Mel's Tandoori Marinade product reviews

No Animals were harmed during the review process. As the 'token vegetarian' of the group I guess it falls to me to do the review from a vegetarian point of view. There was no meat to be marinaded or even dairy products used.

My daughter, ever the keen cook decided to use this product in the making of our regular Thursday Curry night. The Tandoori marinade was mixed in coconut milk (not authentically Indian) and Tofu (yes, tofu! Again not authentically Indian) was marinaded in the resultant mix. During the marinading, my daughter prepared the rest of the vegetables, added the Tandoori Marsala mix and simmered until dinner was ready.

The pack said HOT. I didn't find it remotely hot (besides, it has to be napalm before I can detect any chillie heat) and my daughter who is more sensitive to chillie didn't break into a sweat. She wolfed dinner down quickly and went back for seconds. My wife doesn't tolerate Curries at all (Samoan Kali aside) but did try it and sweated through it.

I really enjoyed it. It was richly flavoured and (artificially) coloured. It worked very well as a vegetarian option and I am sure it would work equally well for the corpse chompers out there. The price is a little steep at $10 a pop, and I am not keen on the zip-lock pouches but that is just a personal opinion. Overall, the product is great, but I would have preferred a little more heat. Kiwi hot is just a little too mild for my taste.

I *love* spicy food... in my student daze... erm, days... it was not uncommon for me to be found down at the local mall foodcourt having a Doner Kebab with extra chilli sauce, or a tandoori curry and rice that would strip the paint off a car at 10 paces. However, in the last decade or so, once I started doing the "family life" thing, my diet for spicy has dropped due to accommodating the tastebuds of partner and kids who weren't raised on fire-food.

So, with a chance to test this out while the family were out and about, I took to it with gusto. The night before, I rubbed and marinated some diced beef, some diced chicken, and some diced lamb... ensuring I could test a range of meals. Because of my carnivorous preferences, there was no "purely vegetarian option" to this test. Meat, meat and meat... with some rice and a few veges thrown in for colour and texture only.

Because I didn't have time to use the slow-cooker for three different meals, I had to fall back on stove-top cooking which did result in the meat being a fair bit tougher than I would consider ideal, so given the choice using a slow-cooker, or reducing the heat slightly and stretching out the cooking time would be well advised.

The results: YOWZA! This beauty had some serious claws to it... but the taste was amazing. Full of rich spicy overtones that were not drowned out by the heat. This was right in the sweet-spot for my "hot and spicy food" preferences! Certainly one I will be buying again... although not as often as I would like.

My three year old daughter and I made the marinade which consists of yoghurt and the Mel's Original Tandoori Marinade. It stated you needed 500gm of yoghurt and then you mix in the chicken (which my daughter had fun completely coating it). It said to let sit for up to 1 hour on the packet but we left it for 4.5hrs in the fridge. We made Shish Kebabs with mushrooms, red onion, capsicum and my daughter had great fun in threading all of the ingredients on to the skewers. We also had a green salad and rice.

Now I briefly read the back and once again forgot to see the word "HOT"!! (Boy was it ever.) I am thankful I brought a large 1kg of yoghurt. The flavour is very intense, and in the future, if we ever buy again will only use half of the packet. I am amazed at how well this sauce/marinade stays on the chicken. My husband joked we could of just dipped the chicken in yoghurt and opened up the marinade and just put the chicken over the packet for 10 seconds and it would of heated the chicken enough.

My baby who is 13mths loved it and wanted more but she was drinking the water like it was going out of fashion she was panting something chronic but she still kept eating. My three year old ate one kebab without any issues and on the second one it must of hit her as she too started drinking. This is the first meal in a long time my husband did not finish - not because he didn't like it just was hotter than he expected. I realised afterwards I did not use enough chicken and like I stated before would only use half a packet next time.

We all agreed that a: it was toooooooo hot (possibly my fault) and b: we enjoyed it. So I have learnt to sit down and read the whole back before I do any cooking and if it says its HOT only use half a packet. I think Mel's sauces/marinades are amazing the flavour is fantastic and does not fade once you cook it. Its amazing how succulent the meat always tastes.

