A 'hot' dip (Tesco Cool Salsa Dip)

Member Name: sun-is-shining

Product:	Tesco Cool Salsa Dip
Date:	04/10/09 (23 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: good flavour, not watery, cheap

Disadvantages: none

If you read some of my reviews than you know that I love tortilla chipsa and salsa sauces, I guess I tried almost all possible brands that are currently available. By now I have a 'favourite salsa' list - unfortunately the Tesco Cool Salsa dip is only on the second place after the ASDA tomato dip.

The Tesco Cool Salsa sauce comes in a medium sized glass jar and looks brightly red with little green pieces of herbs - coriander leafs to be accurate. I don't like these dark dips that look more like BBQ sauce and you cannot even recognise the tomato content.

The sauce smells lovely, a quite strong tomato scent with refreshing lime juice - it smells more like a normal pasta sauce than a salsa dip. The salsa doesn't actually contain any lime juice and the slightly sour smell comes from the jalapeno peppers that were used.
It smells quite spicy but that's because of the green pepper and not because of an actual spiciness.

Now to the actual taste; it is surprisingly mild and refreshing. For me it is not more than medium spicy but nonetheless very tasty. The tomato and pepper chunks are quite small; you won't end up with big lumps of pepper on your crisp. There were quite a few onion chunks but again, they were rather small.

It's a very light sauce; a nice mix between tomato and pepper. The coriander tastes great in this combination and makes the sauce even more interesting. It's great as a dip for tortilla chips or if you prefer also with normal crisps. The sauce sticks nicely to the crisp and doesn't make it soggy as it's not too watery.

Even after a few days in the fridge the dip stays ok and doesn't look watery as the Doritos dip does, it is so annoying when you re-open the dip and all you can find is some 'chilli-water' on top without flavour.

The salsa contains tomato, onion, green pepper and jalapeno pepper; the coriander, garlic and cayenne pepper give the salsa a nicely balanced flavour. The salsa is suitable for Vegitariand and Vegans and the usual allergy adive 'no nuts but cannot guarantee nut free' applies here as well.

Tesco also gives the nutrition information for a 15g serving - I have no idea why they give us the value for 15g, even if you only eat a handful of crisps you'll still use more than 15g of the dip.
* 19kcal
* Protein - 0.2g
* Carbohydrate - 0.8g
* Fat - trace
* Fibre - 0.2g
* Sodium - 0.1g
* Salt 0.2g

These nutrition values are actually really bad, high in salt and especially the calorie count is very higher than the one of my usual ASDA dip.

91 pence is a great price for this tasty salsa sauce compared to the 1.50 for a Doritos salsa. I'd happily get the Tesco own brand again if I had to chose between these two - and not because of the price but because of the great taste. But I have to say that in my personal 'salsa rating' the Tesco Cool Salsa is only on place 2; my all time favourite is the salsa dip from ASDA as I prefer the texture and it's a lot tastier. Than again, the Tesco dip is miles better than antthing offered by Doritos!

For me it is a 08 out of 10 with a little star!
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Summary: see review