Reformed ham? What, it used to be bad and now it behaves? (Sainsbury's Basics Cooked Ham)

Member Name: pmcds

Product:	Sainsbury's Basics Cooked Ham
Date:	17/09/09 (52 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap, cheerful, practical

Disadvantages: Reformed, only 75% pork, packaging

Ham, ham and more ham. Every time I go to a supermarket just to get some bloody ham, I am met with a plethora of choices. You almost need a website to compare the ham pros and cons and help you with your decisions.

Depending on your budget, and what you want the ham for, this could be a good one to go for. What you get is a stack of ham slices, around 30 of them, that are square, and will fit just nicely into a sandwich. Sure, it's completely processed ham and isn't going to give you an explosion of meaty taste, but there is something there, and it's handy to pop into a sandwich.

If you wanted to have ham for any other purpose, it's probably not the best choice. There are things such as little nibbles, where this is ideal for putting with a slice of cheese on a cracker or some cream cheese or something like that, and this tastes quite nice, but if you wanted some quality ham that's going to give you some really good flavour and a good texture, this isn't it.

Ultimately, it's cheap and cheerful and processed. I'm unaware of the process of making this, but I know it doesn't involve slicing ham as you would expect from a butcher. Slicing is involved, sure, but this is think and machine controlled stuff. At £1.50 for 30 slices or so, it's really cheap, and means you're only paying 5p for a slice. It's really thin, so you'll probably need to have two or three slices to give a substantial sandwich, but this is still cheap, at 15p for the ham in your sarnie.

The fact is, there is better quality ham out there. Nutritionally, there is 75% pork in each slice, which is obviously not ideal, but better than some ingredients lists I've seen. It's reformed ham, which is then cured and water added. Each slice has only 12 calories and less than half a gram of fat, so it's not bad in that way. It tastes okay, and smells okay, as long as you expect a processed meat smell. But it's the packaging that really lets it down. The film lid peels back alright, but then curls tightly, leaving it hard to cover unless you improvise and use some cling film of your own. Most other processed ham containers aren't too tricky to cover, but this is not practical, and if you don't have anything to hand, you end up having to eat it quicker than you intended so it doesn't go off.

So, it's processed, it's cheap, it's reformed, it's cut for you, but it's poorly packaged. Overall, it still gets a kind of thumbs up from me. Sure, it doesn't come anywhere close to beating 'real' ham, freshly sliced with a bit of texture and flavour, but for what it costs, it's a good buy.

Summary: A cheap and cheerful product from the Sainsbury's Basics Range