How good are frozen ready meals? This week I decided to shop at Asda and try out some of their frozen ready meal range. These ready meals are a budget-busting price and well worth investigating further!

Meals Under £1

All these are meals under £1 in cost, ideal if you’re getting worried about the rising cost of living and are going down a brand, then you might be wondering how good these ready meals really are as you want more variety or have less time to cook.

Ready meals in general are greatly improved over those sold by supermarkets, say, 10 years ago or more! Quality and content is much better and has been continually improved over the years. Improved nutrition, quality controlled and best ingredients are increasingly assured. Don’t be a brand snob, try some!

It’s Not Junk Food Just Because It’s a Frozen Ready Meal Dinner!

A frozen ready meal isn’t junk food – if you wonder if it is, or think it is, then take time to check out the individual packs, which always contain all the nutritional information you’d want.

Every supermarket has its own brand ranges – and I find them surprisingly good at the price point, but they do differ a little bit so I wanted to give these a try to compare them with how I felt about other supermarkets’ ranges.

I bought six ready-meals to try, I’ve noted the individual prices today out of interest to also see if they change over time! I’d expect to use these six across a month or so – but it’s great having a microwave meal for one just sitting in the freezer waiting….. except the toad in the hole that is an oven-baked meal.

The Asda frozen meal budget range has more products than I bought today – as I have to eat these, so only picked out the ones I wanted to try, for obvious reasons!

• Chilli con Carne with Rice, 85p
• Macaroni Cheese, 85p
• Chicken Curry and Rice, 68p
• Cottage Pie, 85p
• Spaghetti Bolognese, 85p
• Toad in the Hole, 85p

Each of them is a whole meal in themselves, except the toad in the hole that benefits from being part of a larger meal. I’ll also usually add baked beans when I serve cottage pie and possibly a few cheeky chips with the chicken curry and rice. Below is a quick review of each of these ready meals, which all cost under £1 and were cooked in the microwave in 10-11 minutes each.

Asda Chilli Con Carne

This Serves One frozen dinner weighs 400 grams and takes 10 minutes in the microwave, plus 1 minute standing time.

The pack contains 438 calories in total, so I’d count that as a budget friendly diet dinner! The meat content is 13% beef and 43% is the rice. There are some kidney beans in there, just 3% for those who like to pick them out.

Review: This was a nice enough chilli con carne with rice. It wasn’t as hot as I’d like, but is definitely something I will buy again as it’s good value for money, a good sized portion and I enjoyed it. Filling, tasty, quick, easy!

As you can see, serving it on a plate is optional! If I’m not cooking chips to go on the side I’ll simply use their dish and save on washing up!

Would I buy again?: NO.

UPDATE: On 26 May 2022 I found two hard pieces of gristle in the chilli. I can’t buy or eat these any more. I’ve changed my recommendation from a YES to a NO. Such a shame, they were cheap, tasty, easy and had become a staple item to head for 🙁

Asda Macaroni Cheese

I appear to have eaten this without taking a photo of it! I’ll add one next time I cook this as I will be buying it again!

This 400g pack cooks up to 430 calories – so still what I’d call low calorie for a main meal!

Review: I found this macaroni cheese a little light on macaroni, the pack says it’s 28% macaroni, but there’s certainly plenty of scope to add more pasta. It was a satisfying quantity as a meal, so adding extra pasta isn’t needed, but it’s certainly something I might do sometimes.

Review: Nice enough, the pasta’s cooked to the right level of firmness and the cheese is plentiful and cheesy.

Would I buy again?: YES.

Asda Chicken Curry and Rice

This chicken curry contains 12% chicken and 45% of the pack weight is the rice. It’s a good sized portion at 400 grams.

Review: I really liked this chicken curry – the texture of the chicken is good and it’s quite a sweet curry, I noticed from the pack that it contains some mango chutney. If you like a sweet curry then this one’s worth trying. It’s quite a mild curry. This is plenty large enough as an entire meal for one, but I do often add a few cheeky chips; I struggled to get through it all really – my eyes were bigger than my belly 🙂

Would I Buy Again?: YES.

Asda Cottage Pie

This 400 gram pack contains 18% beef and is topped with seasoned reconstituted mashed potato. It contains beef, onions, carrots and a little celery.

Review: This cottage pie is certainly good enough, it’s tasty and filling even though it’s under 400 cals for the whole pack. But – it’s no looker and lacks that finished look a home cooked meal would give; this is typical of frozen cottage pies though, where the topping never looks that great. It does taste plenty good enough though!

This is another great, filling, hot dinner, at a diet-conscious calorie count. What I did was also reheated 1/3rd of a can of baked beans, then pushed the cottage pie to one end of the tray, so the beans fitted in the gap, saving washing up!

Would I Buy Again?: YES.

Asda Spaghetti Bolognese

44% of this pack is spaghetti and the bolognese makes up 18% of the pack weight; the pack weighs 400 grams. This cooks in the microwave in 11½ minutes plus 1 minute standing time.

Review: This was a decent enough frozen ready meal for one person, it’s rare that spaghetti bolognese varies much across the brands, but this one was on par with others I’ve tasted.

Would I Buy Again?: YES.

Asda Toad in the Hole

A toad in the hole isn’t really a ready meal you eat on its own, it is best served with side dishes. For quickness I’d typically serve it with mashed potatoes and baked beans, which I cook in the microwave. The sausages in this pack are 65% pork. Cooked, this is 493 calories.

Disclaimer: It turns out my oven is broken, so this had to be cooked using the oven set to grill+fan which won’t have produced the best end result, but I was watching it as carefully as I could!

Review: This ready meal is cooked in the oven – it cannot be cooked in the microwave as what you get in the pack is frozen, raw, Yorkshire pudding batter and three frozen, raw, sausages. It also takes quite a while to cook, 40 minutes in the oven! I’m not a fan of turning the whole oven on, for what is close to an hour, just to heat up a dinner for one – especially in these times of rising fuel prices it can add quite a bit onto the electric bill if you’re using an electric oven (probably close to 20p at today’s electricity prices).

I personally found this passable and edible, but I certainly wouldn’t put it high on my “must have” list.

Overall, what made this fall out of favour with me is the time it took to cook, the time and oven cost. It’s much quicker to cook a Yorkshire pudding “from scratch” – which takes half the oven time. I’d probably prefer to go down the route of using a packet mix to make a Yorkshire pudding (some you just add water and an egg to) and use frozen sausages that I’d defrost in the microwave first.

But don’t let that put you off – if I wanted an easy toad in the hole in the future I’d not completely walk away from a frozen ready meal, but it’d be at the back of the list of the best ways to get that meal.

Would I Buy Again?: NO.

Overall Review of Asda Frozen Ready Meals:

I will most definitely be heading for the Asda freezer section next time I’m shopping and will buy five of the above ready meals again and would recommend them to anybody who wanted a budget-friendly ready meal to keep handy in the freezer. They deliver what’s needed: A good-sized, tasty, filling, hot meal in about 10 minutes using just a microwave oven!

Another benefit that comes in handy is the way the front of the packs has the cooking time in a very large font – so you’re not struggling to read the pack, turning it in all directions just trying to find out how long to cook it for!

2022 Price Update!

With rising prices, I checked all of the above products and these are now priced at 90p each. They still represent good value and taste at the price point and I will continue to buy the Asda frozen chilli con carne ready meals regularly.