Monday 16 December 2013

Morrisons' Ready Meals - a review

by Bex

A few weeks ago I went along to sample some of Morrisons' new M Kitchen ready meal ranges to review.  They invited some bloggers along to their pop-up in Glasgow with their chefs there to talk about the new recipes and handed out samples to get word out.


I was given samples of quite a few of their new meals to taste and had a chat with one of the chefs.  I liked all of the samples I tried which included sausage & mash - not something I would have thought would be good in a ready meal.  The curries were great, loads of flavour and a good kick without being too hot.  I was also pleasantly surprised by the sausage pasta - not something I would ever make, buy or order in a restaurant but I loved it!

What really interested me was that the M Kitchen does actually exist.  The chefs spend time developing the recipes for Morrisons and when they are sent to be scaled up, I was interested to find out if they then compare them with the original to ensure they taste the same, turns out they do!  They will change the recipe again if it doesn't match the original flavour until they are happy with it.

Tarka Dahl & rice

I received a cool bag full of meals to try at home along with £20 worth of vouchers to spend in Morrisons.  I was so impressed with the meals.  They have 4 ranges in the M Kitchen Ready Meals - Italian, Tex Mex, Takeaway and Tastes of Home.

The first we tried were the curries when Nik's parents were visiting.  We had the chicken saag masala, the fragrant green curry and the mini Indian snack selection.





The snack selection was OK but both the curries were lovely.  I loved the chicken saag but we all liked both of them.

Over the next few days, I tried the rest of the meals.  I loved the steak & ale with cheesy mash and will definitely buy this one.  The steak was tender, tasty and not at all fatty like in some beef ready meals I've had before.  I usually only stick with chicken ones when I'm being lazy but this was really good and not at all stingy either!



I wasn't so keen on the lamb casserole, it was a bit bland and even when I added salt it just wasn't for me.  The portion of this one was much smaller as well.  (You can see it hardly fills the bowl which was the same size as the one above.)



Not long after, we spent our vouchers on some more of the meals along with our usual groceries.  Ones that I particularly wanted to try again were the sausage pasta bake and chicken tikka.



Again, I really enjoyed it - the sauce was delicious and as good as tomato pasta sauce I've had in Italian restaurants.  Another good sized portion and plenty of sausage in this one.



The chicken tikka is lovely, one of the things I love about the curries is that they're not too greasy like some can be.  There's plenty of sauce and rice - nothing worse than too much of one or the other in my opinion!

The tasters I received at the M Kitchen roadshow were all oven cooked but the ones I had at home were all microwaved (with the exception of the Indian snacks) and they tasted just as good.  I do occasionally buy ready meals but have only bought the curries from Morrisons before.  I'll definitely be buying some of the others in future as they genuinely taste good and are good value for money.

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