Customer Reviews

Bertolli Premium Pasta Sauce, Summer Crushed Tomato & Basil, 13.5-Ounce Pouches (Pack of 6)

5 star:		(34)
4 star:		(56)
3 star:		(18)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

What are the roots of your Italian food maker? Villa Bertolli dates back to 1865 and the Tuscan town of Lucca. Francesco Bertolli sold many fine products, and by the end of the 19th century was exporting olive oil to major cities across the United States. 140 years later, Bertolli still sells quality products, including premium pasta sauces, such as this one.

OK, let's get down to brass tacks. Have you tried Bertolli sauces? If not, then you should, I find them to be quite good, with a pleasing level of spices. But, one problem is that the bottles are too large, and I hate leaving half-full bottles of sauce in my refrigerator. Well, enter this convenient pouch. I don't often cook for large parties, so I like this smaller portion that allows me to cook, and leave no unnecessary bottles around.

You can't please all the people all the time, right? Well, let's just say that I am quite pleased. I love this sauce, and I love the convenient pouch. I highly recommend this product!

Aw, don't listen to those other cynics! I'm a typical working guy who throws together dinners fast before Mrs. B comes home. Pasta on the boil, a little garlic and butter on Italian bread and a fast salad, usually from a bag.

Bertoli makes killer pastas and sauces... period. Want to customize it? Knock your socks off, but I LOVE this sauce for FAST and EASY use: nuke it and go for three people (or two with the bread for dunking).

I'm the food curmudgeon of sorts for FOOD INDUSTRY NEWS, and always see a lot of stuff not worthy of hype: But Bertolli's new sauces in pouches rock. Easy to store and use, decent sodium and quite flavorful. We tried one, btw, on the stove as well: no big deal or difference: Cleanly defined basil and nicely done spices make this a "gotta have" kitchen item that will make you look brilliant with dinners on-the-fly. Bertolli plays for their audience: working people like us who want quality. Well, well done!

I do not cook and my husband is a chef. Packaged sauces are pretty much banned from my house. When he is out of town, I like to have food I can prepare quickly for dinner.

This pouch heats up perfectly as directed in 90 seconds. I has a lovely, authentic crushed tomato flavor and mouth feel. It is everything I like in a tomato sauce....spare, elemental but seasoned just perfectly. I shared my sample with a vegan friend (no animal products either of us could deduct in this) who was equally delighted.

I forced my chef-husband to taste it and he declared it "very good". I'd absolutely buy this again in the future for both personal use and for use on the road with RV trips. Absolutely delightful product!

This is a 13.5 oz plastic pouch. It has an excellent taste, and I am someone who usually makes my own sauce from scratch. (Dad thought he was Italian and he taught me.) Because I work full time (and then some), sometimes I cheat a little with my sauce by using a prepared sauce and doctoring it up a bit. Hey, it saves time. This sauce is good enough to stand on its own (without being doctored up.) I would also rather have a plastic pouch than a metal can with acid-based tomato products.

300 calories per 13.5 oz pouch, this package by itself would serve 1 or 2 people, even though the package says 3. Per package serving (3), there are 6g fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 430 mg sodium, total carbs 10 g, vitamin A 60 %, vitamin C 15%, calcium 15%, iron 4%. Ingredient list in order: (1st listed is supposed to be what there is most of in a product) tomatoes, olive oil, water, onions, carrot juice concentrate, garlic, salt, basil, capers, parsley, oregano, spice. Not bad. If you are watching salt intake, there is usually a lot in prepared foods anyway. I have seen a lot worse. You could do a serving of this plus a salad.

OK, so, like I said, this is good enough to stand on its own. That said, if you want my cheater's recipe, get your pencil.

Cheater's Spaghetti and Meat Sauce
Brown approximately 2 lbs lean ground beef or ground turkey. If beef is not very lean, drain off fat/grease. Add onions, garlic, tarragon, and celery. (Basil and Oregano is already in this mix. So is garlic and onions, but I like more.) If you are in a hurry, use the dried versions of onions, garlic, tarragon and celery flakes. Mix. Add 1 can of diced tomatoes. Mix. Add 3 pouches of this Bertolli sauce. No salt. Mix and let it slow-simmer. If you want to cut the acid from the tomatoes, add about a teaspoon of white or brown sugar.

On the side, boil water for the pasta. Add about a teaspoon of olive oil to the water to keep the pasta from sticking. If you want to flavor the pasta a bit, add about 2 or 3 chicken bullion cubes to the water. Once it boils, add a pound of Barilla Angel Hair pasta, or other preference. I highly recommend Barilla, unless you make your own pasta. Cook it al dente (done, but firm--taste if you must--do not overcook or you will have wallpaper paste or goo.) By the way, I hate to make assumptions here, because I have seen people do some mighty shameful things to pasta. But Hey, if ya don't know, ya don't know. Drain off the water. Don't leave the pasta sit in it. DO NOT rinse the pasta. Once drained, you can drop some margarine in it and stir it up to keep it from sticking as it cools.

Done. Quick/easy/delicious. The sauce has a nice tomato taste even without anything added. You could also buy frozen Manicotti from Costco and pour this sauce over it, throw some provolone cheese on top, sprinkle some oregano and bake your dinner. Easy-to-fix din-din for the workin' momma. Break out a bottle of red wine and enjoy! Put on Barry Manilow's Sinatra music CD for ambiance (or some other music, if you must.)

Now! The question is: Do you cut your pasta or do you twirl it?

I wasn't sure if my palate would be sensitive enough to taste any difference between this product and a jar of pasta sauce like Safeway Select. However, I was pleasantly surprised to be able to tell a definite difference.

