THE SUPERMARKET PASTA SAUCES THAT ARE WORTH YOUR MONEY (AND THE HOUSEHOLD BRANDS THAT AREN’T)

A jar of tomato pasta sauce is a standby for countless households, ready to tip over a quick plate of spaghetti or stir through a pan of meatballs. It’s hard to believe that before 1986 and the launch of Dolmio, we all made our own tomato sauce.

To be fair, it’s more than a dash of colour and flavour: tomatoes are high in lycopene, a powerful antioxidant that may lower the risk of stroke and some cancers, and cooking the tomatoes makes the lycopene much more “bioavailable”, ie easy to absorb. Most of our lycopene comes from tomato sauce, juice and tinned tomatoes, so for once there’s a benefit to a can or jar over fresh.

From the producer’s point of view, it’s a highly competitive market. On the Tesco website alone I counted 35 different versions – more if you count pouches and cartons as well as jars. What you might spend on them varies vastly, from less than 50p for a 440ml jar of Tesco’s budget range Hearty Food Co. Tomato & Herb Pasta Sauce, to £3 for a 350g jar of tomato and basil sauce in the Loyd Grossman range. And we are thinking harder about how much we spend on our sauce.

While Dolmio commands a third of the pasta sauce market, pricier Loyd Grossman (now made by Premier Foods, alongside Oxo and Angel Delight), has sales up a tenth on last year, and at the other end, supermarket brands are also growing in popularity, up 3 per cent on last year.

To be really thrifty, as some of my friends on social media have (rather severely) pointed out, surely you make your own? I gave it a go, using the cheapest tinned tomatoes, in my case Asda Just Essentials at 34p a can. I needed two tins – budget brands are a bit more watery, so they need cooking down a bit longer than the premium versions – to make enough sauce to fill a 440g jar.

In keeping with the ingredients lists, I added just a chopped onion and a clove of garlic fried briefly in a splash of olive oil, and some chopped basil at the end. A total cost of £1.11, or 95p if I opted for cheaper dried oregano instead of fresh basil.

So yes, cheaper than any of the big brands, and around the same price as the mid-range supermarket versions. Sure, more than the budget super-market versions, but all of those I tried were memorably nasty, weirdly orange and gloopy, the stuff of canteen nightmares.

My sauce wasn’t just deliciously savoury and appetisingly dark; it was also free from weird ingredients such as modified starch, which saves producers money (it’s cheaper than tomatoes) but has none of the lycopene. What’s more, its use marks products out as ultra-processed food (UPF), currently carrying the can for the national obesity crisis.

However, if I had to buy all the ingredients for my sauce up front, then my supermarket bill would be more like a tenner, even if it would leave me with plenty of olive oil and garlic for future sauces. There’s the cost of fuel to factor in, too, with the home-made version, and the assumption you have equipment, including a blender if the kids are lump-phobic.

Anyway, this is about being time-poor as well as cash-strapped – two factors that often go hand in hand. As a single mother friend pointed out to me, “I pick up my son from after-school club at 6pm, and I need to get him into bed by 7.30pm. There’s no time to slowly simmer tomatoes.”

Maybe you could make some at the weekend and freeze it, I suggested tentatively. Her look could have blast-chilled boiling pasta at 10 paces. “The freezer,” she told me, “is full. Full of frozen pizza.”

Italians buy jars of tomato sauce too, I discovered on a recent trip to Emilia-Romagna, the region regarded as gourmet even by the Italians – home of Parma ham, Parmesan Reggiano and ragu Bolognese. There were plenty of jars in the shops, albeit all made in Italy (whereas much of ours, including the best-selling Dolmio, is made in the Netherlands or elsewhere). I asked my Italian guide if she would ever buy one. “For sure,” she told me, “when I’ve run out of my mum’s home-made version.”

My supermarket dash yielded more than 20 jars of pasta sauce, which I tasted hot with pasta. I included Bolognese sauce, although mostly only the ones that suggested on the label that they could be eaten without adding meat. Heinz was in there, of course – you can’t have missed its recent, hugely expensive launch, which has rattled the sauce cages, much as Loyd Grossman’s snapped at Dolmio’s heels when it appeared on the shelves in 1995. With pasta sauce, it’s every tomato for itself.

The value-for-money taste test

Tesco Hearty Food Co. Tomato & Herb Pasta Sauce

47p for 440g (11p/100g)

UPF ingredients: modified starch, citric acid, saccharin.

Looks semi opaque and flour-thickened and the flavour is minimal; a hint of stale herbs and a horrid claggy texture.

Result: 0 out of 5

Asda Just Essentials Bolognese Sauce

47p for 440g (11p/100g)

UPF ingredients: modified starch, citric acid, saccharin.

Vile. Like a dab of tomato purée mixed with water and cornflour, plus some forgotten old dried herbs.

Result: 0 out of 5

Aldi Everyday Essentials Pasta Sauce

47p for 440g (11p/100g)

UPF ingredients: modified starch, citric acid, saccharin.

Looks terrible, beige orange, exactly as you’d expect flour-thickened tomato sauce to look. Bitter and weirdly glossy.

Result: 0 out of 5

Dolmio Original Bolognese Sauce

£2.50 for 500g at Sainsbury’s (50p/100g)

UPF ingredients: modified starch, citric acid.

This was one of the few sauces that specify to add meat, which given the time that takes, you might as well add a tin of chopped tomatoes instead. It tastes cloying with no complexity or depth, bar a hint of musty herb flavour. You can do so much better at the price.

