crablin

To call myself a ketchup connoisseur would border on pretentious, so I’m not going to. However, I eat a great deal of the stuff and when given the opportunity to be one of the first 3,000 people to try Heinz’s limited edition new variety, blended with balsamic vinegar, rather than the usual spirit vinegar, I bit their arms off.

The bottle arrived at the office this afternoon and after reading the label on the rear, I set about picking up a pack of quality Lincolnshire sausages to ensure a good partnership with the sauce. The bottle suggests it accompanies steak and sausages well, so I expected a more robust flavour than Heinz’s flagship product offers.

I cooked up the sausages and partnered with some fresh garden peas and a decent serving of McCain’s Skin On Rustic Oven Chips. I often find oven chips in general work better with ketchups - by their very nature they tend to be drier and more receptive to the addition of a sauce; fried chips not so much.

It’s fair to say that the bolder flavour of this blend catches you on the nose a little more quickly than ordinary ketchup, the use of brown sugar in the recipe gives the sauce a truly luxurious, rounded taste and when mixed with a fork of sausage and chip, healthy latherings of the sauce were quickly the norm throughout the meal.

I have to say I was quickly enamoured with just how deliciously well it worked with these sausages and choosing a thick cut chip was vital; the whole thing together was nothing short of wonderful.

To the naked eye, the balsamic vinegar mix is noticeably darker and I don’t believe it will work with every ketchup-partnered meal. Bacon sandwiches, for instance, will continue to benefit from the sweeter, easier-going flavour of the classic ketchup and thinner chips, french fries etc. too will be better with the original sauce.

I do however believe Heinz have producer a total winner here. I’m looking forward to giving it a go with a beef-based meal, I’ve got my eye on a steak treat at the weekend and intend to give it some lashings of this when that rolls around.

The sauce itself goes on sale in supermarkets fairly soon but is a strictly limited edition and on the evidence of this first meal, will catch on very quickly indeed.

Highly recommended.