Pasta mia Beef, Lemon & Rosemary Sauce product reviews

I was a little unsure when I looked at this product. I saw that it labelled Beef as an ingredient of the sauce. Did the sauce go with pasta alone? or was it best to add more meat to it? This threw me off for a bit and I left it sitting in the fridge for a few days while I contemplated the best way to go about preparing the product.

The directions effectively say to heat and combine with pasta, so that was what I did with a sample. Combining some of the sauce with pasta, I found that the most prominent flavours were tomato and lemon. Very light in flavour, but very very strong tomato flavour.

While it was okay, it wasn't exceptional, and I decided with the rest of the sauce, I would combine it with beef mince to make more of a bolognese. Even with the mince, the flavour profile still didn't quite sit right, and I ended up adding a couple of birds eye chillis to give it a kick.

The sauce being used as directed on the packet was very easy to use, and combined with pastamia pasta, takes less than 10 minutes to prepare from start to finish. But the flavour itself was too prominently tomato for my taste, for what is advertised as beef, lemon and rosemary.

By the time I got around to opening this sauce packet I had run out of fresh Pasta Mia pasta to eat with it. I went to my local supermarket but I couldn't find it there, so I suspect I may need to go on a search for it in future. In the end I only had some dry macaroni in the cupboard, but I picked to use it for this sauce as I knew the sauce would shine pretty well against the plain dry pasta I was using.

Into a pot, I boiled some salty water. I held back using oil in my water, even though I wanted too. I just wanted to make sure that the taste we all got was the sauce. Once the pasta was cooked and drained, I heated the sauce in a saucepan and then re-added my pasta. I served the pasta in a bowl each, with a little grated cheese on top.

My littlest girl ate a good amount, but got full very quickly. My eldest daughter ate her whole bowl full and asked if we could have it again. My husband also polished his whole bowl off, asked if there was more (there was). He said we should get it again, but also wanted me to add mince or something next time. He forgave me for not doing so this time, due to needing a honest review of the flavour. He felt that it just needed more protein for him.

I enjoyed the taste as well. There is a taste like olive oil infused with lemon. Then there is a beef flavour and lots of big tomato flavour in there as well. The sauce is really chunky and looks great. The big chunks of tomato were good, because it felt more home-made. However, my husband also doesn't tend to like cooked tomato, so he was able to remove the bigger pieces if he wanted to.

To be honest I was a little worried about the lemon in this sauce before I tasted it. I had read a couple of the earlier reviews and wondered if I was going to like it. But I shouldn't have worried! It was delicious and the whole family liked this one so if I ever find it again, I will definitely be buying it. The lemon gave it a fresh flavour that just made the sauce a real stand-out for us.

Oh sweet lord this one was a real surprise! I'll be honest and admit the only reason I took this one on was I saw that it had 'beef' in the name, and I got distracted after that. By the time I clicked 'hang on... LEMON?!' it was too late to offer it to anyone else, because I had just cut the top off the pack. Still, in for a penny...

Having this on top of the Pastamia Fettuccinni was a brilliant match, and I thank the team at Pastamia for sending both. To have this atop a mass-produced pasta would have been akin to eating the finest cured ham on top of a stale salad cracker - it would not have been the done thing!

I found that I couldn't really detect the beef per se... I know it was there, but the citrus tang, combined with the distinctive taste of celery, plus the delicate hints of garlic weaving through it all, sort of 'hid' the beef flavour from me, which was a bit of a shame, but it did allow the uniqueness of the lemon, celery, rosemary and parsley to come through and really make this meal something different. While I can easily see how some would not like it, personally I was really impressed, and enjoy it very much.

In fact, it has inspired me to start testing out other citrus zests in some rich meat dishes, to some mildly good success. I still need to work out the right ratios and balance on some of them... something severely hampered by my apparent inability to stick to, or write down, recipes.

