In this trial an in‐house conventional method was compared with the MSRV method for Salmonella detection. Various high and low moisture foodstuffs (121 and 116 samples respectively), some either artificially or naturally contaminated, were examined. Eleven different serotypes of Salmonella were used to inoculate samples and no significant difference was observed in the sensitivity of any of the media used. Significantly lower numbers of false‐positive results were obtained with the MSRV agar when compared to MLCB agar. This work suggests that the MSRV method as used here, could be used to replace conventional Salmonella detection methods for both high and low moisture foodstuffs.