YOU SAY POTATO, I SAY SMARTPRICE PLS! (Asda Smartprice New Potatoes In Salted Water)

Member Name: Wee_Jackie_163

Product:	Asda Smartprice New Potatoes In Salted Water
Date:	21/05/09 (45 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: BRILLIANT VALUE, VERY CONVENIENT

Disadvantages: NONE FOR ME REALLY

My partner and I got home quite late last night and as we were both ravenous I was looking for a quick and easy dinner to make for us both, instead of running round to the chip shop (my partner's suggestion... tsk tsk!).

I rummaged through my freezer to see what little delights were waiting in there for me, and settled on a packet of frozen cheese crisp bakes. After reading the packaging and noticing that they would not take long to cook, I popped them in the oven and set about looking for something to eat alongside them.

It was when I was raking about in our kitchen cupboards that I came across some tinned vegetables. I thought that this would be ideal to serve with the crisp bakes, and knowing for a fact that I didn't have any fresh or frozen vegetables in the house, I thought this would be a good 'next best thing' option.

One of the tins I came across was some Asda 'Smart price' tinned potatoes. I always keep a tin of these in my pantry as they are so handy for occasions like the one facing me last night. The packaging is very basic - as are all Asda 'Smart price' products, in that the label is plain white with green lettering. The picture above shows the packaging in a red and white design but I think this is the old-style packaging.

Upon opening the tin, I was faced with some nice looking little potatoes that were in some salted water. All I had to do in order to prepare the potatoes was to empty the whole tin (water and all) into a saucepan and put it on a fairly low heat until they were heated all the way through.

I will point out at this point that I felt that several of the potatoes had little marks or imperfections on them, as they quite often do, but I have never found anything too major and it certainly doesn't stop me from buying this product. I tend to just look over each potato individually by placing it onto my chopping board and I simply cut away any little eyes or marks before returning the potato to the pot and placing on the cooker.

The pot of potatoes does not take too long to prepare at all - really just a few minutes, as all you are doing is heating the potatoes - remember that they have already been peeled and cooked for you.

I personally like to serve them with fish and some tartare sauce for a tasty dinner. Last night, however, I opted to spoon them onto our plates with our other vegetables (also tinned) and I made up a little herby butter and dolloped a small amount onto our potatoes. Lovely and delicious they were too!

The potatoes contained in the tin range in size from being the size of your average little new potato (funnily enough)!, to the smallest being a little bigger than, say, a Cadbury's mini egg - yes, some of them are just that small! Some of them are cute, almost.

The tin of Smart price potatoes costs around 22p in Asda, which is a brilliant bargain when you compare it to other varieties of tinned potatoes. To my mind at least, there is not too much that they can do to make a tinned potato any better or worse than another one. A tinned potato is a tinned potato, surely?

Like I said earlier on in my review, I always keep a tin of these in my cupboard - they are very versatile and extremely convenient, whilst still allowing us to achieve one of our "five a day". To top it all off, they are great value... what more could we want?

In order that you can get an idea of how versatile this product is, I will share with you some other ways that these tinned potatoes are used in our house:

1 - In soups - very convenient and very quick

2 - Delicious sliced on a cold salad

3 - Delicious sliced on a home made pie

4 - For buffets - serve hot, with cocktail sticks and a spicy dip

5 - Ideal to use in stews and hotpots... very cheap way of bulking out your meal.


So hopefully you can see that these potatoes can be used for a variety of meals and snacks. Overall, I would definitely recommend them, and can't quibble too much about the odd imperfection on the potatoes - for what I am paying for them, I am more than happy to check them over and cut away any little marks. After all, that is the ONLY preparation required by me!

The tin sufficiently serves me and my other half for one meal, or if i was serving four people I would probably use two tins. So, when you consider that we can both get a small portion of potato for a mere 11 pence each, I feel that this tin really offers amazing value for money!

Top marks from me, Mr Asda - highly recommended! :-D

Summary: A FANTASTIC BARGAIN