A warm, hearty pasta dish is an easy and cheap mid-week meal that will satisfy most people and can usually be on the plate in a matter of minutes. With different combinations of sauce, toppings and pasta shapes, dishes can be tailored to whatever families prefer.
For me, I like to keep things classic with a mostly tomato-based sauce. It usually pairs well with most meats, like chopped-up chicken sausage or beef meatballs, and can even be tasty all on its own.
Most of the time, I whip up my own sauce using roasted vegetables to make things a bit healthier. But when throwing together something last-minute, a handy jar of pre-made sauce is always useful to pull from the cupboard.
I'm usually pretty particular with sauces, so I wanted to see if some of the cheaper options could compare to homemade classics. I went out and bought two similar sauces from Aldi and Lidl to put them to the test.
The price and suggested serving sizes were identical. Aldi's Smooth Tomato jar and Lidl's Baresa Tomato and Basil sauce were both 69p and claimed to make enough to serve four people.
With obvious differences not making either a winner just yet, tasting them was the only way to know which budget store did it better. I made one batch of pasta, divided it evenly and used half a jar of sauce in each.
Split four ways, each portion of the sauce costs roughly 17p. I added 150g of cooked pasta, working out at around 10-12p, depending on the brand used. Overall, without adding any extras, the dishes cost less than 30p per portion.
I usually add a little cheese on top or some meatballs to go alongside these dishes, but for the sake of this test, I wanted to see how the sauces alone stood up to one another.
Aldi's sauce tasted very fresh and had a lovely, strong flavour. I was a little bit worried when the jar only mentioned tomato, and I thought it might lack the seasoning to give it an extra kick, but I was wrong. It had a lovely, smooth texture, as its name suggests, and wasn't too thin to feel watered down, so it spread into four portions. It was a delicious meal that had me wanting seconds.
I did enjoy this bowl more than the Lidl version, which I think did not deliver quite as well as its budget rival. The label claims that the sauce contains basil, and there were slight hints of it. But it did not have the same strength of flavour as the Aldi one, which felt like much more than a basic sauce - it was miles better. With no competition on price and size, I'd opt for Aldi every time when it comes to making a pasta sauce in a hurry.
