Italian Creations - Watties Tomato and Basil Pesto product reviews

This meal is quite similar to the Mexican Creations (Chilli con Carne, Nachos) but is much lighter in flavour. Tomato was certainly the dominant flavour, but wasn't too over the top. I generally enjoy the tomato flavour, but am not a fan of the consistency of cooked tomatoes, so I was pleased to find that this sauce was well pureed, and there were very few lumps to it.

I love the ease with which these meals can be done, being completed in under 10 minutes from start to finish. I would have preferred the sauce to have been slightly richer, so I added some Watties Hot Chilli Beans to the mixture, which worked well. The ease of preparation makes this a great meal, and the minimal extra ingredients needed keeps the costs down, in this budget conscious world.

This is my favourite of the Non-Indian Creations, of which I find are the far superior Creations, but this Tomato & Basil Pesto makes a brilliant bolognese, and can even make a great chilli con carne, with the addition of the chilli beans and a serving of rice. Whether on pasta, rice, or even just spread on a piece of toast, this versatile dish is a must try.

This is the last of the Wattie's sauces we have had to review and now that we've tried it I wish I had of tried it first. I originally didn't even put a request in as I really didn't think I would like it but decided to be brave and give it a go. Well, what a pleasant surprise to be able to say this sauce is truly yummy and I will be buying it for our family over and over again. In fact I will now be using this instead of the brand I used to use for lasagne and similar Italian pasta dishes. A delicious mix of tomatoes, Italian herbs and basil pesto this sauce has the perfect flavour combinations happening.

Finishing work late always means a rushed night with my baby when we get home and consequently my husband and I often eat way to late into the night. Not this time round though - Wattie's creations have simply made my life so much healthier with their wonderful meals! Not only are we eating decent home cooked meals every night that are full of vegetables and are good for us, but we are eating at a decent hour thanks to the simple and quick cooking processes. For these reasons alone (taste, quickness and healthiness) I totally recommend this sauce to everyone to try. No matter what your age, living/home situation or what you like to eat I am certain you will find a way to love this sauce as much as I do. The flavour is bang on the name and tastes of both tomato and basil. Its full of flavour and rich - though to a nice level of richness so not overpowering rich and has the right level of tomato vs. basil.

I cooked onion, mushrooms, pasta and mince (as per the packet instructions), mixed them all together and let the sauce simmer before serving. It really is that easy! Even your children who love to cook could accomplish this one The packet is easy to open, easy to empty so you don't waste any and after trying the sauce I know it could be used for lots of different recipes. A sachet to have handy in the cupboard's at all times that's for sure. I think the price of these (especially on special at the supermarket) is really reasonable and therefore I have already started to stock up on them so they are always in the cupboard ready to go. Fully recommend this to others, you wont be disappointed!

Our family are now all gluten free and I have had to completely change my shopping and cooking habits to ensure that everything in our kitchen is uncontaminated by gluten. This has been a difficult process but has meant that we are trying a whole range of products we wouldn't usually buy. I was pleased to discover that this Watties Creation sauce doesn't contain gluten (or have any allergy statements that it may be contaminated by gluten) so I could try it out on the family.

I use tomato based sauces a lot and have one brand that we have been using safely for a while now. I was interested to see how this would match up.

When cooking I usually throw a bit of whatever we have in with the sauce and with the kids often sneak extra vegetables in by grating carrots, zucchini, mushrooms etc. into my sauces. With this packet though I decided to follow the instructions and see how it tasted without any additions. I fried up an onion and then added my mince browning before adding the packet of sauce. I put this on to simmer whilst I cooked the pasta and vegetables. I found the packet easy to open and I was able to squeeze about 99% of the sauce out so had minimal wastage. Although the package isn't recyclable it does have the advantage of being very light so great to take camping etc.

I served up the sauce on gluten free penne and then topped with lots of cheese and presented it to the family. Hubby and I loved it. The sauce was one of the best we have had and I would definitely buy this again. Although the kids didn't say they loved it they did eta up all their dinner so that is a tick of approval in our house.

