Duck in brown gunge (Iceland Peking Duck With Rice Ready Meal)

Member Name: eatingpinkzebras

Product:	Iceland Peking Duck With Rice Ready Meal
Date:	05/05/09 (147 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap

Disadvantages: Tastes horrible, gave me indigestion

I am going to start this review with a surprising revelation: up until a couple of week's ago I had never set foot in Iceland (and this applies to both the shop and the country!) However as a new Iceland has just opened up near me, I recently had the opportunity to rectify this situation.]

I was pleased to see a large selection of ready meals in the Iceland freezers. I am a big fan of ready meals because I live alone and often cannot be bothered to cook a complicated meal for myself. I know it is lazy but sometimes I just like to take something out of the freezer, pop it in the microwave and be done with it!

Anyway my eye fell upon a large selection of ready meals which were only £1 each. This struck me as good value especially as they were in large boxes which implied they might be a bit more filling than the tiny Weight Watchers meals that I have tried one or two of recently. The boxes were a cheerful bright red colour with a large yellow strip across the top which shouted 'BIG VALUE PACK' in huge black letters. Not classy, but certainly eye-catching!

There was quite a variety of these meals, including chicken curry, cottage pie, lasagne, etc, but I chose the Duck In Peking Sauce meal. The packet described it as 'Shredded duck in a Peking sauce with water chestnuts, red peppers and carrots, served with white rice'. This sounded lovely, and a similar meal would cost you around £6 from a takeaway, so I was impressed.

The meal can be cooked straight from the freezer without having to defrost it which keeps things nice and simple. It comes in two plastic bags, one containing the meat and sauce, and one containing the rice. It takes between 10 and 12 minutes in the microwave, or you can boil it on the hob for 40 minutes if you prefer.

I started to get a bit worried as soon as I put the meal on my plate. The rice had all stuck together and looked strangely gooey, and the meat and sauce looked like an unappetising pile of dark brown gunge. However I tried to be optimistic and tucked in. Unfortunately the rice did indeed taste gooey, stodgy, slightly bitty and very cheap. The sauce was even worse, as it was too thick and too strong flavoured. The vegetables were almost unidentifiable and the pieces of duck were tiny. I could hardly finish the meal and was very disappointed. Afterwards, I found the taste lingered unpleasantly in my mouth, plus I was left with indigestion.

If you want the nutritional information, I can tell you that this meal contains 414 calories and 4.3 grams of fat. It has no hydrogenated fats, no artificial colours or flavours, and no GM ingredients.

I wouldn't recommend this meal but then I was probably foolish for thinking a duck based meal costing £1 would be any good!

Summary: Unpleasant, but unsurprising for the price