Overall, though not priced such that I would aim for this as a regular grocery item, it is one I would consider extremely suitable if I was cooking up a special meal for someone I wanted to impress, and didn't want to risk possible failure of my own efforts. I'll stick to making the dessert myself instead.

I was lucky enough to be given some of this to review and by serving it with the Pastamia Fresh Pappardelle pasta tonight, it meant for a very quick and easy, but quality meal. I read on the packet that this sauce has meat in it, plus plenty of veges so there really is no need to serve it with anything but pasta. However I was a bit worried it wouldn't feed our family of 3, so made extra meatballs, but it turned out that this wasn't really necessary.

Luckily I'd served the sauce on the side as Miss 6 didn't like it at all - she ended up getting out good old tomato sauce to jazz up her pasta! My husband and I both ate the sauce but neither of us were that fussed on it. I honestly thought I would love the flavour from the description but we both found the lemon a bit overpowering, and we wouldn't buy that flavour again. However it felt like we were eating a great fresh, quality product and so I'd happily try one of their other flavours.

Although this seems expensive at first glance, it does go a long way and we felt it was fairly filling. So for a very quick and easy meal, it is a much better option that expensive takeaways and a so much healthier to boot.

I served Pasta Mia's Beef, Lemon & Rosemary Pasta Sauce with their Fresh Pappardelle pasta. I topped it off with a little parmesan cheese. With the first taste of the sauce, I was presented with a strong lemon flavour. It was obvious that lemon was a main part of the mix. I wasn't 100% sure if I thought it was amazing or just ok. I think that the lemon may have been a bit overpowering. With this in mind, it definitely needed to be served with a simple, plain pasta. It wouldn't work with anything else that was too strong in its own right e.g. filled pasta.

I found that the sauce was a rich blend of good quality ingredients. I was able to actually see and taste the fact that there was beef in it. It is a sign of quality when it is possible to find the main ingredients in the product. I found a good amount of beef in the sauce but not over the top - it was still a sauce rather than a mince dish.

Although we hardly ever use salt my mother and husband both felt the need to add a little salt. I was fine with it as it was.

Although our children would usually love a beef and tomato sauce or dish, they didn't like this at all. I think the lemon became the primary flavour that they tasted when they had their first spoonful and overwhelmed their tastebuds. Just as well we always have some basic, homemade tomato sauce in our freezer.

It was nice and easy to create a meal using this sauce along with some Pasta mia parrardelle. The sauce only needed two minutes in the microwave and it was ready to serve. It was so much quicker than creating out own sauce.

As with all of the Pasta mia products, this sauce is made from quality ingredients without any rubbish in it. In fact, I can look at the ingredients on the back of the pack and know that, given the exact quantities of the items, I could make the sauce in my own kitchen. All of the ingredients are recognisable as real food. I really value this in food that I purchase.

Although I did find the sauce a bit too lemony, I appreciate the quality of this sauce and I would be keen to try others in the range.

I was given the Pasta Mia pastas and sauces to review on a night that we needed a quick and easy dinner as there were only a matter of minutes between getting in the door before having to go out again. I decided to serve the Beef, Lemon and Rosemary Sauce with their Gluten-free Fresh Fettuccine. This made the perfect convenience meal as it went for the pouch to the plate in less than 10 minutes.

I was surprised to see so many vegetables in the list of ingredients. The texture was so smooth that my daughters who hate celery and onion didn't even notice it was there. Yay for sneaking vegetables into unsuspecting kids and husbands. Pasta Mia have definitely done better than I can do with that. Unfortunately the smoothness also meant that my kids didn't believe they were really eating meat. To them it was flavoured tomato sauce.

The dominant flavour in the sauce was the lemon. It was a little too strong for all of us. I think the girls were expecting something more like spaghetti bolognese. My husband and I both thought that if it had more beef and less or no lemon it would have been very enjoyable.

The pouch suggested it was 2-3 serves. We found that it gave 3 good size servings. This meant that combined with the fettuccine it would feed 3 for $19. This is a good quality convenient meal which is cheaper than most rubbishy takeaways.