I would definitely buy this again and will look out for it over the brand we normally buy. It is a plus that it is 100% natural and that it is gluten free so I would definitely recommend this sauce. A fantastic product.

I was keen to try Watties tomato and Basil pesto pasta sauce as I love having pasta sauces in the cupboard to use either by itself or as a base to a dish. I decided to get the real taste of this sauce I would try it by itself on pasta sprinkled with parmesan cheese.

This sauce was a nice texture and colour, however the taste was too strong to have as just a sauce. It really needed to be used as a base to another dish with something like cream in it to take away the bitter, insipid taste of the tomato. Because of the strong tomato taste (tasted more like a tomato paste) you were unable to taste the Basil pesto at all.

So putting my thinking cap on I would not use this sauce on it's own again, however do think that it would make an awesome pizza sauce or as a base to a meat dish where the strength of flavour could be dulled down a bit. If Watties changed the wording on the packet it would then be more true to the flavour inside.

I will definitely be keeping it in mind for a pizza sauce but not a pasta sauce.

I have tried lots of the Watties Creations sauces thanks to KIWIreviews but the tomato and basil pesto has to be one of my favourites. I love the taste of basil and tomato but my daughters (4 and 5.5 years) don't like to see any greens on their plate. With this simmer sauce they didn't even know they were eating it. The sauce was red from the tomatoes and the girls love tomatoes in any form.

I decided to use the sauce for a bolognese. The most time consuming part was cooking the pasta. My family were surprised that I was calling them to the table for dinner so quickly. I served the bolognese on pasta spirals and topped it with grated cheese and sour cream. My plate also had mushrooms as I am the only fungi-muncher in the household. This meal was a big hit with my whole family which I excepted as bolognese is always popular with us. This is one of the few meals I have cooked lately that didn't have any leftovers. My girls were actually begging for some from Mummy and Daddy's plates.

This is one sauce that is definitely worth keeping in the pantry as there only a few other ingredients needed to make a quick meal my family will love. I am keen to introduce my family to cannelloni with this sauce. I also see it is suggested for lasagne too which is sure to be a hit and so much easier using it.

Saw some reviews and saw others going on about it and thought I better put in a request from KIWIreviews to get a sample to try. After looking at the supermarket to see they were gluten free I rushed home to do just that, gluten free is my normal check to see so that my daughter can eat the same as us.

I found the pack very easy to get into, no need for scissors, biting the top off or fighting with the packet a simple tear on the side and a rip across the top gave it easy access, and if I wanted to take off the whole top there is a slit on each side for this option. The directions on the back were very clear on what was needed, I just happened to have mince, onion and mushrooms in the house at the time and pasta too. Now it does say you can use this sauce for other meals as well and gives you an idea on what.

I'm not normally one to follow directions on packets because I like things my way, but with short for time tonight I gave it a go, I started at 17.17 and finished cooking at 17.58 so 32minutes all up, would of been quicker if my pan wasnt on low and was on high like I thought it was (oops on my part). Was very quick to cook up a dinner for myself and two children. I'm not a fan of pasta in my mince though and having to use gluten free pasta it really didn't taste the best to me, but the kids loved it and that also matters, will have to do it again with a different brand of pasta or even homemade spag pasta (which normally taste better anyway).

I did however find on the directions after the mince was cooked add the sauce and let it boil, I found it didn't feel like enough sauce to let it boil so I didn't, I just stirred it though and added the pasta. Aside from that it was full of flavour it was a lovely texture nothing sticking out which the 5 Serves of vegetables per pack makes it worth while of a quick meal, there is so much more I would do with this sauce, including a quick pasta dish with mixed veges though it. Its def going to be a sauce that finds my cupboard, I'm over fighting with jars. The price is very good, its what I normally pay for a jar of sauce that is gluten free.

One thing I love about Wattie's Creations is how easy the packet is to open, has slits on either side so just rip no worrying about finding some scissors. Next thing I love is you do not need many dishes to make this dish - the pot to cook some pasta in and a frying pan to take care of the rest. Finally I love how simple it is - boil the pasta, fry some onions and mince, add mushrooms and then the sauce and simmer - seriously what could be simpler?? Get the girls to grate some cheese and in less than half an hour the family is sitting down to a home cooked meal.

