Description
Ingredients: Sardines (70.8%, Sardina pilchardus), olive oil (23.3%), Pickles (carrot, cucumber) 2.6%, Piri-piri (2.1%), Salt and condiments (2 peppercorns, cloves, and bay leaves) 0.21%).
Contains: Fish
The terms “spiced” and “spicy” are used pretty much interchangeably in the tinned fish world, to mean two different things: with a hot pepper (or hot pepper flavor), and with cloves/bay/carrot/hot pepper. There are many examples of both terms being used to mean both things.
We are so frustrated by how widespread this confusing inconsistent usage is that we’ve gone through our entire product line to correct the incorrect ones such that our description of “spiced” or “spicy” will always indicate which it really is, regardless of the packaging. “Spicy” = with hot pepper flavor. “Spiced” = with the cloves/bay/carrot/hot pepper flavors.
Hream McDan (verified owner) –
Beautiful packaging, soft fillets, very mild flavor. After being impressed by what Minerva did with their skinless & boneless sardines, I am a little underwhelmed here. Texturally, they’re a touch softer than Nuri spiced and have more of a shred than a flake. They fall apart *very* easily. The spiced oil is fine but it doesn’t bring a ton of flavor to the party … it’s definitely more of a background note. I’m happy to have tried this and I do think it was worth the price, but realistically it’d be tough to choose this one over other soft spiced Portuguese sardines at this price point (e.g. Nuri) unless I really wanted to impress someone with the packaging.
emosberger (verified owner) –
This was a very good tin of spiced sardines in the Portuguese style. As mentioned previously, the sardines are very soft so if you like them more firm this may not be the tin for you. However it was a nice change of pace texture-wise and the spices seemed more “smooth” than other offerings. Maybe they aged these tins for several years to let the flavors mellow? All in all, a tin worth trying out.