At 27p for a 440g jar, I bought this as an 'emergency' sauce and stuffed it in my cupboard. It looks dodgy - but I sort of trust the Sainsbury's Basics range and I bought it.

I had to use it quicker than expected when I realised my usual tomato passata had all been used up and I wanted to cook up a batch of allotment green beens in a tomatoey garlicy sauce. I reached for the Basics sauce.


Packaging
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A basic recyclable jar and lid with the white and orange Basics logo label. There is an ingredients list, nutritional and allergy info. The label has the stapline: ' Simple recipe, won't cause a stir'. 'Stir' is an interesting word. It plays on the idea of mixing it up in a pan, it's a no-fuss sort of word. Unfortunately though, it could also mean that those eating it may be indifferent to it!

I like a jar like this where I can clearly see the product. The sauce was not a full red colour - more of a strange orangey red. I should have trusted my instincts and left it on the shelf.

Ingredients
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Tomato puree (50%), water, tomato (6%), maize starch, lemon juice, rapeseed oil, salt, sugar, spirit vinegar, dried onion, garlic powder, basil, oregano, black pepper, fennel, acidity regulator, citric acid.

Per quarter jar serving, the sauce contains 0.8g of fat and 0.3% salt.

The label states that the sauce is not suitable for nut or sesame allergy sufferers.


Eating the Pasta
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As soon as I opened the jar, I was not too pleased with the smell of the sauce. With a tomato sauce, you expect a mixture of oregano and basil - and this had a strange smell. My super-hooter was sniffing away at full force so I went back to the label and identified the offensive herb as fennel. I'm not against fennel in general - but does it have a place in a tomato sauce? I hoped to be proved wrong in the eating of it.

I sauted the onions and lovely fresh beans and emptied the jar into the pan (it still looked a bit of an orange blob). I heated, stirred and tasted. Yuk. Not what I would want. There was a tang - what was that? Back to the label. That would be the lemon juice. Once again, lemon juice in a tomato sauce? I decided to add shed-loads of garlic. After much more fiddling and the addition of some tamari and black pepper the sauce became tolerable.

The meal was ok - nothing too terrible - but who wants to eat a meal like that. I like to enjoy my food.


To Conclude
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I would not buy this sauce again - because of its freaky ingredients. I also did not consider it to be much of a convenience as I had to tweak it heavily. In my opinion, you would be much better off buying a tin of chopped tomatoes and making your own sauce. It won't actually take you more time to do this and the outcome would be much more favourable.