How Good is the Homebrand?

If you read the miles long ‘Obligatory Intro Post’, you know that I wished that someone had written a blog like this so I could have been spared. But please, don’t cry for me, because I am a strong woman, and I have recovered from the trauma that I experienced over this mustard. Now I just hope to warn others, to save them the pain.

All jokes aside, I wouldn’t consider myself a connoisseur of mustard. I wouldn’t consider myself a connoisseur of anything – I’ve misspelled the word twice now. But I did learn that I like at least one brand’s offering of Dijon mustard, and now I wanna write about it.

The Story

Okay, so I bought some MasterFoods brand Dijon mustard from The Reject Shop earlier this year. I think it was $1, and I really like trying new things when I don’t feel like they’re potentially going to bankrupt me, so I picked it up. I used it on steak, with mushrooms, in a cream sauce, and was obsessed. When I ran out, they were no longer a dollar, so I decided to try the Coles homebrand option.

Coles Dijon mustard, image courtesy of shop.coles.com.au

MasterFoods Dijon mustard, photo courtesy of shop.coles.com.au

When I come home from doing groceries, I immediately start putting things away. As I do that, sometimes I taste test things that I’ve bought that are new. I scraped a teensy bit of mustard onto a spoon, just to try, and balked at the taste. It was not good.

The Taste

Somehow, this mustard tastes as if plastic has been cooked into the mustard. I don’t know how mustard is prepared, but I assume there’s some cooking going on. Anyway, it was horrible. It had bite and bitterness, but that’s all it had. The flavour was completely overpowered by whatever created that plastic taste. I immediately threw out the jar, and picked up some more of the MasterFoods version at full price when I next visited the supermarket.

Is it worth the savings?

MasterFoods Dijon Mustard retails at $2.80 for 170g in Coles supermarkets, and $3.00 in Woolworths. At its cheapest, that’s $1.65 for 100g.

Coles Dijon Mustard retails at $2.00 for 200g, matching the Woolworths homebrand option. $1.00 per 100g.

A saving of 80 cents (for the product – 65 cents if you go by volume) for a condiment that tasted inedible to me is 100% not worth it. I know that I haven’t tried the Woolworths version (of which they have two – the regular homebrand and their organic homebrand, which comes out at the same price as the MasterFoods version), and when I finish this next jar, I’m considering shelling out an extra $1.20 to pick up the bougie-looking Maille brand Dijon mustard. Maybe I’m missing out on something truly remarkable.

But for now? For now, I officially declare that the Coles brand Dijon mustard is not worth the savings.

So how good is the homebrand?

Bad. Bad bad bad.

Disclaimer: Please remember that the opinions expressed in this post are just that – opinions. You’re welcome to feel entirely differently to me. Perhaps I’m the outlier and the only one who feels this way. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I’ve used WordPress before.

I actually have a blog from probably five years ago, where I had decided I would play old video games and review them for fun. I believe I made a WordPress and a Tumblr page for this concept, wrote a post announcing I would be reviewing Dino Crisis (PS1), and then got myself stuck in the game and abandoned the whole idea.

The point is that I’ve used WordPress before, but I still don’t really know what I’m doing. I’ve been playing around with themes, trying to figure out how to pick colours for a palette when it’s only offering me five ‘featured’ options. I want this blog to look simple, easy to read, and gently coloured. I’m gonna keep playing around with it, but in the meantime it looks pretty shabby.

I guess I should write a little about why I’m starting *this* blog. Probably five months ago, I ran out of Dijon mustard. Oh no, I gasped, as if it was the worst thing in the world. I’m a person who is on the fence about trying new things. I love trying new things, especially food, but I’m always extremely hesitant because of the price. I’ve never had very much money, and I grew up pretty poor. This left me with a bit of a fear that I would run out of money and not be able to afford the things I need. So when it comes to trying new food, part of me holds back because what if I don’t like it, but then I can’t afford something I would like because I spent my money on this and now I have to go without??? It’s exhausting.

Anyway, I had bought a small Masterfoods branded jar of it from The Reject Shop (a ‘dollar’ style store we have here in Tasmania, in case you’re wondering) for extremely cheap, just to try, and had discovered how much I like mustard in cooking. Great! That wonderful special had ended by the time my jar was empty, and I looked around the supermarkets before deciding to try the Coles homebrand version.

That was a mistake.

About a month later, I wanted to start slowly building a spice collection. I was investigating turmeric, and spent ages Googling to find out whether or not buying the inexpensive homebrand version would be a bad move. I would save a little money, which is great, but what if the quality wasn’t worth saving an extra dollar? What if buying this cheapest of options, I got a product that didn’t taste or do what a more expensive option would? And how could I know, because I couldn’t find the information I needed online.

Well, I just asked someone in a Facebook group, and they told me that spices are usually the same regardless of brand. I bought the cheapest turmeric I could find, and as far as I can tell, everything is as it should be. Crisis averted. During that time, though, I thought about how useful it would have been to find a site where people discussed the myriad of different inexpensive brand alternatives we have, and which ones are really worth spending a little extra, and which ones are the gems. I’ve seen posts reviewing homebrand options before, but they all seem to focus on one product in the post, and there usually aren’t follow-up posts, or reviews of other items.

So anyway, I thought maybe I could create that site. Post my experiences with homebrand products, rate them how good I feel they are, and perhaps someone else with the irrational fear I have will stumble across a post and feel relieved that someone has the answer. In reality, I might not post very often. I might not post at all. A blog is something part of me has always wanted to run, but I’m terrible for giving up on things early.

In any case, that’s my hope for the blog. To create posts about homebrand products, and discuss whether or not it’s worth getting the cheaper option and saving your money. Because that Dijon mustard sucked, and I wish I had had someone tell me beforehand.