Tesco Freefrom Coconut Rice with Senga Senegana Strawberry

Tesco do tend to do some interesting own label products and whilst browsing the dairy free aisles, found these own label coconut rice with senga sengana strawberry pots. I love rice pudding (I have a bit of a weird love of all things old fashioned like custard, digestive biscuits and malt loaf) so was intrigued to try this modern and on trend variant to rice pudding. It's wheat, dairy and gluten free.

First thing I was really impressed with was how clean the ingredients were. It is literally just the following:

Coconut Milk (Coconut, Water) (62%), Senga Sengana Strawberry (20%), Caster Sugar, Rice (8%), Gelling Agent (Pectin)

All things I recognise, which is a really good sign. Sugar content is also ridiculously good – how many desserts contains under 5g a serving?! Although big watch out is that a pot contains 44% of your saturated fat for the day. Now I know there is a lot of hype around coconut fat being good fat and apparently saturated fat being okay now but I think it is best to advise caution with these fats. A bit of fat and a bit of sugar now and then seems more sensible than going all out on any one nutrient.

It actually feels like a slightly more premium product that the packaging suggests. The little desserts come in smart little pots that I initially mistook for glass but actually seem to be a good, thick high quality plastic. They feel nice to eat out of and I actually ended up washing the pots out and keeping them. Any dairy avoiding guest would be happy to be presented with one of these at a dinner party as they have that Gu like feel to them.

Pulling the lid I instantly got a nice sweet exotic smell of coconut. Digging the spoon I realised it was thick, very thick due to the high fat content. I tried  bit of the top half first and it tastes extremely decadent, very creamy and rich too. Coconut comes through nicely and it’s not too sweet. However, it is a fairly rich dessert and would be sickly if you had to consume it by itself.

Stirring in the fruit compote at the bottom really helps ligten it up. The strawberry isn’t jammy or sickly sweet but fresh and uplifting and when mixed with the coconut rice makes a really creamy, delicious pudding. 

The only negative aspect of the dessert for me was the rice – at just 8% it gets totally lost in the thick fatness of the coconut milk and bar the odd little bit of bite now and then isn’t noticeable. As a rice pudding I’d rather have a looser, less fatty texture with more rice in.

Overall it’s a very nice dessert and at £2 for the two pots seems quite well priced for what I  thought was a pretty premium dessert.

Price: £2

Bought at: Tesco

Nutrition per pot: 155 calories, 9.4g fat, 8.8g sat fat, 4.9g sugars, 0.1g salt

Score: 8/10