Tesco Meal For One; Sweet & Sour, Chinese Chicken Curry

I was impressed when I picked this out for £2 at my local Tesco. It felt big and heavy. I actually had to read the packaging to confirm that yes, it is a meal for one, and I could legitimately pig out on this without any feelings of guilt or remorse.

When I got it home and took it out of the packaging, I saw four separate compartments – one sweet and sour chicken, one chicken curry, one vegetable noodle stir fry and one egg fried rice.

I was genuinely concerned this wouldn’t fit in my small microwave. I managed to squeeze it in with centimetres to spare.

Nice straightforward cooking instructions: 7 mins in the microwave, stir halfway through. Quality packaging too, the film top peels away easily.

The four separate compartments is a great idea, but it felt like a Laurel and Hardy sketch trying to get it all on the plate. Each section kept tipping into a neighbouring section and as you can see, I ended up with a bit of a vaguely Chinese looking mess.

There’s a lot of food here. The problem with reviewing any of these sections is that there’s really not much of each!

• The sweet and sour chicken is pretty good – not too sweet, a welcome bit of pineapple (I counted two chunks).
• The curry tasted pretty nice actually. But if we’re going full variety box, it would have been nice for the curry to contain a different meat instead – perhaps some beef.
• The noodles come out quite watery and overcooked…
• …and the rice comes out a little undercooked.

After all that, I actually finished the meal feeling really full. Bravo, Tesco! Tesco 1, Chris 0.

This would have been allocated a prestigious 5* if the noodles were nicer and the variety concept pushed just a little further.