Frozen fries can be the hero of a dinner when you’re pressed for time. A side dish you can toss straight from the freezer into the oven, and it’s ready in minutes? Something that pairs with an elegant steak, humble frozen nuggets — or a Caesar salad and a martini?

Often, the answer to “would you like fries with that?” is yes, please.

The hardest part, really, might be picking the best bag. Options in most grocery freezer cases can be overwhelming, and so to help you figure out which one you should toss into your cart, we put the most popular versions to the test.

We first identified the top-selling brands using market data from Chicago-based market research firm Circana, which draws its numbers from grocery, drug, mass-market, convenience, military and select club and dollar retailers. For “private-label” or store brands, we chose from several leading national retailers. And we added one additional widely available brand, Alexia, that has fans in our office.

To determine which fry style we would focus on to keep our test as apples-to-apples as possible, we contacted Ore-Ida, far and away the best-selling brand per the Circana data. The company says its bestseller is the “Extra Crispy Fast Food Style,” which pretty much mimics the fries you’ll find at a certain chain that rhymes with SmcShmonald’s. With that as our guide, we went with the skinnier, shoestring-style versions of the other brands wherever possible. Our tasting group consisted of nine brands.