It's only a Smart Price if it's any good! (Asda Smart Price Sweetcorn)

Member Name: i_am_joy

Product:	Asda Smart Price Sweetcorn
Date:	24/07/09 (43 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Healthy, cheap

Disadvantages: Bland and flavourless

While in Asda at the weekend I bought some of their Smart Price products as I have heard good reports about them. The Smart Price sweetcorn is priced at just 34p for a 326g tin and while this size would ordinarily be too large I was planning a stew one day, Bolognese the next and have several tins of tuna in the cupboard so hopefully the sweetcorn wouldn't be wasted.

There isn't a ring pull on this sweetcorn, although this is expected for such a cheap product - it is a little annoying though as I struggle with tin openers and just wish they would put ring pulls on everything!

I opened the tin and was immediately a little bit disappointed by the aroma of the sweetcorn, I usually buy Green Giant sweetcorn and love the sweet smell that comes out of the tin as soon as I open it yet in comparison this Smart Price version has very little smell at all.

The kernals are not of a uniform shape or size and while they are a nice yellow, they lack the vibrant sunshine colour of the more expensive brands. The water inside the tin looks very cloudy and unappetising too, but I didn't worry as I set about tipping the sweetcorn into a sieve to drain all of the water off.

I picked at a few kernals while they were draining and I wasn't impressed. I eat Green Giant sweetcorn cold on a salad and often have the entire tin as I adore the taste of sweetcorn, yet this version could not have been eaten in this way as it's much too bland and flavourless. It lacks that slight crunch that all good sweetcorn should have and is generally just a little too sloppy to be compared to my usual brand unfortunately.

I was determined not to waste the sweetcorn so forged ahead with my stew and after cooking the sweetcorn might as well not have been there. It didn't add anything to the flavour of the stew and the kernels themselves softened during cooking to the point where sometimes I didn't know if it were a sweetcorn kernal or a pea I had in my mouth! The following day I added a few spoonfuls to a chicken pasta bake with roughly the same outcome; the kernals swirled through the pasta and added absolutely nothing to the flavour of the pasta bake - and because of the longer cooking time they have become even more bland that before as the hot oven seemed to have leeched out every last little bit of flavour.

The final dish I tried this sweetcorn in was sweetcorn fritters, which I had for my breakfast this morning. What a disaster. The fat-free fritters I make have a very bland tasting batter but this is usually broken up beautifully by the addition of a full tin of Green Giant sweetcorn, of course you know what is coming. Add very bland sweetcorn to bland batter and what do you get? A tasteless and very dull breakfast in this case which eventually went into the box of scraps for next door's greedy Labrador as I just couldn't eat it.

I won't bother with this one again despite the fact that Green Giant sweetcorn is rising in price almost on a weekly basis, there are some things I think that you have to be prepared to pay a premium for - and sweetcorn is apparently one of them!

Summary: A good saving to be made, but personally I wasn't impressed with this tinned sweetcorn from Asda.