How healthy (or authentic) is satay sauce from a tub?
A few spoonfuls or the whole tub in a saucepan, onto the heat and stir: voilà, satay sauce! But are these satay sauces actually authentic and healthy? And what’s really in them? The Consumers’ Association investigated and tested seventeen ready-made satay sauces.
Indispensable at the barbecue, a regular guest at the Christmas gourmet dinner, the crowning glory of your homemade meatball sandwich: satay sauce. You can easily make it yourself – a jar of peanut butter as the main ingredient, with some sambal and ketoembar, and even a child could do it – but you can also pry open a ready-made jar like this. Bonus: those tubs are also incredibly handy as lids for leftovers in the freezer, so we’re definitely fans of these tubs.
Satay sauce as sweet as… sugar
But what’s actually in those handy tubs? The Consumers’ Association tasted, tested and compared them. Seventeen tubs from various supermarkets underwent testing. You won’t be surprised: peanuts and water are the main ingredients in all the sauces, but in third place comes… sugar. Some sauces consist of as much as a quarter sugar! The association gives them a resounding fail for that, because satay sauce really doesn’t have to be sweet.
Fail
Such satay sauce isn’t exactly good for your waistline either, though perhaps it doesn’t have to be. They’re full of fat, but it’s mainly healthy fat from the peanuts. There is, however, a hefty spoonful of salt in all the tubs. Too much, according to the Consumers’ Association. Four of the sauces tested are simply too salty according to the Netherlands Nutrition Centre’s standard and consequently receive a resounding fail in the test report.
On the tree
How authentic is peanut sauce from a tub, really? Not very, and no one will be surprised by that either. In the Emerald Belt, Wijko doesn’t grow on trees, of course. The packaging heavily hints at traditional Indonesian cuisine, but the contents have little to do with it. Make it yourself, the association advises, if you want to taste those authentic Indonesian flavours. So do you have the time? Get started!
Also read:
- 7 tips for the best grilled vegetables (plus extra frozen-vegetable tips)
- Recipe: how to make delicious tempeh satay
- Consumers’ Association finds: many stock cubes are this unhealthy
Source: Consumers’ Association, image: Wijko
