I bought these as Mark had been saying that he'd not had a Steak & Kidney pudding for years, I've seen plenty of steak-ey puddings in different shops but he emphasised that the ones his mum (gah!) had the perfect amount of kidney in it. Well, determined to go one better I pounced on these when I saw them in Sainsburys for £1.50 for two individual puddings.

We had one each tonight and boy, were they vile!! I'm quite forgiving when it comes to ready meals, sometimes the convenience and damned yumminess of processed food is just called for sometimes. Thank god for the McCain Beer Battered chips as the tiny pudding wouldn't have satisfied the appetite of my three year old, even if I'd felt like eating the whole thing!

One thing that made me think these would be good puddings was the fact that they could be boiled in their little plastic pots. Many ready made puddings can only be microwaved, and I've never had the microwaving knack so only use it for soup or beans! Mark cooked ours anyway, he boiled them so I know he'd have followed the instructions on the packet to the letter, I have no idea how long they took but they tasted 'done'.

They have a decent (if small) appearance, while we were eating I said to Mark that they were paler than I expected but the pastry tasted well cooked. It has a very stodgy and fatty taste though so I have to say the puddings definitely look better than they taste!

The filling is no better. The meat has a funny not-quite-fresh-and-messed-with feel, to be fair there is a fairly decent portion of meat in the puddings. Which makes it criminal that the meat is probably only just about fit for human consumption. The ratio of steak to kidney is good but the gravy/sauce is too thick and sticky, which strangely made it feel like there was much less meat in the pudding than there actually is.

All round vileness, edible only in a vague 'mmm, must have crappy food' kinda way. I definitely didn't win the battle of the puddings with this pathetic effort. The best thing about them is the smell, which is absolutely gorgeous - but that just adds insult to injury as they have such a nasty taste! One of the worst things is the aftertaste, which is the greasy taste of badly made suet pastry. It's horrible and leaves me with a taste is my mouth which is much too much like stera milk for my liking! <shudder>

The gravy doesn't add much moisture to the pudding even though there's plenty of it. It doesn't soak into the pastry as it should and just isn't very nice at all, the meaty flavour of the gravy feels so forced that it makes the whole pudding taste ridiculously synthetic.

I'm trying to think of something nice to say about the pudding. To be fair, these are bargain basement puddings. I made the stupid mistake of forgetting that some things are just too cheap. The last savoury pudding I had was a M&S one which cost £4 for a much larger individual pudding, the price difference between that one and this poor Sainsburys effort is almost as huge as the difference in taste. Not everyone can shop in M&S all the time (I know I can't!) so if you have to fit Steak & Kidney puddings into your weekly budget then I suppose these are worth a shot.

Anyway, Mark's mum won that round. I don't begrudge her that, she can source the best Steak & Kidney puddings. But I can do b*** j*** - beat that, Pudding Woman!

£1.50 from Sainsburys.