A SAUCY AFFAIR....! (Tesco Value Tomato Ketchup)

Member Name: Wee_Jackie_163

Product:	Tesco Value Tomato Ketchup
Date:	18/03/09 (79 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: THE PRICE

Disadvantages: THE TASTE...!

If you have read some of my earlier reviews, you will know that I have been trying some of the cheaper supermarket brands in a bid to save some pennies.

Tomato sauce/ketchup is an absolute staple in our house, and I have to admit that I am the world's worst for over-using ketchup on my food. (oops.)

Perhaps it's just me, but I have noticed recently that the price of ketchup seems to be getting higher and higher, with a recent purchase of Heinz sauce costing almost £2!! I found this a tad obscene, and after seeing the price of it on my receipt at home, made my mind up to try a cheaper brand the next time we had to buy it.

The brand I opted for on this occasion was Tesco Value, which cost around 35 pence, and came in only one size of bottle, which was glass. (a huge bugbear of mine... how difficult is it to get the correct amount of sauce onto your plate, never mind the hassles when the bottle gets less than half full??!!)

That said, when I observed the ultra-low price, I stopped whinging and popped it into my basket. That night provided a great opportunity to give the ketchup a try as we were having fish, chips and peas, which should (IMO) always be served with a (generous) dash of tomato ketchup!

The ketchup itself looked as it should... thick, and not too runny, and a nice rich red colour (nothing worse than orange coloured sauce...!). Impressed thus far, I set about dipping a small piece of battered fish into the sauce to give it the "taste-test."

Ewwww!! Not only did it taste overly-salty but it left a really horrible after- taste in my mouth after i had swallowed the mouthful of food. Not sure if it was the sauce or the fish, and not wanting to admit defeat too easily, I opted to dip a chip into the ketchup and tried again...

Once more... ewwww!! The texture of the ketchup seemed the same as my usual brand but the taste?! I found it almost bitter, salty, and really quite unpleasant.

I hastily scraped the ketchup from my plate and replaced it with a squirt of my usual brand sauce (of which there wasn't much left - hence why I had to purchase more ketchup in the first place.) My other half was trying the new sauce too and whilst he wasn't overly enthusiastic about the taste either, he ate it all and claimed that it "wasn't that bad" whilst muttering about how "you get what you pay for".

And get what I pay for I did! I suppose, though, to be fair, I had leaped from the top end of the range of ketchups to the bottom (perhaps if I tried a cheaper brand sauce from the middle of the range I would be better impressed) but this sauce, I'm afraid to say, ended up in the bin after only a few uses! There is no WAY I would ever buy it again, as I found it completely unpalatable. Even with the purse strings getting tighter on an almost weekly basis, I don't want to "taint" my food with this sauce, and would rather shell out an extra quid or so to have a ketchup which compliments my dinner rather than ruins it!

That said, I am still on a bid to save a few pounds on my weekly shop, and I won't let my experience of this sauce put me off from trying other products from cheaper brands... I guess you need to try them before you can decide whether to switch to that product for good, or not. In this case, though, absolutely not!

Summary: Won't be buying this again, though I know people who love it!