Product Review: Jen's Family Table Bolognese Classic Pasta Meat Sauce

 Disclaimer: This product was provided to me by the company. However, the review is based entirely on the merit of the product. 

I received this Bolognese sauce along with some other meat chubs from Dos Rios Taco Meat and Jen's Family Table. I will admit I was a little taken aback at the concept of heat and eat meat sauce. My pasta sauce takes hours to make and is undeniably the Best Ever. Could a frozen chub compete? Would it be fair to compare them? No, it wouldn't. My sauce is made for people I know with tastes that I am familiar with. The people at Jen's Family Table are cooking for a vast number of people they have never met before. That's when I decided what I'd compare it to: The meat sauce you get at a family restaurant. You know what I'm talking about, that brownish-red meat sauce that tastes vaguely like cinnamon. This set the bar extremely low, since I absolutely hate that style of meat sauce. So with that in mind, here we go:

The Wife was in a rush to eat and had already emptied out the chub.

The packaging is simple and efficient. There is no question as to what you're getting here. Let's take a look at the back:

Nutritionally, it's not bad at all. If you ate the whole pound, you'd be out 455 calories. This is an important consideration for me, since I try to limit my intake to 1600 calories a day. Calorie-wise, this is a guilt free sauce for me. The sodium is a bit up there, but that's down to the nature of the product. I don't think it can be helped and honestly, the sauce does not taste salty at all. 

With that out of the way, let's talk ease of preparation. This is where this product truly shines. It's precooked. If it's defrosted, you're only looking at a few minutes in the microwave for a piping hot sauce. You could certainly warm it up on the stovetop as well, but we were all about speed tonight. It was literally just emptying the chub into a bowl and slapping it in the microwave for about two and a half minutes.

Now comes the important part; how does it taste? I was pleasantly surprised to find there was no cinnamon flavor at all. This was, as advertised, a "thick and meaty" sauce! You could actually taste the spices. Nothing overpowering, but there was definitely something going on. We felt that it stood on its own and did not need anything extra.  We decided to serve it over some cheese tortellini and The Wife's Eggplant Parmigiana. 

Winner, winner, chi...wait. That won't work.

This sauce held up wonderfully. It clung well to the tortellini and eggplant and did not break down during the meal. The Wife and I both agreed this is certainly a product we'd keep in the freezer for a quick midweek meal. I would definitely use it in my lasagna to cut down on prep time.