As someone that spent the better part of their youth making other people money at a grocery store, I’m bummed that I never had to build a comically oversized pyramid of bean cans that:
A: A neurotic but lovable protagonist that is just trying to get through shopping day would make the whole stack implode by taking a single can.
Or
B: A random cat in a panic would scurry up and around it as I frantically keep the pyramid from collapsing. Once the cat has fled the scene I would utter a sigh of relief just before a dog who was after the cat would crash through the stack just in time for the manager to appear and scold me for the mess.
Jar sauce costing 8+ dollars? What is their excuse? Gold flakes?
It’s not even good sauce. Pour a couple of big cans of crushed tomatoes over some browned ground beef/pork, add lots of garlic and Italian herbs, salt & pepper, a few oz of red wine, and let it simmer all day.
Add more or less meat, perhaps mushrooms. I like to put in chopped spinach at the beginning, to let it break up into micro pieces, and amp up the nutritional value, but it’s not necessary.
It’s super easy, and way better than any jarred sauce, and much cheaper.
Well, jar sauces are rarely good. But an expensive one being substandard (as it seems to be the case here) is particularly bad.
I find they can make a decent base for customization, but on their own, they’re usually lacking something, like flavor.
What would I change out if I can’t eat meat? I love mushrooms, is that enough on its own?
Red lentils
Oh, sure, you don’t need meat at all, I sometimes just make a hearty mushroom sauce, and it’s great.
Put whatever you want in it, there are no rules. Yellow/orange/red peppers are nice. I hate green peppers, and onions, but if you like them, go nuts, just don’t invite me for dinner.
Some people put lots of veggies in, but they puree them first, so they dissolve better (and the kids will eat it without knowing, too, I suppose).
Experimenting is half the fun of cooking. The other half is eating it.
Without the meat should I just start with the crushed tomatoes and go from there?
I like the idea of experimenting, another commenter mentioned using different types of mushrooms together as well.
I guess I never really knew the simple part of how to start a sauce so thats why I’m trying to learn more here.
Thank you for the advice I’m saving most of these comments.
Again, no rules, use what you like.
I went through a period of using ground chicken or turkey, and I used ground beef for a long time. Now I use a combo of ground beef and pork. Ground beef is expensive, of course, but I get the ground pork in a 1 lb roll from Aldi, and it’s usually less than $3. So the pork really fills out the meat portion, and adds a lot of flavor.
Seasoning is important, and chefs talk about three levels of seasoning. First you season the olive oil in the pot as it heats up before before you toss in the meat. Then season the meat as it browns, then season it again when you add the crushed tomatoes.
You will have to balance the seasoning a bunch of times after that, until it tastes right. If you feel like you’re close to right, but you can’t put a finger on it, you probably need to add more salt, or more garlic powder. Add in small amounts until it tastes right, and don’t judge it right after you add them. Wait a few minutes for it to cook in, and then re-taste and evaluate.
If you like a spicy or Arrabiata sauce, add lots of red pepper flakes and cayenne.
Consider meat alternatives. You can even get away with tofu. Anything goes, it’s a sauce…
I’m a big fan of textured vegetable protein (TVP). It gives a ground beef texture but is vegetarian and shelf stable. It looks expensive per pound, but it’s dehydrated so you’re not paying for water.
I find kidney or garbanzo beans a good substitute.
Interesting! I am a huge fan of beans so I’ll have to give that a shot.
Yeah yo for sure can, though you probably don’t need to simmer for as long with everything combined if it’s just mushrooms.
I would do a variety for a bigger range of umami flavour, (et 3:1 cremini:shitake), then add a bit of msg, it’ll hit hard. MSG optional but it’ll hit hard.
I think you can also fake mallard reaction (browning meat) but I don’t know how bc I’m not vegan.
Worcestershire also could help, but idk if it’s vegan
Thanks for the idea I’ll save this and try it out soon.
There is vegan Worcestershire sauce but I dont believe the original recipe is vegan.
Original recipe has fish in it (sardines iirc), so might be ok for pescetarians.
Glass jars piled like that make me feel uncomfortable
I’m reading through all the comments and you seem to be the only one who has acknowledged what this post is actually about.
Everyone else is complaining about the price of pasta sauce.
Nah, you can bowl with those Rao’s jars.
7.49 for fucking pasta sauce? Wtf
That’s the price if you buy five or more…
One to four jars is 8.49 each…
Campbells has to make back the money they spent buying it from private equity somehow
Raos is good. Pretty consistently top rated. I basically thought all jarred pasta sauces were garbage before I tried it.