Result: 1 out of 5

Waitrose & Partners Bolognese Pasta Sauce

£3 for 475g (63p/100g)

UPF ingredients: citric acid.

Shows promising lumps of tomato and cubes of carrot but there’s almost no flavour! Just a bitter afternote.

Result: 1 out of 5

Morrisons Bolognese Pasta Sauce

£1.59 for 725g (22p/100g)

UPF ingredients: modified maize starch.

A bit sickly and too tangy. Not good.

Result: 1 out of 5

Lidl Simply Tomato & Herb Pasta Sauce

39p for 440g (9p/100g)

UPF ingredients: Modified starch, citric acid, saccharin.

Thin and orange. No flavour. Pretty awful but doesn’t have such nasty thickening as some others, which scores it a point.

Result: 1 out of 5

Essential Waitrose & Partners Bolognese Sauce

£1 for 340g (29p/100g)

UPF ingredients: lactic acid.

Quite a lot of tomato skin in this, and the sauce has a dried herb flavour while being quite sharp and vinegary. It tastes thin and metallic, not very balanced on its own, but could be good with very rich meat.

Result: 2 out of 5

Waitrose Duchy Organic Tomato & Chilli Pasta Sauce

£2.50 for 290g (86p/100g)

UPF ingredients: none.

The chilli is lovely but there is not much else going on. Some sweetness but not enough tomato flavour.

Result: 2 out of 5

Crosta & Mollica Fresh Basil & Tomato

£3 for 340g at Waitrose (88p/100g)

UPF ingredients: none.

This is mellow and is on the sweet side, perhaps from the carrots used in the mix. It’s oddly gloopy, despite there being no starch listed as an ingredient, so maybe it’s from the starch in the carrots?

Result: 2 out of 5

Heinz Sundried Cherry Tomato & Basil Sauce

£2 for 350g at Tesco (57p/100g)

UPF ingredients: none but apple juice for sweetener.

Not a rich flavour, just tangy in a sickly way, with hard lumps of veg.

Result: 2 out of 5

De Cecco Sugo alla Napoletana

£2.95 for 400g at Ocado (74p/100g)

UPF ingredients: none.

A bit starchy tasting. Rich but not a lot of flavour and there is a soapy back note. Herbs are restrained though.

Result: 2 out of 5

M&S Food Classic Tomato Everything Sauce

£2.10 for 340g at Ocado (62p/100g)

UPF ingredients: citric acid.

Made in Italy, and it delivers a good, intense, almost caramelised tomato flavour. It doesn’t taste that fresh, though, and there are some hard bits.

Result: 3 out of 5

Lidl Baresa Bolognese Pasta Sauce

49p for 500g (10p/100g)

UPF ingredients: modified maize starch, citric acid.

Gloopy, but looks rich. There is some balance to the flavour; it tastes industrially produced but not terrible at this price.

Result: 3 out of 5

Aldi Specially Selected Cherry Tomato & Chilli Pasta Sauce

£1.49 for 340g (44p/100g)

UPF ingredients: lactic acid, calcium chloride.

Lower in salt than the others and it tastes weirdly under seasoned to me but will suit others well; you can always add a pinch of salt. There’s a big bit of skin and a hard lump of tomato core in the sample I try. I like the pleasing slick of olive oil on top – it’s rich. Vastly better than Dolmio and a lower price.

Result: 3 out of 5

Rustichella d’Abruzzo Pomodoro e Basilico

£3.99 for 270g from Odysea (£1.47/100g)

UPF ingredients: none.

Very mellow. It tastes posh, if a little bit confected. Comes out mild when teamed with pasta; some nice lumps.

Result: 3 out of 5

Mr Organic Bolognese Pasta Sauce

£3 for 350g at Waitrose (86p/100g)

UPF ingredients: none.

No added sugar but still very rich – just a bit too heavy handed with the herbs to eat straight; better with meat.

Result: 3 out of 5

Loyd Grossman Tomato & Basil Sauce

£4.50 for 660g at Ocado (68p/100g)

UPF ingredients: none.

Sweet and confected, but also so savoury I’d have assumed it has anchovies in it. Not much tomato flavour, though the basil comes through. Doesn’t taste artificial. Tiny kick of peppery heat which is nice.

Result: 3 out of 5

Asda Extra Special Bolognese Sauce

£1.80 for 340g (53p/100g)

UPF ingredients: lactic acid.

Lots of umami oomph but that dried herb note is there, too. It tastes a tiny bit soapy on its own but works OK with the pasta.

Result: 3 out of 5

Tesco Bolognese Sauce

95p for 500g (19p/100g)

UPF ingredients: none.

Very tomatoey and quite fresh-tasting, with no musty herb flavour, this is well balanced. The ingredients list is pretty good – it’s got cornflour in, but at least it’s not modified starch.

Result: 4 out of 5

Mutti Pasta Sauce with Rossoro Tomatoes and Parmigiano Reggiano

£3 for 400g at Ocado (75p/100g)

UPF ingredients: “natural flavourings”.

Very parmesan-y, although the sweetness of the tomato comes through. Yummy enough to eat out of the jar but you’d have to like the taste of parmesan.

Result: 4 out of 5

Aldi Cucina Smooth Tomato Sauce

89p for 500g (18p/100g)

UPF ingredients: modified maize starch, citric acid.

Fresh-tasting like a simple homemade sauce, tomatoey in flavour with some nice textured lumps. Versatile enough to be used in lots of different dishes.

Result: 4 out of 5

Which is your favourite pasta sauce brand? Tell us in the comments section below

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2023-06-02T12:50:30Z dg43tfdfdgfd