Aldi Products Yea/Meh/Nay 2023-2024

Yes, and yes. The Botticelli brand is also quite good, but slightly more expensive. I stack up on the AldiRao’s marinara every time they have it.

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Or not, if you read through the thread.

And don’t forget that Costco has dog and cat Advent calendars for your pets! :thinking::dog2::tiger2:

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The sodium content is different, that’s all.

It’s good. I dunno if it’s Rao’s but I enjoy it.

It doesn’t matter if it’s Rao’s or Victoria or Classico, whoever likes the Aldi sauce likes it.

But no, it’s not just the sodium. The fat content is also different (which is a pretty big differentiator as Rao’s is heavier on oil than most). And an ingredient list being the same doesn’t make the product the same — what kind of tomatoes, for starters? Which olive oil? What proportions of onion and garlic? If none of this mattered, we wouldn’t have people seeking out san marzanos or specific brands of olive oil and so on. And at a sharply lower price point, you can be certain the ingredients used are different. You can also bottle at the same plant and not be bottling the same product or the same recipe.

It’s just one person’s conjecture (“ I immediately recognized the bouquet and flavor profile” — but that person does not usually use Rao’s – they happened upon it because Walmart substituted it for… Classico).

In the comments, someone else says the suppliers of the same Aldi label differ regionally, and a third person says it’s an exact match for Victoria not Rao’s, to which the OP responds “fair enough”.

So… no.

You are right.

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You I would believe over random Reddit dude

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zing!

Oh no zing, I’m being serious!

I believe @linguafood’s palate too.

Just not the dude who normally eats Classico and folds when someone tells him the Aldi sauce it’s Victoria not Raos :joy:

(Meanwhile, when I get to the Aldi’s diagonally across town for me I’ll have a sturdy shopping list)

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I read a blog post a while back by someone claiming to be a sommelier who said they eat a lot of Roa’s and identified the Aldi as Rao’s, or very close.

I tend to agree with your theory that the price difference indicates something in the ingredients list is significantly different.

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Bingo.

They may taste the same, but the quality of ingredients may not be.

I can make a hamburger at home that tastes like a Big Mac, but I will guarantee you the ingredients will be better than the ones McDonalds uses.

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It’s probably the same reddit guy (he said he’s a somm)

And yet, what I was thinking even as I wrote that, was that if the flavor is substantially similar at the cheaper ingredients price point, maybe it should debunk the hoopla around only X type of tomatoes and Y type of olive oil being the “best”.

(Many years ago I had a random collection of jarred pasta sauces to use up, and a stint in the pressure cooker plus half a stick of butter rendered them all about the same level of faux-Marcella delicious :joy:)

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I absolutely agree that good ingredients make good end results.

BUT from the manufacturing wonk, assuming that your high-priced container of anything contains only the best ingredients by default would be a really big assumption.

Some manufacturers are just maximising profit by creating buzz. Some roll high end brands off thr exact same line as the cheap stuff.

Caveat emptor. Always.

(But there’s 4 jars of Rao’s in my pantry. Cause it’s really that much better.)

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Yet vodka has a wide range of prices without substantive differences. They’re selling the name, not the better contents.

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Sometimes better raw ingredients and more processing, such as extra filtration. It can’t be that all folk are simply too dumb to notice they are identical. Let’s give people a little more credit.

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In Los Angeles, Aldi’s has the best turkey price in town. Honeysuckle White, 59 cents a pound, no minimum grocery purchase to get that price. Is it the best turkey in town? Probably not. But when you thaw it, do a dry brine and then roast it with wine and butter? Pretty darn good!

Plus they had Ocean Spray cranberries fresh, for 99 cents a 12 oz bag! I got four as I know I will be baking at least two Laurie Colwin Nantucket cranberry pies in the next two weeks, and then I can freeze the rest of the berries. (Dang. Now I am thinking I should have gotten more for the freezer!)

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I need the equivalent of 7 12-ounce bags each year for cranberry relish (Thanksgiving, New Year’s Eve, Passover, summer BBQ, Rosh Hashonah, Yom Kippur break-fast, book club pot luck). I used to buy large bags at Costco, but a couple of years ago they stopped carrying them, and even the supermarkets didn’t have them.I was reduced to buying them frozen in the Eastern European market at twice the price. It’s good to see them back again.

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