We are now huge fans of Mel's sauces and this tandoori marinade is no exception. Yes the price is quite a shock, $10 is a lot of money these days, and not the amount I would normally spend on a packet mix...the fact that this marinade is 100% vegetarian will be very appealing to many. The fact that you also need to add yoghurt to the mix could be off putting for some especially with the $10 price tag attached, but even though its expensive its oh so worth it.

We used it with chicken, its easy to use and easy to put together, even kids could do it. As with the butter chicken mix, and Im pretty sure the mix has nothing to do with this, but the chicken is always so tender, and again the chicken was perfect. It has a slight wee kick to it, but not too much that you can not bear it. The kids enjoyed it too and the flavour is not just coated on, it goes right through the meat, all the way through...and i love that!

I would like to get this again to try with vegetables as apparently it would work well with them too. Will definitely buy it as we do really like the Mel's mixes but due to the price it wouldn't be a regular, it would be something we get when I really need my kids to eat all their food ^

When I looked at the small packet, and saw the price of $10 I wasn't too sure about it, mainly based upon costs. If you add in the price of yoghurt you're looking at about $2 - $3 for the 500gms of yoghurt it suggests, so it isn't a cheap sauce. However, it made it enough sauce to coat our 500gms of chicken and fill a small plastic container to the top. One note though, I did use 750gms of yoghurt.

There isn't anything on the packet that states cooking time. It did state to put it in the fridge for at least an hour to marinade, but no length for cooking (but the amount of meat was up to 3kgs). It was a nice taste, even with 750gms of yoghurt it still had a definite heat to it, but this added well to the flavour. We ended up having this with some rice risotto, Mushroom flavour, and the two went together very, very well.

When we put everything together, the nice taste, the great texture and the huge amount of sauce that this ended up making, we would buy it again as $10 is well worth it when you consider all those factors.

My husband doesn't do curries, so I thought I would be sneaky. I saved over one steak from dinner the previous night. I cut it up into cubes and then marinated it in this curry paste. I mixed the curry paste with yoghurt as suggested on the packet. I used a Greek yoghurt with honey as that is all I had in the house. This worked perfectly. The paste went from a vibrant red orange look, to a creamy orange. The meat sat in the paste for 4 hours before I was ready to cook it for my lunch.

I heated a curry infused oil in the pan and fried the meat with the paste as a sauce. As it cooked, the paste went back to that bright red orange colour. As the orange of the oils in the paste came out, the smell of lemon was unmistakeable and delicious, filling my whole kitchen. Once the meat had finished cooking, I served this on a plate of jasmine rice. I decided to top the plate with some more yoghurt to help cut any heat from the curry as I ate. This was a stroke of genius on my part because this is a hot curry.

The flavour of the lemon is dominant again, which I found surprising. I usually struggle to taste individual flavours in a hot curry. But with this product, I could tell some of the ingredients even though it was very hot as well. The yoghurt was a great accompaniment. I also served a milky ice cream tea with this which set the whole meal off.

There is still so much of the paste left over. What I love is that I could easily have this kind of special lunch meal at home another 6 times or more out of the same packet. Its all re-sealable so I can store it in the fridge or freezer. Its very versatile, in that I could have different meats with it or use it on vegetables or a meat alternative instead. I could even use it as a curry sauce with hot chips or on a sandwich. Its really easy to use and easy to get a great result too.

I was immediately disappointed when I looked at the packet of this Tandoori marinade as in the ingredients list it contains two artificial colourings which are controversial and banned in some countries. Whilst colour is important to some people I would not have expected artificial colourings to be used it in this product to gain a desired colour. This alone would stop me from using this sauce in the future especially when other products in this range are free of artificial colours and flavourings.

I followed the instructions on the packet though halved it and only used half the packet and 300g of yoghurt to marinade. I marinated my chicken thigh meat in this sauce in the fridge then grilled in the oven as recommended. I served with rice, roti's vegetable's and a homemade raita. I was really glad to have the raita as this was hot, hot! It was almost too hot to enjoy eating for me though the chicken was incredibly succulent. Hubby enjoyed the hotness as he prefers his curries etc hot.

This sauce was incredibly easy to use and if you like a hot Tandoori this is the sauce for you! The packet can easily do two meals so is good value for money however I wouldn't purchase in the future because of the food colouring used.