A big pot of pasta boiling on the stove, the skillet is all fired up with a pound of ground beef browned and ready. To the cupboard you go to find a jar of sauce. This is played out every night in many thousands of homes across the country. With the cost of food always on the increase, it’s in your best interest to find the most cost effective products you can. So starts the spaghetti wars, a comparison of commonly found brands of prepared spaghetti sauce.
Way back in my single days, that’s further back then I care to acknowledge, I invited a friend and her two kids over for a spaghetti dinner. As a bachelor, when she asked if it was going to be homemade, I answered of course. In my mind homemade included anything that didn’t come out of a can all blended together with the name of an Italian chef emblazoned across the label.
Boiling pasta noodles separately from the sauce out of a jar met my requirement for homemade goodness. That famous jar of Ragu was about the last jar by that name to be found in my paltry pantry. Though this sad meal was served almost 35 years ago, when the standard bottle of Ragu sauce consisted of a somewhat watery mixture of tomatoes and not much more. With Ragu being first sold in 1937, odds are their current products advertised to be chunky and containing a full serving of vegetables, is likely to now have more merit in the spaghetti wars. Unfortunately I haven’t been exposed to their product for many years.
Having been enlightened by my friend as to how to “Doctor” spaghetti out of a jar. I rapidly learned homemade meant making your own sauce from tomatoes. Oops. I never did attempt that level or refinement, though Doctored spaghetti is a solid member of my culinary specialties.
A definite upgrade in the sauce department was the move to Prego. Wikipedia states Prego, a member of the Campbell Soup family of products came on the market in 1981. With a fine selection of sauces including Chunky Garden Onion & Garlic Sauce. Prego has always been a favorite in our household, but with everything else these days, the price continues to climb.
Good old Wal-Mart, their Great Value brand of sauce looked pretty good in the jar. Priced measurably less then the name brands, it was time to give it a try. Great Value’s Chunky Onion & Garlic Sauce was every bit as thick and good tasting as Prego. With a savings of at least .50 cents a bottle, the family decided having a name brand on the label just wasn’t all that important.
For a couple of years we’ve been quite satisfied with Wal-Mat’s Great Value line of spaghetti sauces. Over the past six months even Wal-Mart has experienced pretty dramatic rises in the price of their goods. Their spaghetti sauce is almost as high as Prego used to be.
Time for more research, off to Sav a Lot, the super discount grocery store. The brand they carry is Pastapali, an unknown sauce in these parts. At a cost of just $1 a 26oz bottle, they are by far the lowest priced sauce on the market. By looking at the sauce it appears to be as thick as the other better sauces, I’m looking forward to trying it out for flavor. Just another step in the constant struggle to stay ahead of increasing prices.
By the way, if you want to Doctor up that jar of prepared sauce, try adding some chopped up link pork sausage along with the pound of beef.
