This wasn't supposed to be a buy Canadian post originally but I thought it would fit this community best due to the result of my lazy experiment.
The tl;dr is PC's pad thai sauce was solid and was most similar to home made pad thai sauce from my crappy test. No, it's not as good as home made.. Also, I understand that PC is Loblaws which isn't great and the sauce is only "prepared in canada" but this is still better than nothing.
Last weekend I was at the grocery store and I was craving some pad thai. Unfortunately the grocery store we went to didn't carry tamarind in any form.
I checked out the sauces section and found 4 different brands of pad thai sauce and decided to give 3 of them a try: VH, thai kitchen and PC. The one I didn't try was blue dragon.
I got the thai kitchen one as a back up because I used their pad thai sauce back in college and I remember it wasn't that bad.
On experiment day, I soaked the vermicelli noodles and prepared all of the ingredients. Then I made 3 servings of pad thai back-to-back-to-back. I taste tested all 3 for flavor.
My findings are as follows:
1. VH pad thai sauce. Prepared in Canada $4 (1.13 / 100ml)
I thought this sauce might be good based on the color of the sauce and that tamarind concentrate was listed so high on the ingredient list. Unfortunately this sauce was really bad.
The result tasted nothing like pad thai. It was way too sweet and I couldn't taste the tamarind at all which is baffling. I tried the sauce by itself as well and even then I couldn't taste tamarind.
Post meal thoughts: I figured out what was missing from the flavor: fish sauce. I checked the ingredients list and sure enough I didn't find fish sauce on the list. My recommendation is to skip this sauce and if you really need to use it add fish sauce.
Verdict: 1/5. Way too sweet. No fish sauce. Tastes nothing like pad thai. Terrible.
2. Thai kitchen pad thai sauce. Product of US $7 (2.94 / 100ml)
When I checked the ingredients list at the grocery store, what stood out to me about the sauce was that it didn't have any tamarind in it. I'm blind, I reread the ingredient list and it does list tamarind. The fact I couldn't tell even after eating it tells you everything you need to know. I also made pad thai with it in the past back it university.
Although it tasted more like Pad thai vs the VH sauce probably due to the fact that at least it had fish sauce in it, it still tasted off. I don't think it tastes that bad per se but it doesn't taste very authentic.
Post meal thoughts: While I'd prefer it over the VH pad thai, I don't think I would enjoy eating pad thai made with it. I think I got spoiled from making pad thai sauce myself and while this sauce was satisfactory for me in the past, I don't think I find it satisfactory today. I think it got the sweet and sour flavor profile and added fish sauce and that was it.
Verdict: 1.5/5. Pad thai made with this sauce is edible but it's still not great. It loosely tastes like pad thai. I docked it an additional 0.5 points for being overpriced.
3. PC pad thai sauce. Prepared in Canada $6 ($1.5 / 100ml)
This sauce also lists tamarind in the ingredient list which is generally a bare minimum for pad thai sauce. Color of the sauce looked ok, but a bit darker than expected.
The taste of the sauce on it's own was very promising. It reminded me of my home made pad thai sauce but with some other flavors in there as well. Also, it was the first sauce where I could taste tamarind.
Taste of the pad thai was very acceptable. Not perfect because there is some off flavor but it tastes like pad thai. If I tasted the pad thai blind folded I think I would be able to tell this was pad thai which I'm not sure I could say the same with the other two sauces. The bar here is low but it's met.
After meal thoughts: this sauce was solid. Of course home made is always going to be better but this sauce is very good as a replacement. I wouldn't mind being served this and it would satisfy my pad thai craving.
Also I think I figured out why it has an off taste to me and also why the sauce is darker. I think they put oyster sauce in this. In it's defense I have seen pad thai recipes with oyster sauce so while it might not be the most authentic, it does seem to be a popular ingredient.
Also it looks like this sauce doesn't contain fish sauce either so maybe adding fish sauce in will make the result even better.
Verdict: 3.5/5. It's good. It's not the most authentic but it's probably good enough for most people. Try it with fish sauce.
So my experiment is not great since I didn't try all of the different options. I didn't try the Blue Dragon or the Selections brand. I am however highly skeptical of the Selections brand because I noticed tamarind is listed very low in the ingredient list. I wonder if the flavor will be similar to the VH brand where the tamarind taste is non-existent.
There are also a lot of imported pad thai sauces from thailand. I didn't try these because I think if you have access to these you probably have access to tamarind. If you have access to tamarind, I would highly recommend trying to make your own sauce.
All in all, I don't think it's possible to source every ingredient in pad thai from Canada so PC's pad thai sauce is basically as close to a premade Canadian pad thai sauce as you can get.
Making your own from scratch continues to be the best for pad thai but if you are in a pinch or if you just can't find tamarind locally, PC's pad thai sauce is a solid alternative.
Edit:
I forgot to discuss price. I changed Thai Kitchen's pad thai sauce from a 2 to a 1.5 because of it's price. I left the other two sauce scores unchanged since I think they are reasonably priced.
