Eek out the hard bits and have yourself a nice bowl of porridge (Tesco Value Porridge Oats)

Member Name: pmcds

Product:	Tesco Value Porridge Oats
Date:	10/11/09 (21 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Quality oats, taste decent, versatile use

Disadvantages: Not as nice as Quaker, the occasional hard oat

When you buy a product such as Quaker's Oats, making porridge has that hassle free kind of feel to it. The oats are soft (but not overly so) and cooking the porridge the traditional way, in a saucepan with some milk, makes it easy, and tastes good.

So, with them coming it at around £1.50 for 1kg of them, what's to stop Tesco Value Porridge Oats coming in at nearly a third of the price and usurping a porridge giant such as Quaker? Well, to start off with, the packaging suffers a little. This is quite standard with Tesco Value products, as you often get some of the reduced cost because of minimal packaging. What this does here is give you the oats in just a plastic bag as shown in the product photo. This makes it harder to store them, but I tend to just empty the whole bag into a jar and keep it on the shelf. We often do the same with things such as flour and sugar anyway, so why not oats, too?

In terms of quality, the porridge oats are pretty much just as easy to make porridge with. Adding them to hot milk winds up with a bowl of porridge that still tastes good. I find that the taste leaves a bit to be desired, but I did expect this to a certain extent. They taste nice, but there is almost something a bit bland about them. Not completely so, but compared to something such as Quaker, you can tell the difference. Adding sugar to the porridge can almost negate this for much of the porridge, but this would obviously not work if you don't like having sugar on it.

Just because they are so named, it doesn't mean that the porridge oats may only be used for this purpose. We find that these oats are just as good as any for cooking with as well. The occasional batch of flapjacks cooking come wafting through the house every now and then at a weekend, and other oat-based recipes can make good use of this product.

One slight drawback is that you do get the occasional solid oat, one that wouldn't actually blend in with the milk even on application of heat. These may need to be weeded out, but they're often hard to separate before cooking. Some of them are more blackened than others, and it's likely the case that these will be hard, and so you could probably take these out, but there are also others which would get lost in amongst the 'good oats. Still, this is a minor problem, and they're not so hard to hurt your tooth or anything. It's more like when you get an unpopped bit of popcorn - you notice it before crunching down hard on it.

Overall, I rate these oats very highly. Sure, they don't make such tasty porridge as a better known brand like Quaker, but they still taste decent, and can be used for many different things. I recommend giving them a go.

Summary: Tesco Value oats: do the job nicely