Unlike jarred sauces, the tomatoes in this sauce are not as harsh or acidic. It makes for a more sweet, mellow flavor.

It's a chunky sauce that's not too runny, which is what I especially liked about it. I hate runny tomato sauces. It's definitely not as chunky as the sauces I make myself, but the ease of cutting open the package instead of working over the chopping board and stove is worth it.

It's a very simple sauce that lends itself well to additions. I would have liked a stronger basil flavor, but that might be just me, because I love basil.

I added some vegetables and diced cooked chicken to the noodles before pouring the sauce over, so I used a little more than the 1/2 cup serving per person that's on the package. While the package says there are three servings per package, I only got two servings.

In hindsight, this sauce would probably go well with shrimp or fresh mozzarella cheese.

This was a good-sized package for my husband and myself, so that we didn't have leftovers but we were satisfied. Whenever I open a jar of sauce, we always have leftovers in the fridge, which can be annoying if I don't feel like eating a tomato-based sauce in the next few days.

Overall, a good product.

The Bertolli PREMIUM PASTA SAUCE SUMMER CRUSHED TOMATO AND BASIL 13.5 ounce package is an excellent sauce. It comes in a well sealed pouch which is designed to use in the microwave. It can also be warmed up on the stove, which is what I chose to do with it.

Unfortunately, this sauce only comes with 13.5 oz in it which is only enough in our house to serve one- and perhaps 2 not very hungry people- and we even use whole wheat spaghetti which is a lot more filling.

This sauce has a fabulous twist of capers in it which really makes the sauce different than most spaghetti sauces. The tomato flavor is delicious and quite frankly, other than being a tad more salty than my own home canned sauce from home grown tomatoes, this sauce is the closest to home canned that I have had in a package.

I would prefer this in a larger container to feed a family, but for individual servings or a side dish for two, this is a good sauce. We all fought over who could have a taste of this sauce next until it was gone.

No sugar in this sauce is FABULOUS as we do not ingest sugar cane in any form. This sauce is sweetened with carrots which is another flavor that is unique to it. It is a wonderful addition to this sauce.

Bertolli Summer Crushed Tomato and Basil is a sauce that I would buy again if I could be assured that there was a more economical way to buy it for my family. It is very hard to find a GOOD tomato sauce without added sugar in it.

I was a tad skeptical of how this sauce would taste. I grew up eating Italian cooking from Italians that were fantastic cooks and have never found a bottled sauce that could come close to being as good as their homemade sauces. I now can say I have found one that is close enough so as not to matter. It has a rich tomato taste, and I didn't pick up the heavy sweetness found in many of the sauces.

The convenience issue is a different story. I didn't find it all that much better than pouring sauce into a pan and heating it, although the pouch shape did store more easily in our pantry. On the other hand, our daughter thought the idea was fantastic. She is a competitive swimmer who consumes large amounts of pasta to keep her energy levels up. When she goes to college next year, she will not be allowed to have a hot plate in her dorm, but will be allowed a microwave. She is planning on taking pre boiled pasta with her in plastic containers. Then all she has to do is refrigerate that and microwave to heat. Heat the sauce and she has a dinner late at night flowing practice (when the food service is shut for the night) that will be healthy and have the carbs she needs. She plans to cook pasta up in batches at a family friend's house that happens to live only an hour away from school.

I can fully understand the complaints on the convenience issue and think the packaging depends on what type of user you are. If you use a lot of sauce, this isn't for you, but if you're a senior and eat fairly lightly or a student trying to eat healthy meals, this type of package is wonderful.

There are other brands of these microwavable pouches of sauce, but I tried Bertolli because I've always been satisfied with their products. The taste will please many people, but I'm not convinced about the concept, and how convenient it really is.

A jar is more convenient in many ways -- you can screw the lid back on and keep a part-used jar in the fridge, and you can see at a glance how much is left. With this pouch, if you only use part of the contents, it's not so convenient to store the rest. If you store it in a plastic container, you've lost the advantage of less washing-up.

If you cook the meat in the sauce, as most people do, then again, you don't have fewer pans to wash. It's only if you have just pasta topped with sauce, and use it all at once, that you save the use of a pan. If you serve pasta the way they often do in Italy - a small dish of pasta and sauce as a starter - then this would be a convenient way to serve 4 people, probably more. But cooked with meat as a main course, it's around 3 servings.

I tried it first with just pasta, cooking some macaroni al dente, stirring in a little canola spread, then serving it topped with the microwaved sauce. It was good, but I would have preferred a little more olive oil and garlic, a little more of Italy. That of course is just individual taste. I added pepper to zest it up and topped it with cheese. That makes a good snack.

I then cooked some with ground beef, onions and mushroom, as a main course. This made a good meal but, as I explained above, it was no more convenient than sauce in a jar.

The sauce has wholesome, natural ingredients and none of that harsh, chemical taste that you usually get in ready-made pasta sauces, but I shall stick with my own recipe, heavy on oil and garlic. But taste is just that -- a matter of taste. If a microwavable product like this happens to be convenient for you, you should give it a try.

I love the idea of pasta sauce in a bag, for so many reasons, including the ability to pack it up when going on vacation or camping. It also is easier to store in the cabinet. The sauce gets a 5 for packaging.

The crushed tomato and basil flavor was too basil-y for my tastes, but I'm going to try some of the other flavors from the grocery store and I'll update my review.

My stepdad was straight from the Old Country Italian and taught me to make sauce when I was a kid. This is absolutely the best packaged sauce I have ever had. Most of the others are filled with sugar. This one has less than one gram per serving. My supermarket is discontinuing it (hence the visit to Amazon). I did manage to buy all that they had, though. I love it!