Everyday Value Meals from Tesco tested

This week I have tested fresh (not frozen cos they take too long to cook and who has time to stare at a microwave for 12 minutes?  Not me) everyday value meals from Tesco.

The reason I picked Tesco is that it's the only supermarket I pass on the way to work and I conducted this experiment in my half hour lunch break at said work.

There are 11 dishes in the Tesco Everyday Value Ready Meal range:
Chicken Korma and Rice
Chicken Tikka and Rice
Chilli Con Carne and Rice
Creamy Mushroom Chicken and Rice
Cottage Pie
Fishermans Pie
Lasagne
Macaroni Cheese
Sausage and Mash
Spaghetti Bolognese
Sweet and Sour Chicken and Rice

They're all 95p and 400g.  I would go into the nutritional values for you but if you was that bothered about nutrition you would have made yourself a nice salad and taken it to work in a tupperware like I wish I had.

So here are my results (ignoring the cooking instructions on every packet and cooking at full blast in the microwave for 4 minutes):

Chicken Korma, Sweet and Sour Chicken and Creamy Mushroom Chicken are all much of a muchness.  Same game of hunt the chicken, different sauce.  To be fair I didn't try the Tikka.  Mainly because there was none on the shelf.  But I would eat them again.  They filled a hole.  And I'll probably give the Tikka a go if they ever get any in stock.

The Cottage Pie, Chilli Con Carne, Spaghetti Bolognese and Lasagne were truly awful.  In fact I had to throw my lasagne away, after the third piece of gristle I was starting to feel naseous.  And I hate waste.  Especially when all that's left to eat is stale custard creams.  I won't buy any of them again.

Macaroni Cheese was OK actually.  Once you got past the sicky smell, but then it's cheese sauce.  I bet even Nigella Lawsons cheese sauce smells like sick.   If I'd done it in the oven instead of the microwave it probably would have been dead nice.  But a success all the same.

Sausage and Mash was just the strangest thing I ever ate.  The potato came up in one huge slab when I put my fork in.  And it tasted like cardboard.  The sausages were OK, quite nice actually so long as you don't think too deeply about what's probably inside them.  And it could have done with a lot more gravy.  But I might be willing to try it again, maybe put some salt and butter in the potatoes to give them a boost.

Finally the Fishermans Pie.   This is the best in the range IMO by a long way.  Loads of fish, no bones, the cheese sauce is a bit runny but it's OK.  If you're a pig like me eat it mushed up out of a plastic bowl sat on a box of listing paper.  Bliss.  In fact I like it so much I went back and bought five and put them all in the fridge at work with my name on in sharpie marker.  If you're lucky I might take a photo of my orange plastic bowl full of mush one day.

In conclusion:

Best:      Fishermans Pie
Worst:   Lasagne