Sunday, November 4, 2012

Weekend Cooking: Pasta Sauces

To all of my east coast friends, I hope you are all doing well.  The news has been devastating and we're all  thinking about you (and donating to help where we can).  My thoughts and prayers go out to you as the clean up and recovery begins.

What can I say about this side of things?  End of term about killed me last week and weekend, so this week I think I spent it trying to gather strength and energy again.  I'm not sure what was up with that first term, but I was so burned out that I couldn't get enough sleep or rest enough to feel back to normal.  What's up with that?  Things are looking up though with a nice weekend relaxing and NO grading in sight.  I'm feeling a bit more back to myself.

For Weekend Cooking this week, I decided to do a little product comparison.  Have you ever looked at the expensive bottled spaghetti sauces and wondered if they're really worth all that extra cost?  Sometimes these sauces are over twice as much as the spaghetti sauces we're all familiar with!  Well, I purchased a couple of bottles of sauces I hadn't yet tried:  Mario Batali's Tomato Basil and Rao's Tomato Basil.  In my local grocery store, these sauces run about $7.99 a bottle.

Now, I usually just make my own sauce from my home canned tomatoes because I have a bit of a sensitivity to acidic tomatoes (supposedly, I'm allergic to them?), but I do fine if the product is high quality and canned when it's fully ripe.  Anyway, I thought I'd try out these sauces for those last minute dinners or baked pasta dish I want to whip up.   Here are my results.

Mario Batali's Tomato Basil
  • Flavor:  Very light and slightly tangy back taste.
  • Color:  Also, very light, which might mean the tomatoes have been thinned out or canned before fully ripe?
  • Basil-ness:  That basil flavor is pretty light.  In fact, it seems to be a bit thinned out.
  • Toothiness Quotient:  When applied to the pasta, it sticks nicely and has more of a fresh tomato flavor to it that makes the pasta taste a bit like a cheaper brand.
Rao's Tomato Basil
  •  Flavor:  Nice a deep, robust flavor.  This literally tastes like it's been cooking on your stove all day, developing a richness that doesn't taste like it could be bottled.
  • Color:  Even from the picture above, you can see that it's a beautiful, dark color.  It's a glorious dark red, with bits of basil and parsley leaves (obviously fresh) throughout.
  • Basil-ness:  It was a perfect balance.  The sauce was so rich that the basil was more of a compliment than anything.  
  • Toothiness Quotient:  When I tried it out on penne, it coated it delightfully, so spaghetti turned out even better.
My favorite sauce then?  As you can guess, it was Rao's by a landslide.  In fact, when I returned to the grocery store, they had it on sale and I bought four bottles to put on my shelves!  I've tried other expensive brands, but nothing has compared yet to Rao's.  If you look, others have also evaluated bottle sauces and agree with me.  Here's Cooking Light's taste test

If you're a bit cheap when it comes to sauces, which I've been since college, I have to at least say you should bite the bullet and try Rao's.  I'll be keeping this sauce around for quick dinner emergencies or a nice baked pasta. 

Weekend Cooking is a great, weekly post run by Beth Fish Reads.  There are some really great food-related posts there.  Stop by to check out other great posts from this weekend.

17 comments:

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    1. Rao's really is excellent. I highly recommend!

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  2. It is hard to find a good sauce - I tend to make my own with variable results because I can't resist adding chillies etc... Have a nice week.

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    1. Yes. I agree. I'm now sold though on Rao's and like the homemade flavor of it. You'll have to try it!

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  3. I have always meant to try Rao's but the price did put me off. Your stellar review means I will give it a try- thanks!

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    1. Yay! Honest. You really should give it a try. I really liked the way it tasted as if it were homemade. Yum!

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  4. Fantastic post! I to have been meaning to try Rao's but I've wondered if it really was worth the price. So good to know that it's worth keeping in the pantry.

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    1. Yes. It's really great. When I make things like Baked Rigatoni, I like having a great sauce like this on hand. It makes it so much easier to whip together for company!

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  5. Wow, $7.99 a jar is really expensive! But a taste test would be interesting. I usually buy Classico brand, but sometimes I just get what is on sale or what I have a coupon for. I would be interested to hear how an inexpensive but higher quality sauce - like maybe Trader Joe's or Newman's - would compare to these.

    Thanks for the info!

    Sue

    Book By Book

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    1. Yes, $7.99 can seem steep, but it was so worth it. Besides, I got 4 meals out of it. That seemed pretty reasonable, all things considered. We don't have Trader Joe's here, but I did try Newman's before and it just didn't stack up to Rao's. At least in my opinion! :)

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  6. Oh, interesting! Cooking Light (one of my favorite mags) liked Classico, too!

    Sue

    Book By Book

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  7. I LOVE Rao's! It really does taste as good as homemade. The perfect balance of sweetness and tang.

    My mom bough San Marzano bottled spaghetti sauce on sale a few weeks ago and that was really good, too.

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    1. I want to find San Marzano tomatoes. We have a specialty food store down the street from me (yes, I'm lucky that the big name in the valley is just a hop, skip, and jump away). I think I'll go over and see if I can find any of them there. *crosses fingers*

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  8. So good to know! I am so picky about sauces, and as much as I enjoy making a marinara from scratch, I just don't have the time anymore. I would willingly pay extra for a bottled version that tastes as good as homemade. I will definitely be checking this out the next time I am in the market for some jarred sauce. Thanks!

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    1. I agree. I love making a homemade sauce, but sometimes it's just not possible. Rao's was perfect for this and still tasted like homemade. You'll have to give it a try! :)

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  9. Guess I'll have to break down and give Rao's a try. My mother is the official sauce-maker in the family and we've been spoiled for most commercial brands, but I have been meaning to try Roa's...

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  10. I've never even investigated these more expensive sauces!!! So glad you've started this for me. Rao's sounds amazing!

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