Can you imagine your life without some chaat? So bland, so pointless. The two main components that can make or break the flavor of any chaat are the green chutney and the sweet tamarind chutney. While the green chutney adds a lot of spiciness to the chaat, a wonderful tangy sweetness comes from the imli sauce.
We tried two popular brands of imli chutneys (Tamarind sauce) that are available in an easy-pour pouch packaging to test which brand gives a more wholesome flavor to our homemade chaats.
After tasting the imli sauces with dahi bhallas and aloo tikkis, we found that Maggi Imli Sauce Pichkoo (Top Pick) was a clear winner. Let’s find out why and how we chose our winner.
Table of Contents
Watch Video – The Best Imli Sauce
The Best Imli Sauce For Tastier Homemade Chaat
Mishry Top Pick – Maggi Imli Sauce Pichkoo
Maggi Imli Sauce Pichkoo
The sweetness and tamarind tanginess is in perfect harmony in our Top Pick – Maggi Imli Sauce Pichkoo.
MRP – Rs 20/-*
Net weight – 90 grams
*Price at the time of review
Why Maggi Imli Sauce Pichkoo was our Top Pick?
Maggi Imli Sauce Pichkoo is our Top Pick because it was tastier and had a better balance of sweet and tangy flavors which are expected out of a street-style chutney.
Simply put, Maggi’s Imli Sauce elevates the flavor of a plate of dahi-bhalla immensely, even without adding any other masalas or spices. The burst of cumin, in addition to the sweet-tangy flavor, plays a big role in doing so. This imli sauce mixes more effectively and tasted far closer to street-style chaat, or dahi pakodi dishes.
The appearance and consistency of the Maggi Imli Sauce is also similar to that of a street-style imli chutney. It has a flowy consistency and a dark brown color.
A 90-gram pack of the Maggi Imli Sauce Pichkoo is priced at Rs 20/-.
Why Did Veeba Classic Imli Sauce Not Win?
The Veeba Classic Imli Sauce is not unappetizing, but it lacked the significant imli tang and sourness. In fact, the sauce has a dominant tomato flavor. The promise of the sweet & tangy flavor that you expect from an imli chutney was not delivered as well.
Even though the overall spice levels of Veeba Classic Imli Sauce were high, we significantly missed the flavor of cumin and a tamarind tang.
Veeba’s Classic Imli Sauce does not have any added preservatives and a 100 gram pouch is priced at Rs 24/-. The tamarind content is only 4% which is low when compared to Maggi’s Imli Sauce.
Our Review Process
Chaats are extremely loved around the country in different forms. From dahi bhallas to aloo tikki, golgappas, and paapri chaat, these classic dishes are always generously doused in a sweet, slightly tangy tamarind chutney. While most of us love eating chaat from roadside vendors, making it at home is a very satisfying process as well. We wanted to find a saunth chutney or imli sauce that made our homemade chaat tastier.
Who Is This Review For?
Making saunth chutney or imli chutney at home can be a laborious process and can take a lot of time even to make a small batch. So this review is for all those people who love pairing this sweet sauce with cheelas, samosas, or home-made chaat. This review is for everyone who loves making chaat at home or wants a convenient, handy chutney option when you make samosas, bhalle or tikkis at home.
How We Picked The Brands
We picked two popular brands of imli chutney/imli sauce that are readily available in grocery stores and online as well. These chutneys had to come in a small pouch packaging with an easy pour nozzle.
What Does A Typical Imli Chutney Have? A regular imli chutney is made using tamarind paste, sugar or jaggery, cumin, dry ginger powder (saunth) and other ingredients.
The Brands We Picked
The contenders for our review are –
- Maggi Imli Sauce Pichkoo
- Veeba Classic Imli Sauce
The Parameters
For our review we considered two broad parameters –
Taste – Here we wanted to check for the overall flavor profile of the imli sauce. How are the sweetness levels? Is the sweetness coming from the jaggery or sugar? Is it tart and is the sourness from tamarind in an appropriate amount? How is it seasoned? Does the cumin flavor come through or is it lost somewhere?
Consistency – Market-style imli chutney is very flowy and thin. We were looking for the chutney that came close to that.
How We Reviewed
We divided our review into two phases –
- 1 – Raw inspection and tasting
- 2 – Tasting with chaat
Phase 1 included label reading and raw tasting of the sauces. Here we made notes on the differences between appearances, their consistency, and flavor without any chaat. This helped us gauge the sweetness levels, tamarind tang, and the amount of seasoning.
Phase 2 – Our mid-week blues were pushed afar when we called for some delicious chaat at Mishry HQ. We ordered Dahi Bhallas and Aloo Tikki from Bikanervala and asked for the chutneys to be packed separately so that we could test our contenders. We did not add the green chutney that came with the chaats as we wanted the imli sauce flavor to shine through.
After a delicious tasting session, we picked our winner.
Quick Comparison – The Tastier Imli Sauce
| Maggi Imli Sauce | Veeba Classic Imli Sauce | |
| Price | Rs 20/- | Rs 24/- |
| Net weight | 90 gram | 100 grams |
| Best before | 9 months | 9 months |
| Tamarind content | 15.0 % | 4.0 % |
| Consistency | Flowy consistency | Thicker in comparison |
| Color | Dark brown | Deep red-brown |
| Aroma | Sweet and Sour aroma | Tomato sauce like aroma |
| Flavor notes | Tangy and sweet. The cumin flavor is dominant. | The tomato flavor is dominant and the tamarind sourness gets lost. |
Results Of The Review
We really did enjoy ourselves during this delicious tasting session. After multiple side-by-side tastings with dahi bhallas and aloo tikkis, we landed on our decision. Maggi Imli Sauce Pichkoo was chosen as our Top Pick for the sheer balance of sweet and tangy flavors and the presence of cumin, which really helped uplift the overall taste.
Team That Worked On This Review
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