We were gifted 25kg of sushi grade tuna and I knew that we had no wasabi in the house. Ordinarily I buy the powder so that I can make the paste myself, but I could not find any at my local shops. I happened to be at the Woolworths store in Cavendish where I found some of their preprepared paste. I purchased this and one taste at home left me with one desire – “take it back”. Before I could do so, I was at the Good Food and Wine Show and I tasted the Wasabi-O products. Hayley kindly gave me a selection of their products and it was this that inspired me to do a taste test, comparing their paste to the Woolworths paste. Dave did not know which wasabi was which, and so his blind taste test results are what I have listed here.
WOOLWORTHS WASABI PASTE
Dave scored this a 2 out of 5. He thought it was tasteless. I thought that the taste was not good at all, it is not strong enough and the texture is gritty.
WASABI-O WASABI PASTE
Dave scored this a 4 our of 5 and he said it has a nice citrus flavour. I thought it had a very strong wasabi taste but it was a bit too oily for me.
WASABI-O WASABI MAYONNAISE
This has no wasabi taste but Dave still scored it a 3 out of 5. I thought it was mild and sweet.
WASABI-O WASABI POWDER
This is a real traditional wasabi and Dave scored it a 5 out of 5. It is strong and smooth but I am sure the strength has to do with how I made it.
WASABI-O WASABI SAUCE
This is very sweet and scored a 4 out of 5. It is flavourful but mild and gets better the more you use. Dave decided that if he used lots of the sauce it was the clear winner.
CONCLUSIONS
Woolworths need to send their paste back to the supplier as it does not meet their high standards. Get the Wasabi-O products into stock and there will be a lot of happy people around 🙂 If you are only going to get one of the products, the powder is more versatile. But if you don’t feel like making your own, get the paste (1st choice) or the sauce (2nd choice).
YUM!! I love the Wasabi-O Paste 🙂 now I feel like sushi for brekkies……xx
Now, that sounds like a perfect breakfast to me 🙂
Love wasabi but have never found it in southern Spain. I have a list pinned to my fridge where I jot down things that I can´t buy here so that when people come from the UK to visit they can bring them with them. Bet you know what´s going on the list now?!
I should do the same with a list of things I cannot find here!
Never seen Wasabi-O products, will look out for them.
they are really good!
Hehe..I’m so glad I’ve found your blog, Tandy. Where else could I read about a wasabi taste-off? Although you had me at the first line – what on earth did you do with 25kg of sashimi grade tuna? Is it for a catering job, or are you going to freeze it? I could well and truly make myself delightfully sick on all that… 🙂
Sadly, we have frozen most of it – and given away half of it as well!
That’s ok. Did you know in the US it’s illegal to sell sashimi unless the fish has been frozen first? Apparently it’s necessary to kill all the parasites!
and I would never consider eating something raw that had previously been frozen 🙂
Thanks for sharing 🙂
my pleasure!
Obviously, I don’t know any of these brands as I can only get one at home (and I don’t remember what make it is – apart from being Japanese!) But in Hong Kong airport yesterday the wasabi was an incredibly alarming BRIGHT almost flourescent green, rather stiff and nicely punchy. No idea of the make of that either! 🙂
the flourescent may have put me off, but if it is punchy then it had to have been good! Glad you got safely half way around the world 🙂
Wasabi O paste will be available at Woolworths from the 8th August
That is fantastic news!