If you’re looking to lose weight while making minimal effort, healthy ready meals could be for you.
They take the hassle out of prepping food – and if you go down the Slimming World route, you don’t need to calorie count either.
But just how tasty are they? And can they actually help you to lose weight?
Manchester Evening News reporter, Dianne Bourne, road tested the Slimming World frozen meals that are available in Iceland. Here’s what she thought after a week on the diet plan…
Day 1 – Chicken carbonara – £3.50
Billed as a ‘comforting pasta dish with seared chicken, smoky pork strips, mushroom and spinach in a white sauce’ it did not look all that inspiring or comforting when I poured it into my dish.
There were around eight pieces of chicken and a few strips of pork, and my first thought was that it seemed to taste very salty and the consistency was a bit gloopy.
For me, I think I’d rather stick with making my own carbonara – as the Slimming World version (with ham and egg both ‘free’ foods) is a fairly simple and much cheaper recipe to make from scratch.
Rating: 2/5
Day 2 – Chilli Con Carne – £3.50
A really hearty dish with large chunks of meat in a rich sauce and the rice was nicely herbed up.
If you weren’t doing Slimming World you’d think this was just a regular chilli ready meal, which is probably the best compliment I can give it.
Indeed, my friend’s strapping 16-year-old lad ‘accidentally’ microwaved himself one of these and gave it a big thumbs up as well, so it’s definitely good in the ‘generous portion’ stakes.
Rating: 4/5
Day 3 – Beef vindaloo – £3.75
Tea time well and truly gave me one of the highlights of the week – in the new beef vindaloo dish.
This was a real treat. A really brilliant hit of spices in a rich tomato sauce with flavoursome lumps of beef.
Rating: 5/5
Day 4 – Beef Lasagne – £3.50
This one has been a favourite of many SW-ers for a while now, but they’ve just introduced a new recipe. So it is as good as the old one?
Well, I was pretty excited about this one – because it’s even better. The new recipe has finally nailed the elusive creamy cheesy aspect of the lasagne that is not easy to do without using up all your HEA for the day.
Taking a nosy at the recipe card on the inside, it appears to be a mixture of butternut squash, potato and the magic Quark that has created the delightful crispy cheesy topping here.
A word of warning on this one though – while it can be cooked in the microwave, it does say for best results stick in the oven. And, while it does take a mammoth 50 minutes, it tastes sooo much better this way to get that cheesy crunch.
Rating: 5/5
Day 5 – Hunter’s chicken – £6.50
This one has to be cooked in the oven and is a large portion for two, so my Other Half got roped in to eating this one with me.
It had a long cooking time of over an hour this one – and I’m not sure if that’s why the chicken was a bit dry and chewy. And one’s thing for sure, it looked absolutely nothing like the glossy image on the packaging when it came out of my oven.
But the overall flavour was ok – although the barbecue sauce was a tad on the watery side. My feeling is this one would be much easier and better to simply recreate yourself at home – it’s just a rasher of bacon plonked on some chicken really.
Rating: 2/5
Day 6 – Smoky meatball tray bake with potato wedges – £7
The meatballs were on the dry side, but had a decent flavour punch, and were extremely pleasant when mushed together with all the smoky tomato and chick pea sauce. There was a decent size portion for two of us, although we did add lots of vegetables for speed.
This was a really tasty one – but I’m afraid it can’t get full marks this one for the sheer faff factor. It took 1hr and 5mins to cook in the oven which comes in very low on the convenience factor – as does the vast size of the packet that I needed to try and wedge in my not very sizeable freezer.
It’s also pretty expensive for this style of dish.
Rating: 4/5
Day 7 – Chicken tikka rogan josh – £3.50
Ending the week on a high with this classic curry. The Slimming World chicken tikka masala has been a bit of a staple since the Iceland range was first launched, but this new rogan josh version might even trump it for me.
Loved the spice on this one, and the added lumps of tomato and pepper. You could almost be eating a “real” takeaway curry.
Rating: 4/5
Did I actually lose any weight?
Well, this is the big question isn’t it?
After a whole week of eating the ready meals, and sticking 100 per cent to the Slimming World plan throughout the rest of the day, I’d have been gutted if I didn’t lose any weight.
But guess what? I did. I lost a whopping 3lbs.
Which just goes to show sticking to ‘free foods’ and the rest of the rules of the Slimming World plan does do the trick.