…it does always hurt a little when I splurge on a jar though. Also, Costco sells two packs of the 32oz jars for just a bit more than this and it goes on sale frequently.
I think ALDI’s Select pasta sauce is better for $3.60. Even at Costco price Raos is not worthed.
I agree, its the next best thing to home made pasta sauce
I was just wondering how they get away with writing homemade in the label.
good question, I spent a few minutes trying to look it up and it probably has to do with the size of the company and the size of the batches made being mostly human labor
its not easy to find a clear answer though
Raos is watery and overpriced.
It’s 8.50. It’s only 7.50 of you buy 5 other them or more.
Damn for 18 bucks it better be orgasmic
Spoiler: It’s going to be pretty much the same as the $2 sauce.
im guessing the 'truffle" makes it expensive. if its the actual fungus i can see that.
They list the actual mushroom on the label
Even Newman’s Own (a non-profit) is $4. $6-$10 is normal in my area, and it’s one of the least affluent areas of the country.
Like, where I am, the cheap classico sauce is about 3 bucks. And i dont doubt that the tomatoes they use come from Cali. Im across the continent, in a different country. I know some “ritzy” sauces here are encroaching on the 10$ mark. Its so fucked up
raos is pricey, while the instore brand in wf, is like a cheap 2$.50cents
Most expensive one I could find with a simple google search in Germany is € 12.54 per kg,
the ones pictured above are 680g, so for $ 7.49 that’s $ 11.01 or € 9.55 per kg (at current exchange rate)Average price for pasta sauce in Germany seems to be around € 5.00 / kg, but then the Rao’s might be among the pricier sauces in the US?
Rao’s might be among the pricier sauces in the US?
It is. It’s a high-quality sauce made by a very famous restaurant in New York City. It’s one of those few products that immediately stands out when someone tries a blind taste test on you.
Damn, Trump even put tariffs on imports from Krypton!
Your right, fuckin cheap! Pasta sauce around me is around 12.99. Well besides the store brand which is pretty much water now a days.
Rao’s is the most overrated pasta sauce on the market. Overpriced for no reason.
Pre-made pasta sauce in general is pretty overrated. It’s so easy to make your own pasta sauce, it’s pretty much ready in the same time as it takes to heat up premade pasta sauce. Only real advantage is that you don’t have to worry about seasoning
The real avantage is fewer dishes and less prep time before the actual cooking.
However I usually find that pasta water takes enough time to start boiling that I can just chop up the ingredients and start the sauce while that’s happening.
With premade I’ve just chucked it in the hot pasta which heats it up enough AND cools down the pasta so I can eat it quicker.
Also locally made premade sauces in my country are 2-3 EUR which makes them actually cheaper than homemade because I usually put either mince or chicken in my sauces and those already cost more than the entire premade sauce lol. Of course homemade is way better but honestly sometimes I feel like I’d be saving money if I used premade.
i get the hunts pasta sauce in a huge fuckin can for like a buck. Raos is definitely for people that think a banana costing 10 dollars is cheap and affordable.
I don’t care how good it is, $8.50 for a jar of pasta sauce is highway robbery. It’s like Bachan’s BBQ sauce, sure it’s good, but it ain’t even close for those prices. I’d legit feel ripped off if I bought either.
meanwhile me buying 400g canned sliced tomatos with herbs from supermarket own brand for 0.85€
The sign says “serving SoCal” so this is actually a below average price
Los Angeles grocery prices always make my eyes pop out of my head. It’s just the cost of existing down there.
Shit is getting ridiculous here too. Luckily I’ve really gotten into cooking over the last five years or so. Fresh ingredients are still pricey, but much much much cheaper than what these corps are slopping out. I can make pasta or pizza sauce in these quantities fresh for under $2.
No. Don’t spread misinformation/bullshit. Plenty of family in LA and lived there just two years ago. This is NOT a below average price. Maybe for Raos, not sure, but definitely not for pasta sauce as a whole. And no it’s not the cost of existing down there unless you have absolutely no shop savvy. Food4Less, Aldi, Super King, Costco, etc will absolutely have plenty of pasta sauce of that size for under 5 bucks
Kroger actively wants their employees to do this. (Source: worked in this hellhole for 13 years. Would choose homelessness/starvation over going back)
Its a psycholigical trick to make you think its cheaper than it is. Intended to make you think subconciously “It can’t be that expensive if they treat it this poorly.”