Unfortunately out of all of the Watties meals that we have tasted this would be my least favourite. I found it extremely rich and felt like it was lacking something. Maybe, spinach or carrot to break it up a bit or even sour cream. Thinking, about it I made Spaghetti and Meatballs a couple weeks back and this would of been a nice sauce for that. Just as a pasta meal on its own I was not a fan. Reading the packet it says can be used in traditional Italian dishes like Lasagne or Cannelloni which actually would be really nice.

My baby said she didn't like it, eating only half of it. Where as my eldest loved it. My husband thought it was alright but thought it could have done with some herbs to break it up a bit. This will not be a regular purchase for us

On the second night of my in-laws stay, we were doing the "what's the dinner plan?" dance. It's one we always end up doing. Along with the "what do you have planned today?". The answer is often "nothing" because they are in town and we don't want to go making plans without them. This time though, I took the bull by the horns and had already planned a pasta meal for us using this Watties Tomato and Basil Pesto sauce.

Into a pot I boiled some water with oil and salt and dinosaur pasta. Into a frying pan, I added some diced onion to brown. Then I added some mince and browned that off. I added the Tomato and Basil Pesto sauce once the meat was ready and simmered it together. I also added some capsicum at that stage too. I drained the pasta of the water and then stirred the pasta through the meat and sauce mixture.

Lastly I put it all in a casserole dish and added a cheesy topping to bake for 15 minutes. This gave it a nice cheesy top. I served this in pasta bowls, with a slice of Turkish garlic bread for something a bit fancy. This dinner was definitely a crowd pleaser. Everyone was very satisfied with it. The kids ate all their pasta and sauce. Everyone else ate til they were stuffed. An after dinner snack had been purchased and it wasn't even touched.

The flavour of this sauce might not have suited my husband usually, but with the extra cheese I added, I think it suited his palate well. He is just not into a cooked tomato flavour. I really enjoyed the tomato flavour and I love basil pesto anyway, so it was always going to be a winner. I will purchase this again, and will probably do a lasagne next with a cheese sauce layer between.

Knowing that I would be picking up some new review products today, I took a punt and got out some chicken for dinner. I was very happy to see Wattie's Italian Creations Tomato and Basil Pesto Pasta Sauce. We had to make a quick stop off at the supermarket to get some fresh pasta and a block of parmesan cheese. We had the rest of the items at home that we needed. We didn't even look at serving suggestions at the back of the packet. I knew straight away how I wanted the dinner to turn out.

I have tried a number of Wattie's Creations sauces a little while ago, so I was excited to start testing an Italian one. This packet, like the other sauces, looks attractive and makes me think of fresh, wholesome ingredients that would go into making the sauce. The black background is classy and the clear photos of the tomatoes and basil on the front make me want to taste what is inside the packet.

We were in a bit of a hurry for dinner, so my husband and I worked away quickly to get the food on the table for our hungry family! It only took about 15 minutes from the beginning to it being on the table ready to eat. We combined the sauce with about eight button mushrooms and a zucchini and cooked it up until the vegetables were softened a little but still deliciously crunchy. I rinsed out the sauce packet with a little water so I didn't waste any of it. I also found that it helped to stretch the sauce a little further to go over my additions of vegetables and chicken. I would be careful not to add too much water as the sauce has a lovely texture straight from the packet and it would be a shame to over water it. The chicken was fried in a tiny bit of oil and it's own juices. My son likes having different coloured pasta, so we used fresh tricolour fettuccine. To serve I mixed the chicken with the sauce/vegetable mix in order to get a good coating on the chicken and then placed it on top of the fettuccine. I always like to use a white bowl to serve this sort of meal as I find it shows of the colours in the food so nicely. I topped the dish with some grated parmesan cheese, slithers of parmesan and fresh basil leaves. We fed two adults and two children with the food we created. There was still a good amount of sauce to pour over it if we wanted. We had a 400g pack of fresh pasta and only used about half.

