Tongue-tinglingly smokey and sweet (Heinz Spread and Bake)

Member Name: rrrrachel

Product:	Heinz Spread and Bake
Date:	11/03/09 (164 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Livens up chicken

Disadvantages: You have to use the jar up within a week

I initially picked this up in Tesco as I had a Clubcard voucher for 30p off. The usual price is about £1.49 so it's a little bit more than other similar sauces eg. Chicken Tonight, however I was curious and always like to try something new. I eat a lot of chicken and struggle to think of different things to do with it so I thought I'd give this a try.

Spread and Bake comes in a 315g clear glass jar with a screw top. It's a smaller jar than you would get a typical cook-in sauce, but that's presumably because you're supposed to use less as you're only spreading it over the meat rather than pouring it all over to cover your chicken.
It comes in four flavours: Barbecue, Tikka, Mediterranean Tomato and Moroccan. I went for the BBQ one as I thought it would go well with chicken.

When I opened the jar, I could smell the delicious barbecue aroma which got my tastebuds tingling! It was an orangey-brown colour which looked appealing and fresh without being too artificial. I spread it over four large chicken thighs (to feed two of us) and found the consistency a little runnier than I'd expected - it ran off the chicken a bit but perhaps I used too much. Each jar is supposed to make 4-6 generous portions, so I used about a third of the jar and put the rest back in the fridge (the label says you can keep it a week in the fridge). I put the chicken in a Pyrex baking dish and baked in the oven for about half an hour. It smelt delicious while it was cooking and although when I took it out it looked a bit burnt on the top, I think this was actually quite appealing as it reminded me of proper sticky smokey barbecued food.

When I tasted this I wasn't disappointed! The sauce is tangy and fruity with a hint of sweetness, but not overpoweringly so. There is definitely some tomato in there too. It kept the chicken lovely and moist, and helped the skin crisp up on top - mmmm! I really enjoyed this with some rice to mop up the sauce: it definitely got runnier as it cooked so it's a good job I used a deep dish. Don't cook it on a baking tray!

There are 88 calories per serving so I don't think it's too unhealthy, especially if you have it on lean chicken with some veggies.

Nutritional info per 1/6 of a jar:
Protein 0.6g
Carbs 6.1g
of which sugars 5.7g
Fat 1.2g
of which saturates 0.2g
Fibre 0.9g
Sodium 0.1g
Salt equivalent 0.4g

Summary: Can't wait to try the other flavours in the range...