I do think they picked the wrong product for this treatment considering shrink and high price. It should be shit like dvds and other durable products.
And oddly enough in order to prevent breaking the jars, the employee had to carefully position each jar haphazardly like that.
“Great Rao!”
- Pasta Sauce Afficionado, Superman
Cento peeled tomatoes and a little basil makes better sauce for less than 7.49 just saying
fuck kroger i dont blame them
I grew up shopping at Kroger and continued to shop there for a years after I moved out on my own. Cant say enough how much i fucking hate Kroger. Our local one decided to put in those stupid security gates at the door, forcing you to walk the ENTIRE LENGTH of the store and through the registers to get out. It was the last straw in a mounting hay pile of shitty changes that pushed me to start going to Meijers despite kroger being much closer. Cant state enough how much i fricken love Meijers compared to Kroger, Giante Eagle, Etc around here.
EDIT: I also worked Kroger bakery in 2019 and i got to see how they rolled back all pay and benifits over the years for new employees. They were also abusive as fuck with my hours.
My wife (who has DOCUMENTED NUT ALLERGIES and told them about it) was put into the bakery and expected to pull all the frozen stuff to thaw before being baked.
Anyone see an issue with putting a worker with a nut allergy in the bakery? Because they sure as fuck didn’t. They were also very surprised when she no call/no showed to quit after they kept ignoring her complaints and expected her to do the work of 3 people and to train register people when she needed help to get shit done.
Im sorry she had to go through that. Kroger is a shit company to their employees and customers. I was there for maybe a month before i did the same, no show/call and quit. I specifically applied for the bakery, they hired me for the bakery, but on my first day they started dropping hints the bakery was over staffed and tried to probe my interest in working in the deli, which was a hard no and they knew that. The second week they kept trying to position me in deli and i refused every single time. By the third week they told me i had no choice, but to work deli, so i stopped showing up.
All in all, they gave me less pay than promised, less hours than promised, less benefits than promised, and work in a completely different deparment than promised. The hours, by the way, they kept just a hair shy, and well below what i was promised, of qualifying for benefits, which i was also promised.
“Fresh for everyone” my ass
deli/prepared foods at our local wf is similar to, hard work nobody wants to work there, and the people that are there gives attitude to other employees because they are worked to the bone.
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I really enjoy Rao’s sauce ☺️
That edit made me laugh, 'cause I totally understand. For example, I had a ‘Gram’ and a ‘Gran’ and my whole life I can never remember for sure which goes by which. Makes me feel like an asshole, lol.
I’m glad he taught you how to make your own, by the way. It’s so damn tasty. Now I’m craving homemade tomato-based pasta sauce…
dude i feel like i should make the title of my autobiography “Where did all these grampas come from” or something but like, grampas were pretty cool. I looked up to them enough that my friends started calling me grampa in high school
I’m gonna say the customers did this. It looks like the bargain DVD bin at Wal-Mart.
This former Kroger employee explained that Kroger does indeed have a tendency to display their sale items like this.
And this comment .
You think a customer went into a Kroger, printed a price sign, took the time to move like 6 cases of sauce haphazardly into a unsafe pile and nobody said anything? Possible but unlikely.
I mean technically it would only be the last step and presumably the sum of multiple customers. But someone else has already claimed this may be an intentional psychological gambit.
Nah, this kind of display is called a dump bin. It’s meant to look like a chaotic jumble, but doing it with jars seems like a bad idea.
Cause I’m digging for the interesting stuff in the sauce bin.
Really hoping the intent is that you use the taco noodles with the marinara.
Here I started typing up a comment asking what ‘Taco noodles’ were, then I looked more closely. What the fuck, I’ve never seen taco-flavored ramen before.
Here is my worst food abomination for you that I’ve ever seen. Yr welcome.
Wow. I can’t even really conceptualize what that would taste like, nor do I want to find out.
Ass. It tastes like ass.
I saw Rao’s get recommended as the second best sauce outta all the store brand sauces in the US rated by some of Italy’s top chefs.
It isn’t that good. Newman’s Own is way better and, around here anyway, half the price of Rao’s. But you can also very easily and for a lot less than a jar, make your own pasta sauce and make it as good as you want.
Personally, i always thought Rao’s was nasty and never understood the hype.
I only like the arrabiata (spicy), the rest are not great.
Safeway store brand is, oddly enough, the best I’ve found.