Once dinner was finished (and Mr four did a great job of cleaning his plate off), I found time to sit down and have a look at the packet. I like the fact that the ingredients state that there is a total of 93% of vegetables in the sauce (tomato puree being the main one of course). The rest of the ingredients are relatively simple and I think acceptable to me. I like to keep the food that I serve my family as much like food as possible rather than a list of numbers and colours.

I like this sauce and it is likely to appear in our cupboard again. It was a tasty meal and sure beats our usual can of tomatoes mixed in with vegetables for a similar meal we create here.

I was lucky enough to get some of this Watties sauce to review and tonight for a lazy weekend meal, it seemed like the perfect time to cook it up.

The instructions are pretty simple - fry up mince (400-500g which I pushed to the maximum), onions and (if you like) mushrooms, add the sauce and simmer for about 20 minutes. It says to serve the pasta (250g - 300g) separately and serve the mince mixture on top of it, but I just mixed the whole lot together for a kid-friendly easy meal. And personally I like to make sure my pasta is well coated in sauce anyway - using the 300g of pasta worked with the amount of sauce but I certainly wouldn't have wanted to push it any further.

I also added some spinach that I had to use as it made me feel a bit better about having more vegetables in the meal but it would be easy enough to add any other veges that you like - next time I might put some grated carrot in too and courgettes if they were in season. The pack does say it contains 93% vegetables (5 servings), but this is mostly tomatoes and of course 5 servings for a meal that will do 6 people easily is actually less than 1 serving of veges per person per meal... hmmm they do like to make things sound better than they actually are!

So yes, it fed the 3 of us tonight and we have more than half leftover for another night so it's made for a meal that has stretched quite far.

As far as taste goes, I personally didn't think it was anything special but my 5 year old gobbled it down quickly and easily and declared it 'all right, but not my favourite'... I couldn't really taste the basil, but that's not a bad thing as basil isn't my favourite herb anyway. I'd certainly buy this again if it were a good price compared with other tomato based pasta sauces, but I don't feel like I have to buy this particular one again.

My wife has reviewed some of the Wattie's sauces before and so I was most pleased to get some of these to trial.

I enjoy a good basil pesto sauce so was keen to see how a tomato and basil pesto sauce would taste. I really like that you don't have to read the back of the packet to see what the main ingredients are. Regardless of the front, I still read the ingredients, this is so that we can find out if we can use this sauce on a Friday night (which is when we eat dinner with my vegetarian mother in law) and a lot of sauces use beef stock, animal fat etc. Happily, this came up clear.

I ended making a pasta dish with this, I had a mixture of onions, tomatoes, garlic, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower and some herbs which I cooked quickly in a little bit of butter. Once that was ready I threw in some vegetarian beef chunks and then poured the sauce in. I really liked how easily it opened and poured out, there was no strong smell to it but I still looked forward to trying it. We popped it all on top of pasta and chowed down. This was a nice sauce, but there was nothing strong to it and so I kind of felt let down by it. The kids ate it but for me there was nothing special about it at all.

I would buy this again, but based upon price and not flavour.

I really do love the Wattie's range and how quick and easy they are sometimes I feel a little bad that when I get home late and tired that I grab them instead of cooking a meal from scratch. However when the sauce contains 93% veges and 5 serves of veges per packet I can feel a little less guilty.

I really like basil pesto so was keen to try the tomato and basil pesto pasta sauce. Since I was home a bit earlier and feeling a bit more adventurous than just browning mince and throwing it all together I decided to make meatballs instead and add the sauce. I threw together some meatballs with some grated veges in them and then browned them off. Once they were brown I threw in the packet of tomato and basil pesto and simmered it while the pasta cooked.

Once done I threw the pasta on a plate topped with the meatballs and sauce and sprinkled over some grated cheese. The results one very tasty, very fresh, very filling meal, it was amazing! I find most pasta sauces are quite bland but this one was more like a homemade sauce with very intense rich flavours. The amount of sauce in the packet was perfect for four servings. I plan to try the sauce again as I think it would be just as yummy stirred through some pasta as a side dish.