We pretty much ran out of food in our house yesterday and, since my wife had to run to the store anyway (to pick up things for my daughter’s school lunches), I told her just to grab something for dinner. Since money was tight and we already had the spaghetti pasta cooked (I made it for my youngest daughter the day before), I told her to keep things simple and just pick up a cheap jar of spaghetti sauce.
She came home with Mushroom and Green Pepper Pasta sauce from the Wal-mart Great Value brand.
For some reason, I remember having Great Value spaghetti sauce in the past but, when I saw this jar, I realized I really didn’t remember too much about it. And, the idea of sauce with both mushrooms and green peppers mixed into it did attract my interest. The fact it was more affordable than the other brands was also a plus.
I usually don’t like cheap brands of jarred sauces because I like thicker sauce and most are somewhat watery. That wasn’t the case with this sauce. It wasn’t as thick as some of my favorite brands. But, it was much thicker than many brands that are sold for around the same price as this one.
I was also somewhat impressed with the seasonings in the sauce. Normally, cheaper sauces like this are pretty tasteless and, more often than not, I end up having to add my own seasonings to them just to make them edible. While not the best sauce I have ever tasted, this one was still better than most bargain brands simply because it did have some spices in it and had some flavor as a result.
My biggest complaint about this product was the lack of vegetables in it; or, at least the size of the vegetables. There really were mushrooms and green peppers in the sauce, I can vouch for that. But, they were chopped so small, they weren’t very noticeable and I honestly couldn’t taste them. In fact, the only mushrooms I did taste were the ones we ended up adding ourselves (fortunately, my wife thought ahead and picked up a can of mushrooms too).
Overall, I feel I am OK with this purchase. It fit our budget and, as I said before, the sauce was better than what we could expect from most other bargain brands. However, if you are able to spend more money, there are plenty of better brands out there.