It Aint Indian - It's Sainsbury's (Sainsbury's Chicken Madras)

Member Name: anonymili

Product:	Sainsbury's Chicken Madras
Date:	05/09/06 (272 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It's cheap

Disadvantages: It's not hot, it's sweet and its way too oily

Sainsbury’s Chicken Madras - “succulent pieces of chicken breast in medium spiced sauce with tomato and coconut served with pilau rice” - says the description on the pack. Succulent? Medium spiced? Really? I don’t think so!

I bought a couple of packs of these from my local Sainsbury’s recently along with some Chinese microwaveable meals. They cost £1.85 a pack but if you buy 4 you get a £1 off. Not falling for that scam again! This has to be the worst microwaveable meal I’ve ever had the misfortune to try!

Firstly, I’m Indian and I know Indian food, brought up on it at home and visited many good Indian restaurants over the last 20 or so years. I know what a “Madras” should taste like and it certainly isn’t supposed to taste like Sainsbury’s offering. Yes yes, I know what can you expect from a microwaveable meal in a box for only 2 quid? Well I was hoping for a bit more than this.

Secondly, for me this sort of meal is a quick fix when you can’t be bothered to cook and want to “nuke” something in the microwave to save time and effort or take to work to microwave it there. The preparation time if you microwave it isn’t exactly quick and the preparation time if you oven cook this is really not worth the hassle!


THE MEAL ITSELF

Ok once you get past the fact that it has 692 calories per serving and 25.0g of fat of which 12.9g is saturated fat, 2.8g of salt and nearly 14g total sugars (the total sugars should have given me a clue about the taste to expect), you think this might be a tasty meal, albeit not exactly healthy!

The weight is 500g, something you’d expect to fill you up. The packaging is a rather flimsy black plastic container divided in two with rice on one side and the chicken on the other. You’re supposed to pierce the film lid with a fork (or other sensible item) and then microwave for 7or 8 minutes depending on your microwave category. After that you should take the meal out (be careful now - the plastic packaging is quite hot and rather dangerous to my mind), peel back the plastic film covering the compartments, add a couple of tablespoons of water to the rice, give it a good stir and then stir the chicken in its compartment too. Put the flimsy plastic film back over the compartments (this is a dodgy task in itself as it’s all soggy and sticks to your fingers) and pop back in the microwave for a further 5 or 6 minutes.

Bearing in mind that this process in total has taken about 20 minutes including opening the box, popping in and out of the microwave, sprinkling the water, stirring, etc, it’s not exactly the quickest microwave meal to prepare, you now have to get the pack out of the microwave without scalding yourself. This is no easy fete - the packaging is even hotter than earlier and even if you’ve taken the advice on the outer pack and placed on a plate, the plate itself is piping hot too!

The first thing I noticed when I peeped off the plastic film this time was how much oil was floating around on top of the chicken. Ugh! This didn’t bode well, I’ve already nearly scalded myself getting this thing out of the microwave and now you’re presenting me with a whole heap of oil which is not something I want to see! I scoop out over 3 tablespoons full of oil before transferring the rice and chicken to my plate. Ah the second thing that hit me when I did this was the very strong aroma that my “food” was giving off. Not sure if it was the intended smell but it didn’t smell like any pilau rice or chicken madras I’ve ever had before. Not totally unappealing but I was hoping the meal was going to taste heavenly to make up for a) the packaging practically scalding me and b) the odd “scent”.

Oh and by the way you can “oven cook” this in 45 minutes! Why bother? I could cook a whole curry in not much longer than that myself…


THE TASTE TEST

For those of you not in the know, madras curries are supposed to be quite hot, not as hot as a Vindaloo but pretty hot. I dabbed a bit of the sauce on my tongue to check how hot this curry was. Yikes, it was SWEET! I wasn’t expecting that at all. Feeling quite hungry I ignored this initial taste warning and waited a few minutes for the meal to cool down a bit as it was piping hot. I mixed the sauce with the rice, there was far too much sauce (even after I’d taken out the several tablespoons of oil) compared to the amount of rice in the portion and mixing the sauce with the rice made it all rather soggy. The colour looked alright for a madras so I tried a mouthful of rice and sauce. Hmm still rather sweet. What’s going on? This is not supposed to be a sweet and sour dish, I’m not even getting the gist of the hotness that is a madras curry. I took a swig of water before tasting the chicken. The pack says succulent, I say far from it! It felt dry and chewy. “Try the chicken with the rice and sauce” my mind screamed at me, so I did. So what did I get? A mouthful of soggy rice sauce and overly chewy chicken.

I managed to get to the end of the meal out of hunger and swigged (is that a word?) a huge glass of fruit juice to get the taste out of my mouth. On washing the plate I found I had to scrub like mad to get the food colour stains off the plate and even after washing the plate 3 times there’s still a hint of yellow on the plate! I’m not happy!


AFTER ALL THAT

What did I think (if it’s not evident from the statements above) of this meal?

Well I had to include several warnings from my point of view.
• Don’t scald yourself on the packet when removing from the microwave
• Beware of the excessive oil one the meal is ready
• Don’t spill any of the sauce on your kitchen counter - it’s a nightmare to get out however powerful your kitchen cleaner is
• Not a good idea to eat this product if you’re watching your weight or have cholesterol or are diabetic
• Erm, obviously avoid this if you’re a vegetarian!

Here are some of the ingredients of this frozen meal (I’m not listing them all - just the main ones):
• Pilau rice (made with water, basmati rice, turmeric, salt, etc) making up 48% of the meal
• Roast cooked chicken breast making up 14% of the meal
• Onion making up a further 10%
• Coconut making up 2% as well as some coconut powder
• Red chilli
• Garlic puree
• Ginger puree
• Chicken paste (made with chicken extract, chicken fat, duck fat, salt, etc)
• Sugar
• Salt
• Yoghurt
• Lots of other stuff which I’m not going to list here

The things that bugged me about the ingredients which I would never use in a madras or a curry were the chicken paste and sugar. The packaging didn’t list what percentage of sugar was used but I’m guessing it’s pretty high from the overall sugar content of the meal as well as from the taste of the prepared meal itself. And what is with all the additional chicken and duck fat? Ugh!


CONCLUSION

Well needless to say, I wont be buying this product again. As a quick fix - it’s not quick and left me feeling less than satisfied when it came to hitting the spot where hunger pangs are concerned. Save your £1.85 and spend it any other of the other frozen meals on offer at Sainsbury’s - I’ve tried quite a few and this is by far the worst one so far! For a £ or so more you can get a delicious microwave Indian meal from Marks & Spencers.

There’s another pack of this in my freezer, anyone want it?

Marks for:
• “Hotness” - 3/10 (this is because it has 2 chillies on the box and is supposed to be hot which it’s NOT)
• Taste - 2/10
• Price - 5/10
• Preparation time - 4/10
• Overall - 3/10

You might be interested to know that sales of Sainsbury’s Chicken Madras have fallen 40% since they started labelling their products more clearly with the fat, sugar and salt content (source: http://www.nfuonline.com/x6793.xml). This clearly indicates that health conscious people are avoiding products like this.

NB: This is obviously not suitable for vegetarians! It also contains milk, celery and barley gluten) in case you’re allergic to any of those.

Summary: Not wasting 185 pennies on this again!