Expensive Sardines: Worth the Hype or Overrated?

When I shop, I lump products into two groups:

1. Those I buy at the lowest price.
2. Expensive products that I’m willing to pay more for.

However, my decision to spend more on a product is not necessarily based on its quality but rather on assumptions I’ve made over the years.

For example, I may buy an expensive product simply because it has better branding or because I’ve heard good things about it on the internet. On the other hand, I may avoid certain products because they look cheap or I don’t understand how there could possibly be a difference in quality.

For instance, I’m more than happy to spend a little extra on Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, honey, and pasta, but I try to get things like eggs, tinned tomatoes, and butter as cheaply as possible.

But have I ever tested whether my assumptions about which products are worth paying more for and which aren’t, are actually accurate?

No, not until now.

In the next few posts, I will be conducting blind taste tests of the same product at different price points to find out if the extra cost is worth it. I will usually test a cheap, mid-range, and expensive version of each product.

This post is about tinned sardines. We’ll try some cheap sardines, some mid-range sardines and some expensive sardines. Going into this, I thought that sardines were worth paying the extra for. But is that true? Let’s find out.

The setup

To begin with, I purchased three different brands of tinned sardines in the UK:

• Cheap sardines: Lidl (£0.47 for 125g / £0.38 per 100g)
• Mid-range sardines: Princes (£1.00 for 125g / £0.80 per 100g)
• Expensive sardines: Ortiz (£3.99 for 140g / £3.56 per 100g)

The difference in price between the Lidl and Princes tins is significant, with a difference of over 100%. However, that’s nothing compared to the staggering 450% difference between the Lidl tin and the Ortiz brand.

Let’s find out if the Ortiz sardines are worth their hefty price tag.

For the blind taste test, my girlfriend blindfolded me and placed a sardine from each tin into a container (shoutout to Beth for her help).

Then, she passed me a spoon with the fish on it. To cleanse my palate between each bite, I used water and water crackers.

After trying each sardine, I shared my thoughts on each one and tried to guess which one I was eating. (Spoiler alert: the results didn’t quite turn out as expected).

Presentation

Before Beth blindfolded me, I opened each tin to see what I would be scranning (British slang for eating, by the way).

When I opened the Lidl tin, I was greeted with an unappetising sight. There’s no elegant way to describe it: the sardines looked like burn victims. The skin had an odd, unpleasant char.

The Princes’ brand sardines looked noticeably better than the Lidl brand, but they had a bog-standard appearance.

The expensive sardines, the Ortiz brand, however, took the cake. These sardines had perfectly uniform skin and had been arranged in the tin in such a way as to cater to my repressed OCD. It was almost as if they were meant to be displayed on a fancy dinner platter.

Taste

However, the presentation of the expensive sardines alone is not enough to justify the 450% price increase compared to the Lidl brand. Speaking as a pretty frugal bloke, I’ll eat almost anything if it means saving money, unless the quality justifies the extra cost. I love saving money, but I love a high-quality meal even more.

So, with my blindfold on, we began the sardine taste test.

Unbeknownst to me, the first sardine was from the Princes‘ brand. My initial reaction was that it was “grainy, tasteless and bitty,” with negligible flavour even on the second bite.

Next, I tasted the anticipated Ortiz sardines. The first bite had more flavour but a paste-like texture that reminded me of cheap tinned tuna. Although it had a pleasant salty taste and more acidity than the Princes‘ sardines, it was also more bitter and overpowering. I wasn’t sure about it at first, but a few more bites confirmed my dislike for the bitter taste.

Finally came the Lidl brand. The first blind bite of the charred remains of sardine surprised me. “Whoa,” were my first words. Despite a lot of chewing due to its somewhat dry and pasty texture, it had a smoky, appealing taste. “That’s lush,” I noted after my last bite.

After trying each sardine again to reconfirm my initial guesses, I was surprised to find that I had made a mistake in my blind tasting. I had initially thought that the first sardine (Princes‘ brand) was the Lidl sardines, the second sardine (Ortiz brand) was the Princes‘ brand, and the Lidl sardines were actually the… Ortiz brand?! I actually thought the expensive sardines were the cheapest sardines.

Oh, dear. How wrong I was.

Conclusion

Okay, to be honest, although I enjoy eating fish, I’m not the world’s biggest fan of sardines. I like them, but I don’t eat them very often, so perhaps it would have made more sense to start these taste tests with a more familiar food item.

Nevertheless, I concluded that the expensive sardines, the Ortiz brand, while decent, do not justify the 450% price increase over the Lidl brand. Surprisingly, I even preferred the Lidl brand over not only the expensive sardines, the Ortiz brand, but also the slightly more upscale Princes‘ brand.

While I plan to stick with the Lidl brand for now, everyone’s tastes are different. After all, this is only my taste (and my taste can be controversial).

Do you disagree? Let me know in the comments why I’m wrong.