A few days ago I made Buitoni Italian Sausage Ravioli with pasta sauce for lunch. The refrigerated ravioli are huge, the type that you need to cut in two to fit into your mouth. The filling has visible chunks of Italian sausage mixed with cheeses and breadcrumbs. It definitely tastes like Italian sausage, and you can easily just eat these ravioli with only added butter or olive oil – they are pretty dry, so they need a source of moisture. They did OK with the tomato-based pasta sauce I used, but this mostly covered the flavor of the sausage so it was unnecessary.
The regular package is 10 oz, and will feed two if you add a salad or you are not very hungry. It was $7 at Safeway, but I got it in a BOGO deal.
Buitoni in America is owned by MA private company Tuscan Brands, in Europe, by Nestlé.
Prego, along with Ragú, are two of the oldest supermarket pasta sauces. They are also the cheapest – created at a time when economy and convenience were the most important factors for shoppers. As inflation brings hunger to America, we are right back where we started.
Prego sauces are made with tomato paste, rather than with whole or diced tomatoes as the more expensive brands. If you watch food tasters out there, Prego ranks at the bottom. It may be familiarity, but I actually like these cheaper pasta brands, as I find them more flavorful and complex – they need to make up with spices what they can’t accomplish with fresh ingredients.
Prego Creamy Tomato Garlic is part of a new line of Prego sauces which combine tomato sauce with cream. I think they are founded on the success of vodka sauce which became a thing a decade or two ago. I thought it was very good. On the ravioli, it was a tad too acidic and but it was very tasty, but I also used it to make my regular meat sauce and it was absolutely delicious in it. My husband actually remarked at how good it was, and we ended up eating up the whole sauce from the pot before we even boiled the pasta.
The sauce was $2 at Safeway (from $4.50 regular). Prego is made by Campbell’s,
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