Wendyl Nissen: Great sauce to heat and eat

Tatua Cheese Sauce. $4.65 for 200g sachet. Photo / Supplied

Making a cheese sauce can be a bit time consuming and personally I often don't bother. So having one you can grab from the supermarket fridge which you can heat and eat is a great idea to throw over pasta at home or to make a quick cauliflower cheese. This sauce differs from the powdered cheese sauce packets available as it is ready to heat, and is kept in the refrigerator so is pretty close to real food.

Tatua Cheese Sauce. $4.65 for 200g sachet.

Ingredients (in order of greatest quantity first):

Cheese 47% (skim milk, cream, salt, milk solids, culture, enzymes)
These are the same ingredients you would find in cheese. And this is a good amount of cheese to have in a cheese sauce, similar to a sauce if you made it yourself.

Water

Milk solids
This is dehydrated milk. Probably in here for flavour.

Thickener (1422)
This is acetylated distarch adipate which is a treated starch. It will be in here to make the sauce thick.

Stabilisers (415, 466)
These are xanthan gum (415) and sodium carboxy methyl cellulose (466) which is extracted from green plants and algae. Both ingredients will most likely be in the sauce to keep its creamy consistency.

Emulsifying salts (331,451)
Emulsifiers help fats and water to remain together in a sauce like this instead of separating. These are sodium citrate (331) which is a salt of citric acid and diphosphates (451) which are salts of phosphoric acid.

Food acid (270)
This is lactic acid (270) which occurs naturally in milk.

Yeast extract
This will be in here as a natural flavour.

Colours (100, 160A)
These are both natural colours, turmeric (100) and carotene (160A). The sauce has a light yellow colour.

My recommendations:

If I made cheese sauce at home it would take butter, flour, milk and cheese. This sauce has a few more ingredients, but they are mainly to help the product look and taste okay by the time you get it out of the packet. It also tastes very much like the real thing.

Highlights:

• Contains 47% cheese.
• No artificial flavours, colours or preservatives.
• Fast option to pour over pasta or vegetables.