Pea and Bacon Pasta – Making Money Go Further Challenge

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I love a challenge.

So it was a no brainer for me to take part in the making money go further challenge.

Debt Free Direct challenged a few bloggers to create a meal twice. One with ingredients from famous brands and one with a supermarket’s own brand ingredients. The questions was – could you taste any difference between the two meals?

So I decided to create a pasta recipe that can pretty much be made from pantry staples in less than 20 mins. Perfect easy meal idea for week night suppers. Aka a pea and bacon pasta.

So off I trotted to one of my local supermarkets Waitrose, compared and shopped away. The four main ingredients I compared were:

Team famous brand (total cost £11):

 Birds eye peas

Creme Fraiche D’Isgny

Cav. Giuseppe Cocco Fusilli

Denhay dry cured smoked streaky bacon.

Pea and bacon pasta @ Recipes From A Pantry

Team Waitrose (total cost £7):

Waitrose essentialpetit pois

Waitrose fench creme fraiche

Waitrose essential fusilli

Waitrose smoked streaky bacon (there was no essential streaky bacon at the time so I got this instead).

Pea and bacon pasta @ Recipes FRom A Pantry

There was a very small difference in how the famous brands ingredients looked compared to Waitrose own brand. It was nothing that mattered or would have put me off using either of them. The most noticeable one was that the Creme Fraiche D’Isgny was thicker and richer than the Waitrose creme fraiche and I wondered if that would come through after cooking.

 So I happily cooked away and resisted the temptation to taste either version till the very end.

Pea and Bacon Pasta @ Recipes From A Pantry

Now in terms of the final dish – I blindfolded OH (to remove any possible bias) and asked him to taste test both. He honestly could not tell the difference between the two dishes. He did the same to me and neither could I. Seriously. We both enjoyed each dish equally.

Pea and Bacon Pasta @ Recipes From A Pantry

So I would not hesitate to make this dish again entirely using Waitrose own brand ingredients (which worked out cheaper and thereby saving you money)  – they were good. The minor differences in appearance were completely irrelevant in the final version of the dish.

I hope you try this easy pasta recipe and please do share your budget recipes here. Do also check out their tips on their thrifty blog.

With thanks to Debt Free Direct for sending me a supermarket voucher to create these meals. Note that I gave the cost for the full packs of ingredients. It would cost less as I did not use the full packs.

 

Don't forget to tag #recipesfromapantry on Instagram or Twitter if you try Pea and Bacon Pasta! It is really, really awesome for me when you make one of my recipes and I'd love to see it. You can also share it on my Facebook page. Please pin this recipe to Pinterest too! Thank you for reading Recipes from a Pantry.

Print Recipe
5 from 1 vote

Pea and Bacon Pasta

A quick pea and bacon pasta made from pantry staples.
Cook Time15 minutes
Servings: 4
Author: Bintu Hardy

Ingredients

  • 400 g (14oz) dried fusilli
  • 6 slices smoked streaky bacon
  • 1 tsp olive oil
  • 300 g (10.5oz) frozen peas
  • Handful of chopped mint or some dried mint
  • 3 heaped tbsp crème fraîche
  • Juice of 1 lemon
  • Salt
  • Ground black pepper
  • Cheese optional

Instructions

  • Boil the pasta according to the packet instructions.
  • Whilst the pasta is cooking finely chop the bacon.
  • Heat the oil in the frying pan, add in the bacon and fry until it is crisp.
  • Add in the peas and fry for a minute.
  • Then stir in the creme fraiche and mint and cook for about 30 secs.
  • Meanwhile drain the pasta but reserve a little bit of the pasta water.
  • Add the pasta to the bacon mixture along with the lemon juice and let cook on low for a min till the sauce is nicely thick. You can add in a bit of the reserved pasta water if you prefer it a bit thinner.
  • Adjust seasoning and add in any cheese if using.
  • Serve warm.
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Notes

Adapted from Jamie Oliver.

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24 Comments

  1. That’s a really neat challenge. It would be interesting to do a comparison between an ordinary grocery store and something like Whole Foods.

  2. Brilliant idea to directly compare and re-assuring to know they came out pretty much the same on the taste factor. I’m a big fan of cheaper supermarket own brands. Great mid-week speedy supper recipe too!

  3. Haha Bintu, that’s a fun challenge. When it comes to things like dried pasta and frozen peas, I suspect it’s very hard to tell the difference.

    1. something to think about when deciding if buying own brand or not own brand ingredients.

    1. Fiona – Waitrose are my nearest supermarket. And actually if you look at their essentials range it is comparable to the other supermarkets own brand prices.

  4. I like the idea of this challenge very much. I tend not to buy own brand goods but need to rethink this.

  5. Ha, love it! There are some things in this world that I will only buy a decent brand of (Sellotape, kitchen foil and black bin bags all spring to mind) but for the rest, I’m always up for buying the store’s own brand version.
    Janie x

  6. 5 stars
    I often buy supermarkets own brands and they taste as good as if I paid twice as much 😉 It’s worth to pay a bit more for some products but most of the time “value” or “own brand” rocks!
    Pasta looks super, I love peas!