Pasta and Sauce - Swap Taste Test

I normally purchase both pasta and pasta sauce from Tesco. The sauce I purchase is 75p and the bag of pasta I purchase is £2.89. In my previous post I discovered that pasta is cheaper in Lidl and they also sell cheaper sauces too. I'd like to make a point that my absolute favourite sauce is a brand, the Homepride pasta bakes. They do go on offer for £1 but standard price they're £1.59; so if I can get a good sauce for 65p I'm up for that but I won't be biased.

When it comes down to nutritional values you'd assume a cheaper sauce would be worse to make it taste better? It can actually be the complete opposite, the more expensive brand sauces can be worse.

Here are the comparisons:

The breakdown for the Lidl sauce is:

Energy: 515kJ / 124kcal

Fat: 8.0g

Saturates: 1.1g

Sugars: 5.8g

Salt: 0.92g

In summary the branded sauce is the worst for salt and fat. Tesco is worst for sugar and Saturated fats. The Lidl sauce beats nearly every single category compared to the branded sauce besides Sugar; but it's not as bad as the Tesco sauce. Keep in mind that the Lidl sauce and branded sauce contains bacon, meaning more fat content. If the Lidl sauce has bacon in it and STILL beats the two other sauces for fat that has to count for something, right?

Down to the taste test!

I usually only use half a jar of sauce per meal and keep the jar in the fridge for the following week, saves money and spreads the meals out. However we are going back to our parents for a week and therefore shall be using the whole jar. 

Comparing sizes, there is a difference. The Tesco pasta is thinner and longer whereas the Lidl pasta is shorter and wider. It did affect cooking time, with the Lidl pasta taking longer but taste test there was absolutely no noticeable difference. I don't think Lewis would have even noticed there were two pastas if I hadn't of undercooked the Lidl pasta. 

The jar sauce itself, when I opened it, I couldn't believe the smell; it smelt EXACTLY the same as the Homepride sauce I use to buy. Even better, it actually taste the same as well! Maybe if I had them either side of each other I'd notice but I could not tell that this was a different sauce. I couldn't actually believe it taste so similar. There were actual bits of bacon in it too, I was surprised by how many pieces the sauce contained. They were cut into small squares and did taste/look like bacon.

Lewis said that he preferred the Tesco sauce but perhaps it was an unfair comparison because I hadn't got a cheese sauce and instead got the bacon sauce. I would 100% buy this sauce again, especially for the price. Next time I will buy a cheese one and see how Lewis feels about it then!

Spaghetti Bolognese - Recipe

An easy dish with few ingredients, you can even make it in bulk to save in the fridge or freezer for another day!

 So this picture has the cost of the items from bulk, meaning the OXO cube came from a pack of 18 and that cost £1.19. Let me give you a break down of where I bought the products:

1. Onions - Tesco: 1KG cost 75p for the Tesco 'Brown Onions'; they do cheaper onions for 59p with the 'Redmere Brown Farm Onions'. I honestly don't know why I haven't tried the Redmere ones yet. I only use half an onion per meal and a bag roughly contains 12 onions; therefore costing 3p per half onion per meal.
2. OXO cube - Lidl: 18 cubes cost £1.19 rather than Tesco costing £1.25 for just 12. So per meal this roughly cost 6p per cube. 
3. Tomato Puree - Tesco: 142g for 35p, comes in a tin but is exactly the same as the tube, only difference is you can get more out of a tin than a tube. The tube may be cheaper per 100g but you can't squeeze it all out!
4. Beef Mince 20% fat - Lidl: 500g for £1.59, only in recent months has this price increased, it use to be £1.29. Tesco do a cheap mince for £1.69 but the meat is a lot thicker and I find it doesn't go as far.
5. Penne Pasta - Tesco: 3K bag cost £2.89. Hard to work out the cost per meal as the bag last so long, however I've recently seen that Lidl Penne pasta is 29p per 500g making it a cheaper alternative. Will have to give it a try!
6. Worcestershire Sauce - B&M: 568ml cost me £2.99. I'm not sure if they sell this size any longer, I think I got lucky at the time. However B&M still sell 290ml for £1.49 which is £1.01 cheaper than Iceland and £1.11 cheaper than Tesco. Of course this is branded Lea & Perrins and you can buy shop brand Worcestershire sauce. 

I haven't included salt and pepper as that is so hard to work out the costing per meal it seems silly to try. With all the maths laid out this meal will roughly cost you £2.84 excluding Worcestershire sauce and Penne pasta. 

However I only use half the packet of mince for one meal to stretch the meat out further reducing the mince to 79p per meal. Obviously this reduces the portion size but me and Lewis manage with the size. You can scale down or up depending how many people you're feeding. The mince itself has 20% fat content; if this is something you dislike Lidl provides Lean Mince 5% at £1.99 for 250g beating Tesco's at £2.50. 

Because I reduce the amount of mince, I like to bulk it out with vegetables (or fruit seeing as Peppers are technically a fruit). These peppers from Tesco cost 93p for 3 mixed peppers. However Tesco do offer a bag of 6-7 peppers for £1.15 it's just we don't use them up before they go soggy. For this meal I used half of a red pepper and half of a yellow so, add on 31p for this meal.

 My mum cooks the mince until brown and adds a dash of red wine to her Spag bowl mix which gives a nice new flavour, so if you wanted to buy a cheap red wine Lidl sell a cheap one at £3.09. However I don't do that for our meals. You'd just add it in and "burn" the wine into the mince after draining the fat. Then you add your onions and peppers, soften them until adding the OXO cube, salt, pepper and dash of Worcestershire. 

Lastly you add the whole tin of tomato puree and add water until you get the sauce consistency you prefer. Leave this to simmer for 30 minutes, while that simmers you can start cooking your pasta. 

Me and Lewis also have garlic bread with our meal, we buy a Tesco Value Baguette for 39p (I think) and cook half with our meal. So 19p for the Garlic Bread. I can honestly say there is no difference between the Value stick and the standard Tesco stick; just price.

 Once it's cooked, plate up and add some cheese on top!