Heinz has rocked Britain — and Italy, presumably — with its first tinned food launch in 10 years. The product is called “spaghetti carbonara” and described as “pasta in a creamy sauce with pancetta”. Not carbonara, then, but canned pasta inspired by the famous Roman dish. Any good? We put it to the test.
David's take
The first sighting of Heinz’ new carbonara-in-a-can was a demoralising, perplexing one. Not the clownish yellow can itself, true. But what lurked ghoulishly inside: bobbing pancetta, worms of spaghetti, a cream sauce the colour of mucus. In gold type on the pink label read assurance of no artificial colours. These are not necessary: no-one would deliberately conjure this glue-ish paste. Mike brings over water as a precaution as the carbonara cooks. There is a sense this will be a taste to wash quickly away.
When the bowl arrives, bubbling, nothing improves. It comes smelling of a thousand empty school canteens — well, ones in the Nineties — with the pasta skulking mostly under the surface. Its vibe is very much “pre-digested”.
“Keep your thoughts to yourselves,” I say. “Let’s not influence each other.”
What transpires is the very nadir of ready-meals: a supermarket own-brand take on a Dolmio sauce, watered down for good measure. Seasoning has been abandoned; even salt and pepper must have been deemed too risky. Instead I sit there chewing and swallowing, but never tasting. “I’m going back to get a bite with pancetta in,” Josh says, fork in hand, “I didn’t get one before.” And I think: how could you tell?
I did not anticipate much; I did not expect the real thing. I do not oppose tinned food — soups are handy this way, chopped tomatoes and chickpeas too, roasted peppers, and let’s not get into the cassoulets and confit ducks of French supermarkets. And I love Heinz. I see the appeal of this, and how handy it must be for parents in a rush, or for those for whom cooking is too much for one reason or another. But why must this be so goddamn awful? “All done? Anyone mind if I throw the rest away?” I asked, once our cutlery had sat undisturbed for a while. “I think that’s for the best,” mutters Mike. We are not a happy bunch.
Mike's take
Tinned food can be a wonderful thing. A life-and-shelf-life-extending product with the ability to alleviate the stresses of a store cupboard or pantry. It offers a culinary salve for those, particularly the elderly or infirm, for whom shopping and attaining fresh produce is a daily challenge. But the spaghetti carbonara from Heinz isn’t that. It is not a shining beacon of rescue, democratising dishes otherwise unavailable with ease and affordability: it’s a bloated, one-note custard of pseudo-Italian horror.
The smell and appearance of this product (which I truly resent calling food) is that of overly sloppy cat food. This, much to the chagrin of your wife or girlfriend, must be decanted into a pan or bowl to be heated, creating a barbarous smell of ultra-processed vomit. Perhaps Heinz is banking on this not being an issue, as anyone bonkers enough to buy this stuff won’t have a wife or girlfriend.
The tangle of over-cooked noodles, once warmed, resembles some kind of I’m a Celebrity worm-eating challenge, floating in a pool of deeply unpleasant cytoplasm, masquerading as carbonara sauce. The pancetta — billed as “crispy” on the tin — emerges from the quagmire as tiny, chewy, salty pellets of floating rat droppings in this otherwise aggressively beige excuse for pasta. I’m exceptionally grateful that I don’t have any Italian heritage, lest my forefather’s spirits saw me consuming something that claimed to be of their native land. Che schifo, it’s bad.
Josh’s take
Aside from the fact Heinz’s baked beans are a little off the pace (Branston wins here), I admire its tinned range. The bolognese in a can is a solid dish and I feel the same about the ravioli. I return to both with some regularity: each must be warmed through on the hob at a medium-high heat so that the tomato sauce reduces. After, I feel these timeless creations work soundly on heavily buttered toast (ideally supermarket tiger bread), particularly when blanketed robustly with cheddar. I’m less enamoured by the beans with sausages and the spaghetti hoops but I wouldn’t roll them out of bed.
The new Heinz “spaghetti carbonara” — the brand’s first canned launch in a decade — is also its most ambitious creation. After all, this is stepping into disquieting territory: is a dish argued about more? Hardly. Italy guards its Roman pasta with ferocity and rightly so. Something about the preservation of perfection. Mamma Mia. La Dolce Vita. Sophia Loren driving a Fiat 500 along the coast.
This tinned version is so far away from the real deal that it doesn’t matter. It’s just a quick dinner inspired by something beautiful. The whys and the wherefores need not be considered.
Our taste test? For me, flawed from the get-go. We heated the pasta up in the microwave, so what appeared in front of us was more of a soup by way of consistency, with lost spaghetti strands and roaming cubes of what should probably not be called pork. All in all, not great. Heated up on the stove so the contents might thicken and some semblance of flavour might remain and I suspect this could be a reasonably agreeable piece of culinary engineering. It’s no Heinz ravioli or bolognese, but, hey, on buttered toast, parmesan lavishly sprinkled upon it, and it’s something.
