Inconvenient truth about convenience food (well, most of it...)
SCRAMBLED EGGS
Instead of whisking, you have to squeeze the pouch like cat food. It has a questionable smell before it’s even cooked, and is a lurid yellow colour. It doesn’t get much better when it’s pinged...
90 secs; Too salty with a plastic texture.
Eggs, dash of milk, butter, salt and pepper. That’s five fewer ingredients than in Iceland’s pouch. I’m not a great cook but it tastes divine.
1 min prep, 3 cooking;
Creamy and perfectly seasoned. MASHED POTATO
Possibly one of the first convenience foods to arrive in supermarkets, prompting my late granny at the time to exclaim she was glad she wouldn’t be around for much longer. And since tasting Iceland’s mash, she was making a fair point.
3mins 40 secs Like wet cardboard.
My granny taught me the trick to making perfect mash is to dry the potatoes in the pan before adding and scalding the milk over the heat. And don’t over-mash.
18 mins prep & cooking
Soft, fluffy and buttery – like my granny’s. GRATED CHEDDAR
It’s probably one of the products with a 100% mark-up for changing its physical property. I also think they do it just to wind up Gregg Wallace on his Eat Well For Less series.
5 seconds to open bag
Sweaty spongy texture.
Paying someone to grate your cheddar must be one of the most indulgent pastimes of the 21st century. 50 seconds
Same plastic notes but finer, dry shavings PANCAKES
Iceland sells Ma Raeburn’s pancakes, but frankly I’d send them back to Ma. I counted 14 ingredients, including the environmentally evil palm oil.
30 seconds Like sweetened carpet underlay
Three ingredients – flour, milk, eggs – whizzed up with a blender. Sunday mornings wouldn’t be the same without having to scrape my tossed pancakes off the floor before the dog eats them.
10 minutes Light, fluffy and crispy at the edge. Flipping excellent – even if I do say so myself
ICELAND is now selling scrambled eggs in a bag – at more than the cost of a box of six eggs.
So how much extra are your
GARLIC AND BASIL PUREES
Cleaning out a garlic crusher is right up there on the list of hated chores, but I can’t understand basil in a tube – how hard can it be to pick a leaf? 2 secs to unscrew top Garlic’s bearable, but basil is sludge.
Sprinkle clove of garlic with salt and squish it with the flat side of a large knife. Herbs in a pot or dried last longer.
1-3 minutes Fresh, zingy and floral
convenience foods setting you back? From ready meals to spiralised veg, we compare the price, taste and time-saving to see what really is the cost of convenience...
CAULIFLOWER COUS COUS
If your busy life prevents you from ripping a couple of florets off a cauli and whizzing them up in a food processor, M&S sells it prewashed, grated and bagged up.
2 mins to cook Smells like old cabbages and tastes like muddy puddles.
It doesn’t take long to make yourself, and would probably taste OK if you mixed it with real cous cous, melted butter and salt – but that may invalidate its reason for existing.
2 mins to prep, 2 to cook
Less cabbagey than the bagged one, but still an abomination. COURGETTE SPAGHETTI Another invention of the anti-carb movement, the M&S bag of courgette sprirals are sold as an alternative to pasta. Yes they’re carbfree, but they’re also taste-free.
2 mins to microwave
Pointless.
Fun for a few minutes then the spiralizer goes to the back of the cupboard for another five years.
1 min. 10 mins searching.
Pointless. FRIED ONIONS
I hate peeling and chopping onions, so I was hoping Sainsbury’s can of Eazy Fried Onions would be a possible alternative for making a quick spag bog.
10 secs to open can Like they’ve been scraped off a burger van hot plate.
The smell of frying onions has to be one of the best smells in the world. My husband said it was what first attracted him to me, which I think is a compliment.
5 mins
Caramelised and crispy. RICE
Nutritional deficient, you’d get as much goodness from eating the plastic packaging. Which is handy because that’s what it tastes like.
2 mins Slimey and plasticky
I use a rice cooker at home so it’s a slight cheat, but it does the job while I get on with nagging my daughter to do her homework. We eat rice once or twice a week – if I had to eat pouches of rice, it would be once in a lifetime.
15 mins Fluffy and nutty CHOPPED APPLE AND PEANUT BUTTER
Selling a chopped apple in a plastic box defies logic since apples are one of nature’s convenience foods.
2 secs to peel open box Strangely acidic.
Grab an apple from the fruit bowl and save the planet. 2 secs to bite Sweet, crunchy and like I’m eating something healthy.
READY-MADE:
READY-MADE:
HOMEMADE:
WINNER: Homemade
READY-MADE:
HOMEMADE:
WINNER: Homemade
READY-MADE:
READY-MADE:
HOMEMADE:
WINNER: Homemade
WINNER: Homemade
READY-MADE:
HOMEMADE:
WINNER: Homemade
HOMEMADE:
HOMEMADE:
WINNER: Homemade
READY-MADE:
HOMEMADE:
WINNER: Both losers
READY-MADE:
HOMEMADE:
WINNER: Ready-made
READY-MADE:
HOMEMADE:
WINNER: Homemade
READY-MADE:
HOMEMADE:
WINNER: Homemade