Barker's Meal Sauce - NZ Mushroom & Red Wine product reviews

Tried a few barkers meal sauces and this one really caught me cause as much as I try I can't make a good sauce with mushrooms and I never have wine in the house which is great for making yummy sauces. So trying this was perfect, the jar once again is simple and tells you what it is with two suggestions on the label which I really love, if your stuck it helps.

I decided to try this sauce in the slow cooker with a stewing steak. Popped in my steak and then this sauce cooked on low for 8 hrs of course tasting it beforehand. It was really good almost perfect to quickly heat up to add as a sauce over the steak as on your plate and not cook with it. But we cooked with it, it smelt so good while the slow cooker did its thing. Hubby came inside and said he could smell it outside on the deck.

Once the 8 hrs was up the steak fell apart and the sauce mixed around it was perfect. Served on mash potato so the potatoes soaked up all those juices was so good. I only had one complaint cause it had mushrooms but too bad everyone else loved it. One jar was perfect for the slowcooker but to make it more saucey I would add one jar at the start and then mix in a second at the end as cooking that long can get a bit watery.

The price isnt too bad for a yummy sauce that is easy to use and gets thumbs up from most family members. The taste was great will be one I buy to pop in the cupboard I reckon would be perfect in a pie too.

This was my absolute favourite of all the new Barkers meal sauces, you had me at mushroom oh and red wine yum! One of my favourite winter comfort foods is beef stroganoff I remember my mum cooking it for us when we were young and always crave it through those cold winter months. This sauce is my absolute dream to be able to have a tasty beef stroganoff without having to faff about making a sauce myself from scratch and makes that dinner time rush with a hungry family waiting to be fed so much easir having the sauce pre made and ready to add.

I made a beef stroganoff with half of the jar and a heap of extra mushrooms as I can never have too many mushrooms and served with some creamy mash potatoes and in one word I would describe it as divine. The sauce is packed full of flavour and has a rich creamy texture to it that makes it moreish and hard to resist. I tasted it as it was cooking and it was very hard dishing out portions fairly I could of quite easily kept it all to myself but my family also loved it so had to be fair. The dinner went down really well with everyone commenting on the sauce and whether it was different to the stroganoff I normally make and could I use this one in future so we will definitely be buying it again.

I had specifically set aside half of the jar of sauce to make a chicken and mushroom pie another night as this also sounded very appealing as a serving suggestion on the jar. Again I was not disappointed and will definitely be making it again, I feel this sauce is so versatile and want to buy it again to try out different dishes I've since decided this would be perfect for like chicken fettucine, risotto (serving suggestion) and as a side sauce for steak. It is on the shopping list and is set to be a regular buy for our household in future.

It's safe to say that I'm not a great cook. I'm barely a good cook. So my repertoire of recipes and cooking skills are limited at best. I like mushrooms and I like booze, so I thought this meal sauce looked like it could be a nice new thing for me to try. Unfortunately, looking at their recommended ways to try this sauce, I realised that I don't know what a stroganoff is, I've never made a risotto before, and have certainly never succeeded in cooking a pie before. Perhaps I'm a little out of my depths here...

Anyway, I like the Barkers of Geraldine brand because they have very little waste in their packaging. Glass and metal and easy to recycle, so there is an easy point in their favour. They are also always creating new products and flavours, which I like; because who doesn't like the novelty of "new".

The shape of the jar is good; it doesn't take up too much space in the fridge, and the jar is pretty full (not 3/4 empty like every bag of potato chips I've ever eaten). Easy to open, the jar and lid are well designed. It's secure but doesn't require a huge amount of effort to open (neither does it require stabbing the lid). Easy peasy.

But the crux of whether this sauce is good comes from whether the flavour is worth it, and that is whether the meal sauce stumbles. Unlike the teriyaki variety which is intense in both flavour and aroma, this mushroom and red wine variant is much blander in flavour. The sauce comes out of the jar reasonably thick, but dilutes very easily with any meat juices, and takes quite a while to reduce back down. Even fully reduced with added seasoning, there is little strength to the flavour. Perhaps this was a side effect of putting cubed potatoes into the sauce (supposedly potatoes absorb the salts), but while my "chicken, cauliflower and potato with mushroom sauce" was edible, it wasn't exciting enough to warrant trying again in that form.

What I could tell by the flavour, is that it would work really well as a soup, if you fry some onions, chicken and mushrooms and add to the sauce. If you could reduce it enough it could work well as a pie filling, but that would severely reduce the number of servings you would get, and you still need ingredients of strong flavour to make the meal enjoyable.

