dishes.
The Flakiest: Whole Foods 365 Wild Albacore Tuna
Overall rating: 7/10
Whole Foods’ canned tuna is the only variety we tried with any sustainability claims—it is pole and line caught and claims to be traceable from boats to shelf. It was also the most expensive can we tasted, coming in at $2.69. I was surprised that this can was so flaky compared to the rest, despite the label saying the can contained “whole albacore.” While this tuna was a bit dry and spongy overall, it had a great tuna flavor, and the flakiness made for the best tuna salad of our taste test.
The Crowd Favorite: Trader Joe’s Solid White Albacore Tuna
Overall rating: 9/10
Straight out of the can, Trader Joe’s albacore has a nice chunkiness with a good but mild fish flavor. All four of us loved the texture and flavor of this tuna as tuna salad, which is not surprising, as the only ingredients are albacore tuna, water, and salt. Trader Joe’s canned tuna also hit the sweet spot pricing-wise at $1.99 per can.
While I’ve got quite a bit of tuna stocked in my pantry now (thanks, Costco!) I’ll definitely be looking at Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s next time I need a restock, and exploring more of their varieties (like oil-packed tuna) in the future.
To learn more about our approach to product recommendations, see HERE.
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