Are jars always a bad option?

gayleygoo

I generally prefer the taste of homemade sauces, but I wouldn't consider that jars are "bad" for you. They might have various additives, but in small quantities they are highly unlikely to be actually harmful to you unless you have a particular sensitivity. I do occasionally use them if they've been bought on offer, but tend to add herbs and spices to them for extra flavour!

Cheese/white sauce and peppered sauce can be made very cheaply, so I wouldn't buy them in jar or packet form. Value pasta sauce however, can make a decent, quick meal and if it means you don't resort to takeaway then it is surely good value and fairly healthy. Although I normally make my own pasta sauce, because it takes the same amount of time as boiling the pasta!

I recently read an article that stated you should "never eat tinned food" - again it's maybe not as healthy as fresh food but I'd be quite lost without tinned tomatoes, peas, beans and sweetcorn!

redmel1621

Thank you everyone for your thoughts.

I do a mixture of cooking from scratch and using jars and sometimes feel 'guilty' when I make a curry from a jar of sauce. I am fully capable of making from scratch pretty much every sauce, with the exception of carbonara, but often don't have time or energy.

I'm glad to see they are not quite so frowned upon as I have been led to believe.

Bobarella

No indeed RedMel - End of the day, you have a certain amount of time in a day, if you are not able to cook a sauce from scratch everytime, who really can judge??

Evil_Olive

Softstuff wrote: »

And curry, I've learned a fair few curries and jars just don't work the same, there's no way you can cook your meat in the spices and such before adding the liquid

I've found that the Pataks jars of curry paste are a good 'halfway house' for this as you can cook your meat in them before adding the liquid and I've made a fair few curries with them that husband has commented taste just like the takeaway. (we live in a flat above a row of shops and there's an indian next door - the smell of cooking curry drives us mad with yearning every evening )
You can make several meals with one jar and what's left keeps for ever in the coldest part of the fridge.

[Deleted User]

This sauce with 400g of chicken breast costs £2.58 for 640kcal, which is £4.03 per 1000kcal. If you make it with expensive Patak's sauce it works out at £4.93/1000kcal.

This home made balti is £1.51 for 217kcal, or £6.96/1000kcal. That's 73% dearer than the Tesco sauce, and still 41% dearer than the Patak's sauce.

Tesco guarantees that:

"There's no msg, no hydrogenated fats, no artificial flavours or colours, and no genetically modified food in any of our Tesco food."

maman

It's the sugar content that puts me off. A quick Google tells me 5.9g of sugar per 100 ml in Dolmio compared with negligible in passata. That's why I make my own.

Maitane

I agree with the Patak's. I generally make my own sauces out of preference and because it isn't hard but Patak's is a good alternative if I can't make a curry from scratch for any reason (often camping).
It's the only curry paste my Kashmiri family will consider, they can tell the difference.

Linda32

I don't think they are a bad thing at all (Any health reasons aside, that is).

In an ideal world, yes I surpose everything would be cooked from scratch everyday, having said that, who's ideal world? and who says that that is an ideal world?

Getting back to what I was going to say :rotfl: someone pays you to work. It would be cheaper for them to do it themselves but instead they pay you, so you pay someone to make part of your dinner for you. Does that way of looking at things justify jars?

Its not my ideal world to make a curry as I have tried, they smell lovely but taste of nothing, so I've wasted ingredients (money) and time, so I use a jar of curry sauce.

I wouldn't use a jar of tomato based sauce in a mince based dish, purely because its pretty much a can of tinned tomatoes and some herbs.

tiredwithtwins

nothing wrong with using jars, I tend to cook from scratch but use jars for the convenience ... I do tend to stretch them though, pasta sauce jars I add a tin or two of cheap toms or passatta ... white sauce for lasagne I usually add water or milk to - half as much will make it stretch nicely. curry sauces I add a tin of toms or a couple of tablespoons of coconut milk powder and some water to.
I also buy them only when they are on offer ...
you have to do what fits in with your life and your budget, nothing wrong with using them occasionally ... its all about balance

Evil_Olive

jack_pott, that homemade curry looks lovely, but I live in the tiniest flat with a cupboard for a kitchen and can't keep lots of different spices about that I would only use for one recipe - also very time-poor Like Maitane, Pataks paste is the only thing I've found that tastes like a real Indian (never tried their sauces)

My Pataks curry doesn't cost me anywhere near that much though, the paste goes much further than a jar of sauce. If you make it up according to the instructions on the jar you get 8 portions to a jar but I stretch it with 1/2 chickpeas and 1/2 chicken and extra toms. When I batch cook and use the whole jar of paste at once, I'll get at least 12 portions out of it, sometimes more, so the paste (1.98 a jar) comes in at 16.5p or less per portion. Never actually costed out the whole thing per portion - might do that now. No clue as to calories but they are BIG portions