CHOICE crowns best tomato sauce

Finding the perfect tomato sauce can be hard, but fortunately CHOICE has done the hard work — with a surprisingly cheap choice coming in first.

When it comes to tomato sauce it can be hard to find “The One”.

Some can be too sweet, others too salty and worst of all, you might end up with a watery sauce for your meat pie, an absolute disaster, really.

Fortunately CHOICE has done the hard work for us and enlisted three expert taste testers do sample 22 supermarket brands of tomato sauce to reveal which one tastes the best.

CHOICE’s three taste testers were professional chefs Tawnya Bahr, Adam Moore and Peter van Es.

The foodies tasted the 22 sauces blind and scored each sauce based on this system:

90 per cent for taste: This was broken down into 50 per cent flavour, 30 per cent texture, 10 per cent aroma and 10 per cent presentation.

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You can’t have a meat pie without tomato sauce, don’t @ me.

10 per cent for nutrition: This score was calculated based on each product’s health star rating and the nutritional table provided on the back of each product.

CHOICE said it could only recommend sauces that scored 70 per cent or more, which ruled out 18 of the 22 brands they tested — yikes.

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AND THE WINNER IS …

With the highest score of 79 per cent Community Co A Squeeze Of Tomato Sauce was praised by the experts for it’s “thick and shiny” look and “nice flavour” that is “well balanced”.

Community Co A Squeeze Of Tomato Sauce.

Ozesauce Australian All Natural Tomato Sauce.

Made from a minimum of 98 per cent Australian ingredients the source is also one of the cheapest in supermarkets, costing an average of 30 cents per 100 millilitre.

In second place with a score of 72 per cent was the Ozesauce Australian All Natural Tomato Sauce (60 cents per 100 millilitre), which was commended for its “spicy herbaceous flavour”.

Coming in third at 71 per cent was one of Australia’s most popular brands, Heinz Big Red Tomato Sauce (53 cents per 100 millilitre).

The pantry staple was praised for its “nice glossy” colour and “fresh and clean” flavour.

Finishing in fourth was Aldi Colway Tomato Sauce (28 cents per 100 millilitre) at 70 per cent and one of the cheapest tomato sauces on the market.

The experts decided that the Aldi sauce had “strong onion and garlic notes” as well as “good evidence of pureed fruit”.

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Heinz Big Red Tomato Sauce

Aldi supermarket Colway Tomato Sauce

Here’s how the rest ranked:

5. Woolworths Tomato Sauce (30 cents per 100 millilitre): 67 per cent.

6. Rosella Tomato Sauce (46 cents per 100 millilitre): 66 per cent.

7. Fountain Tomato Sauce Reduced Sugar (40 cents per 100 millilitre): 65 per cent.

8. Coles Tomato Sauce (30 cents per 100 millilitre): 64 per cent.

9. Masterfoods Aussie Farmers Tomato Sauce (63 cents per 100 millilitre): 63 per cent.

10. Rosella Organic Tomato Sauce (80 cents per 100 millilitre): 63 per cent.

11. Heinz Organic Tomato Ketchup (86 cents per 100 millilitre): 63 per cent.

12. Masterfoods Tomato Sauce (59 cents per 100 millilitre): 62 per cent.

13. Rosella Honest Kids Tomato Sauce (70 cents per 100 millilitre): 62 per cent.

14. Heinz Tomato Ketchup (64 cents per 100 millilitre): 61 per cent.

15. Heinz Tomato Ketchup 50% Less added sugar and salt (64 cents per 100 millilitre): 57 per cent.

16. Coles Tomato Ketchup (52 cents per 100 millilitre): 56 per cent.

17. Masterfoods Tomato Sauce Reduced Salt And Sugar (62 cents per 100 millilitre): 54 per cent.

18. Fountain Tomato Sauce (40 cents per 100 millilitre): 53 per cent.

19. Black & Gold Tomato Sauce (30 cents per 100 millilitre): 52 per cent.

20. Celebrate Health Tomato Sauce ($1.16 cents per 100 millilitre): 51 per cent.

21. Three Threes Family Recipe Tomato Sauce ($1.09 per 100 millilitre): 50 per cent.

22. Beerenberg Tomato Sauce ($1.58 per 100 millilitre): 44 per cent.