Author's product rating: 
| Advantages: |
Quick and Convenient |
| Disadvantages: |
None apart from Milk lactose |
| Recommend to potential buyers: |
yes |
Homepride first began selling flour back in the 1920's, the familiar figure of Fred, dressed in his black hat and clothes made his first television appearance in 1964 advertising flour. 1969 saw the sale of merchandise featuring Fred, which was sold as far away as Japan, then in1974, Homepride cook-in-sauce appeared on the shelves, and have remained there ever since, with even more varieties to chose from now.
I don't think the label on this sauce has changed much in all those years; I remember buying the white wine and cream sauce to cook a meal for a then boyfriend some 22 years ago as it required the minimum of effort and very few ingredients were required.
I recently purchased another one of these from Tesco for 98p as our son had expressed an interest in cooking for us for a change and I felt this would be easy enough for him to do with minimum supervision.
Six weeks or so on, and it was still sitting in the pantry, his desire to cook for us was obviously short lived , so I decided to use it up myself.
The Homepride white wine and cream cook-in-sauce came in a 500g tin. The label, blue and yellow, shows a picture of a plate with chicken cooked in the sauce, with the famous and familiar Fred behind it, arms stretched as if to say, "Look what you can make with this sauce"
The label recipe suggests using chicken, but as the sauce is suitable for vegetarians too, you can really use whatever you want.
After lightly browning 3 chicken breasts, I opened the tin of sauce (no ring pull so tin opener required), what greeted me was a thick pale creamy looking sauce, speckled with small pieces of carrots , it looked and smelt very much like chicken soup, although there was a definite slight whiff of wine..
The label, suggests that the sauce be poured into the pan with the chicken then cooked on the hob for around 25 minutes or until the chicken is tender, I however decided to cook it in the oven, so I could free up the hob to cook my potatoes and vegetables.
With the chicken and the sauce in a casserole dish, I placed it in the oven at gas mark 6 and left it to cook, whilst I prepared potatoes and vegetables.
After about 20 minutes I took the casserole dish out of the oven, to give the sauce a quick stir and used this opportunity to have a taste. It wasn't exactly how I remembered it and felt that was either due to the length of time it had been since I had last cooked with it or the fact that the label stated there was no added MSG in the sauce, something which I doubt was the case all those years ago.
The sauce tasted a little like weak chicken soup, with just a hint of wine, I decided to give it a good twist of black pepper, to enhance the flavour and returned it to the oven to finish off cooking, you could if you wish add some extra wine to this, but be careful not to add too much, or it may thin the sauce too much.
15 minutes later and the aroma coming from the oven was most definitely wine, nothing too heavy, but enough to let me know it was there.
30 minutes later potatoes and vegetables ready, plates warmed, it was time to check if the chicken was cooked. Lifting the lid off the casserole dish, the smell was very inviting, cream and white wine; some would say a perfect combination. It still looked the colour of chicken soup, with the orange from the small pieces of carrot adding a little colour. (I couldn't really understand why the carrots were there really, unless it is just to add colour) Another quick taste then a final twist of black pepper then onto the plates it went.
Although the sauce was much thinner than it was when the tin was opened, it was still thick enough to coat the chicken nicely and stay where it was put without running all over the entire plate, I put the sauce left in the dish in a jug, so it could be poured over the potatoes or vegetables at the table, should it be required.
In my opinion this is an ok kind of sauce, it's not something I would use on a regular basis, but it's easy and quick enough to use if you want to cook a meal in 25 minutes as the label suggests.
Once cooked the sauce whilst creamy and having a hint of wine, it was still in my mind very much like weak chicken soup, and similar results could probably be achieved actually using a tin of the condensed chicken soup and a good slug of white wine, a little cream and perhaps some sliced mushrooms.
As the finished dish is rather pale in colour despite the addition of the (why are these in this) carrots, all that's needed are some colourful vegetables to cheer it all up.
Once the plates were clean, then washed and put away, I rinsed out the tin ready to go for recycling.
The ingredients list for this sauce is rather friendly with the exception of milk lactose, which may be a problem for some.
