Home > Categories > Food > Fish > Pacific Crown Tuna - Mild Thai Curry review
Delicate pieces of premium tuna in an authentic mild Thai curry sauce with coconut cream and potato pieces. This makes an appetizing meal when heated and served over a bed of rice.
A healthy source of Omega 3, Pacific Crown tuna is wild caught using dolphin friendly methods.
Product reviews...
Not a big fan of this one. After eating genuine curries from Asia and India over the last few years while I was travelling, this was quite a let down for me. I think if they rebranded it "Mild Indian Curry Potato, with Tuna" they might get away with it because then at least it will honestly describe the contents I found in the tin.
If this is an authentic Thai Curry, then I am a three-legged German man named Pierre McTavish because I have spent the last 3 years eating the real thing. Yes, some Thai dishes would have a curry flavour, and be predominantly vegetables, I admit. Thailand being mainly Buddhist, and Buddhists being vegetarians, it makes sense. But this flavour was not like anything I ever ate in Thailand.
This did go fairly nicely mixed through some steamed egg noodles, but the sauce didn't really stick to the noodles the way it should have, so I ended up with a warm, watery soup in the bottom of the bowl. Not the worst thing to happen, especially I get home to NZ just as the horrible Winter weather kicks in after spending at least 2 years in places that never fall below 20 degrees, and more often are above 30 degrees.
I don't think I will buy this flavour again, but I can imagine plenty of people who would find it acceptable. Not too spicy, has an exotic flavour even if it isn't an authentic one, and is quick and easy to prepare. This is a can that you could eat as a single serve as-is too. Thanks to the high proportion of potato, it does not actually need anything extra to make a meal of it.
I use tuna a lot in the summer to mix into salads and this size of can is perfect for a salad for one! These tins are great to take to work for lunches just pop it into your lunchbox and add to your salad when ready to eat without making all the other ingredients soggy! Heat and eat is a great way to utilise this flavour as well, add to rice, couscous or Bulgar wheat for a more substantial meal and to make it go even further mix with veges and hey presto a ready made meal for one!
I have used this brand and flavour before but have been slightly disappointed with this particular flavour at times. Yes, there is a mild Thai Curry sauce, but it can be quite watery. The amount of Tuna is sometimes sadly lacking too with almost more potato than tuna in the tin at times.
I am impressed that it is caught using dolphin friendly methods, with this being one of the reasons I go back to purchasing it. Ethical reasons have to take a certain priority with products I purchase. I feel that maybe the label could be redesigned so it stands out more and has something of the flavour on it.
I'm disappointed with this one. It smells lovely like a mild curry but definitely doesn't taste like it smells and on opening we found random large white fat looking things in there, which also put me off. You can relax though as it is only sweet potato but I think the chunks are too large for such a small tin.
On eating it, I had no indication I was even eating tuna as the texture was a little off. I think that a lot of the minimal flavour was lost in cooking so I would like to try the serving suggestion, which I only noticed after the can was empty. Perhaps I'm a little hard on it as the non fish lover could love it.
The pictures on the tin and the colour coding makes it easy to find your favourite among them both in the supermarket and at home.
My middle child said that it tastes good and is awesome. She has asked if I can buy some more for her school lunches and if they make bigger cans of it. She has also rather excitedly told her father about it and asked him to get her some when he goes to work. My youngest thinks its good and not too spicy as anything remotely spicy gets spat out.
I love little pots of tuna and they are often on the menu for me to have for lunch at work but to be honest I'm really sick of my usual flavours so I was super keen to try this as it sounded delicious.
Normally I would grab a piece of bread to toast up at work to go with the tuna but reading the label, I decided this was more than just tuna as it even mentioned potatoes in it, so I treated it more like a meal. For this reason I decided to put in a bit of effort and cook up some rice to have with it instead. It actually recommends having it with rice, and I think it was well worth doing it this way.
