Tag: curry

Curry Night with Patak’s Frozen Curries

Earlier this year Patak’s launched their new range of frozen curry ready meals. The meals in the Patak’s Frozen Curries range are beef madras, chicken korma, chicken vindaloo, king prawn balti, vegetable jalfrezi and chicken tikka masala. We were send some Patak’s frozen curries to put to the test.

One of our favourite takeaways is curry. The small boy really enjoys a chicken korma and I like a saag paneer. A takeaway curry for the three of us is about £25 and that’s a big chunk of money out of our weekly budget. We just can’t afford to spend that on one meal at home, so when we were asked to try the new Patak’s frozen curries we thought it’d be an interesting alternative.

Patak's Frozen Curries

We tried the chicken korma, king prawn balti and the vegetable jalfrezi. These are priced at £2 each and they are currently only available at Tesco. 

The ready meals weigh 425g and consist of a portion of curry and a portion of rice. The Patak’s frozen curries can be pinged in the microwave or cooked in the oven, they are meant to be cooked from frozen.

In terms of calories ready meal curries are probably a bit healthier than takeaway curries. The chicken korma contained 604 calories, the king prawn balti contained 478 calories and the vegetable jalfrezi 501 calories. We bought some naan bread to have with ours to make it feel more like a takeaway treat.

Patak's frozen curries

The small boy had his usual chicken korma. It looked and smelt good and there were good chunks of chicken breast in the curry. He didn’t complain that it was different to what he normally had, and he presented me with a clean plate at the end. The chicken korma was a success.

Hubs went for the king prawn balti. The sauce was flavoursome and complemented the sweet prawns well. He did say that it wasn’t as hot and spicy as he thought it should be. It was a medium strength curry, but he said it was quite mild. There were a good number of prawns in the curry as well as some small pieces of vegetables. I think £2 for a prawn curry is great value.

I had the vegetable jalfrezi. I thought the portion size was good, I struggled to completely finish my meal which is always a sign of a hearty portion. Again mine was a medium curry and I braced myself for a hit of spice, but found none. It was probably the mildest jalfrezi I’ve ever had. Which may disappoint some, but I was fine with that level. The vegetable jalfrezi had lots of interesting veg including sweet potato, green beans and peppers. I would probably prefer chunkier pieces of vegetables but other than that I enjoyed it.

I often find that homemade or ready meal curries, though usually nice, they’re not quite the same as a takeaway curry. I thought these were really good value, at £2 each, especially compared to what we would pay at our favourite takeaway and with the chicken korma a roaring success we’d be happy to try the rest of the range to find our favourites.

Patak’s Frozen Curries are available from Tesco’s at £2 each.

We were sent our curries for review purposes. All images and opinions are our own.

Curry Night with Co-operative Food

Cooking and eating are important activities in our house, my Dad (now known as Grandad) comes round for his tea at least once a week, it’s our way of ensuring that he eats a decent home-cooked meal regularly and it’s an excuse for us to have a “gravy dinner” with extra veg or something similar. Sometimes when I’m just too busy to cook we’ll get a takeaway, or get some ready meals in.

As a family we all love curry, after all it is the national dish! The problem with curry is that we all like different things, the small boy loves chicken korma, hubs likes a lamb rogan josh, Grandad likes a chicken tikka marsala and I’m a vegetable biryani kind of girl. It’s impossible to cook a curry we will all be happy with, takeaways or ready meals are where it’s at. I had noticed in my local Co-op that they’d recently launched a new range of curries, so we jumped at the chance of trying them when we were asked to have our own curry night at home.

co-op curry

We were sent the Co-op Loved by us Chicken Tikka Masala and pilau rice (500g £3.59), the Co-op Loved by us Chicken Karahi and pilau rice (500g £3.59) and the Co-op Loved by us Bengali Vegetable Masala Curry with pilau rice (500g £3.59) to try. These curries are individually priced or are available in a 2 for £6 offer.

The new range of 12 curries from Co-operative Food has been created by chef, Pratap Chinna who has over 35 years experience as a chef and has been creating exotic recipes for retailers for the last five years.

My first impression was that they smelt delicious, the Chicken Kahari one especially filled the kitchen with a lovely, mouth-watering smell which has the boys running to the table for their tea. The meals are very generously portioned, I was unable to finish mine it was so big, it’s a good sized meal for a good sized appetite.

We served our curries with naan bread and poppadoms, because no curry is complete without them. Hubs had the chicken kahari which he really enjoyed, it looked and smelt good, with big chunks of chicken and lots of sauce, he said he’d definitely have it again. The packet said medium and it had a kick of heat and was the hottest of the three curries we tried.

co-op curry

Grandad had the chicken tikka masala, again this was a good sized portion which he struggled to finish, it had a good creamy sauce and nice chunks of chicken, he enjoyed it and said he’d eat it again (which is massive praise from my Dad).

I had the Bengali Vegetable Masala Curry which was full of lots of different vegetables, the sauce was spicier than I was expecting but it was flavoursome and very filling.

As well as the price and the portion size, what I also liked about them was their calorie counts – ok so the cream-based chicken tikka marsala was 702 calories for the whole ready meal, that’s probably a lot less than a takeaway,the chicken kahari was a decent 583 calories which makes that a pretty healthy option for a meal, and my vegetable marsala was just 449 calories. They’re not made to be low-fat or low calorie, but if you’re keeping tabs on that kind of thing I thought these were pretty good calorie-wise.

We’re giving Co-op curry the thumbs up!