This one just wasn't for me. Clearly didn't know what to do with it, and it did not hide my subpar cooking skills at all.

We love mushrooms in our house and I also love quick and easy meals with working full time and getting home to hungry kids I need quick meal ideals. This lovely jar of Barker's Meal Sauce - NZ Mushroom & Red Wine sauce was great to use. We decided to make quick beef stroganoff with the sauce as recommended on the label. It was quick to make and I noticed at first was a tad runny while cooking, but once I added the cooked strained fettuccine pasta it slowly thickened up to the creamy meal.

My family really enjoyed the meal and said the flavours were great, I loved the few chunks of mushroom in the sauce as well. I didn't get a very overpowering red wine flavour but as a whole the flavours were great. I really like the label on the glass jar, simple but eye catching and great the sauce is in glass and not plastic so it can be recycled as a lot of towns now only accept type 1 and 2 plastics which most products are not made from. the label give two suggestions to use the sauce with, but you would be able to use it for so much more then the two suggested.

Another great thing about the sauce is it is gluten free, has New Zealand mushrooms and natural flavours no preservatives. There is also a link to their website for added recipes which is great. I personally did not go and have a look at the time as did not have the time, but I was happy with the meal choice we choose to use the sauce with. The family enjoyed it as well so win win. The price at $5.99 per bottle is a little more then I would normally pay in the supermarket for a sauce for dinner as most normally sit around the $3 to $4 mark, but it is tasty and worth it.

My kids used to turn their noses up at mushrooms, but now they seem to be a staple in our diet. I had had a few requests recently for something with a mushroom sauce and this arrived at just the right time. We were just going with a nice and easy meal as we needed something quick and simple, that wouldn't take a lot of time to prepare. We grabbed some mushrooms, onion and garlic, chopping them all up and then letting them simmer for a little while. We then added the sauce and left it to simmer. Once it was ready, we added it to some penne pasta and sprinkled on some parmesan.

Well, I don't think the kids have ever enjoyed a mushroom sauce quite as much as they did this one. My youngest said it was yum and asked that I buy this again. My middle child ate theirs, trying to savor each bite. My eldest gave it the biggest seal of approval by eating it at a really good pace and not having any complaints at all. I thought the sauce was delicious and had just the right balance of flavour and creaminess. The bits in the sauce were the right sizes and had a great texture. I actually found myself wishing there had been enough for leftovers and we will be getting this again.

Some years ago, I lived in a remote rural area in Western Europe where game was plentiful and the locals, although not financially well off, were well supplied with wild salmon, turkey, hares, ducks, pigs, and venison. Every time someone went hunting, they would share their meat with their neighbours. As soon as I saw this sauce, I was determined to try it with venison: it seemed that this flavour was destined to complement the dry gaminess of the meat. We had some venison in the freezer, so we added a little water and cooked it in a slow oven with some puha and onions. Once it was tender, we transferred it to individual baking dishes, stirred through the sauce, and topped it with raw kumara cut into chips. The "pies" were then finished off in the oven; as the kumara cooked, the sauce was able to permeate the cooked meat and vegetables.

We had invited my cousin and her husband around for dinner. They often host us for seafood meals: being keen on fishing and living in Whangamata, they often have freshly caught fish to share. This time it was our turn to host them, and to get their impressions of my game preparation - even though the meat came from an urban supermarket! They were interested in the sauce and were surprised to find that it was reasonably low in both calories and carbs. They mostly follow a keto diet, so this is a sauce they would consider buying if the taste met their expectations. It is a bonus that the ingredients are authentic. You can even spot the small pieces of mushroom in the sauce, and the creamy texture ensures that the flavours are well integrated.

To say we all enjoyed it would be simplistic. Although Barker's sauces are generous in their portion size, we were all so impressed that we would have had another helping if there had been any left. Every scrap disappeared, and by the end of the meal we were all buzzing. Because my cousin and her husband are both good cooks, they can be quite critical of other people's efforts, but in this case they were both delighted with the meal. I had thought of making a topping with mashed potato, but for people on a keto regime, kumara was a better choice - and by making a "chip lattice" rather than a mash topping, it meant there was less needed. At the same time, the sauce ensured there was no compromise in taste. Quite simply, this was a very straightforward gourmet meal that all four of us considered a huge success.

I can think of other ways I would like to use this sauce. It would be nice with beef or lamb, and I can also imagine it going well with a vegetarian meal based on portobello mushrooms or jackfruit. There are so many ways in which the unique mushroom and wine flavour could be used. I am looking forward to getting another jar so I can try out some more ideas.