Lunch time came and I tipped the tuna onto my rice to re-heat it. My first thought was that there wasn't enough sauce around the tuna but as it turned out, there was just enough to blend through the rice. I heated the whole lot together and it was a filling and delicious lunch. I even enjoyed the potatoes which I was worried would be rubbery but they weren't at all. The flavour was mild but of course I had diluted it with the rice.
I definitely would try this again and happily buy it, mainly because I want more variety in my lunches, but I thought it did taste quite nice, if maybe just a little forgettable.
While Thai food is not one of my favourite cultural taste profiles - never really acquired the taste for lemongrass and coriander in the same dish) it is one that has a huge visual appeal for me, and as such I have been known to indulge in the odd Thai meal now and again. As such, it is one I have a little experience with, and I only eat it if it has been prepared by a Thai cook. No cook can really claim to cook authentic dishes unless they were either born, raised or studied for at least 10 years in the country of origin, in my opinion. You can taste the difference, if you have anything close to a sense of taste at all.
That said... this tuna did not have an authentic taste to it, but despite that it wasn't actually too bad, all things considered. The tuna was in chunks and flakes, not the 'mush' you find in some other brands. That alone saved this from being a failure. Add to that a nice, thick sauce that was at least flavoursome if not accurate to the cultural tastes, and a generous portion that was able to cover a bowl of rice almost to the edges... and this proves itself to be not the worst "Thai" canned fish I have tried.
Overall, I find myself in a tough position - while I didn't really LIKE it, I can't say I DISLIKED it either. There are some quite good aspects and a few not so good aspect, but there wasn't anything I could point to as "bad" either... I guess this is one of those foods that is going to polarise opinions - there will be those who hate it, and those who love it, and more than a few stuck in the middle - like me - who will likely keep a couple of cans on hand for when the mood strikes, but it won't be a 'go to' food when they want a snack most of the time. I think I may need to try it again a few different ways before I really make up my mind. One thing I did have to do though was break up the chunks of potato - they were unexpected!
I was pleased to be able to try out this Pacific Crown Tuna in a Mild Thai Curry flavor and review it. From first impressions the packaging/label of this product wasn't terrible but it wasn't the best either. I think that it definitely makes it look like a brand of lesser quality than some of the other brands of tinned tuna.
When I opened this product I was quite surprised to see that it wasn't just tuna in there but there were also potato chunks as well. This made me go back and look more closely at the label of this product and from the heading on the label I would have thought that this product was simply a flavored tuna but when I read further around the side of the label I noticed that it said that this was a tuna in a curry sauce with potato in it.
I had originally opened this tin to have with avocado on puffed rice crackers as I would do this with other tinned flavored tuna but once I opened it I saw that it wasn't the best thing to do with this. But I didn't have anything else to have it with so I went ahead anyway. I must say that it didn't taste bad but it wasn't anything to rave about either. Unfortunately the flavor wasn't amazing so I don't think I would be buying this product in the future.
I like me some tuna, but the wife doesn't, still, so long as she doesn't have to eat it she's fine with me gobbling it down, so I figured this was a good item to request to review.
I'm not a big fan of the label design, it just doesn't catch my eye as much as other brands, feels like there is something missing and I would probably choose other brands over this particular brand. I've never tried tuna of that flavor so was curious to see how it would turn out. Opening it up, the usual strong tuna smell wasn't there (that appealed to my wife ) but not to me. I offered some up to my kids, who were all excited to try it.
I gave the kids just a small piece each, not even half a teaspoon and the prompt response was thumbs down from all three and a begging look on their face of "can I please spit this out?" I tried it and thought the fish was lacking in taste, was rather bland and not what I expected from the tuna. I also think there was too much potato in it, the chunks were huge and meant I had far less tuna, when I would be happy with no potato, more tuna and more flavor.
I don't think I would buy this, eat it yes if someone offered it, but buy it, no.
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