Pretty Awful Stuff (Tesco Instant Hot Oat Cereal)

Member Name: DavyMichelle

Product:	Tesco Instant Hot Oat Cereal
Date:	13/06/09 (51 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Convenient

Disadvantages: Bland, Weak, Pricier than a Brand Name

Tesco Instant Hot Oat Cereal seems like a relatively good buy at £1.32 for a 750g box. That's compared to £2.08 for a 750g box of Readybrek, or £1.69 for a 1kg box of Quaker oats (which would be £1.27 for 750g and is in fact cheaper than this generic store brand is!). I was fooled into thinking that this was an affordable product that wasn't so cheap it might be nasty.

Making up this hot oat cereal is relatively straightforwards. Just mix it up with the appropriate amount of milk in your bowl, and put it in the microwave to heat up for a minute or two. A nice quick way to start the day with porridge, without the fuss of getting any pans out or standing over a hot stove when you haven't got the time to.

Where this cereal loses it's appeal for me is on actually tasting it. It's really very bland, with a strange texture that to me is nothing like I expect from a porridge product. I appreciate that this is intended to be a hot oat cereal, and does not claim to be porridge precisely, but I still expect it to at least taste like oats!

It's got a very weak smell as well, which does nothing to whet the appetite. When you cook up real porridge from oats, even Tesco Value oats (just 58p for 1kg and really very nice), you get a delicious, warm scent drifting up from them. With this hot oat cereal, there's hardly a whiff of anything at all.

I don't think much of this and I won't buy it again. Yes it's easy and convenient compared to making up a batch of real porridge, but there are considerably better brands out there. In fact Quaker do a much better version - and it's cheaper per 100g even! This is definitely one to avoid.

Summary: Not Recommended