Birds Eye Chicken Curry With Rice

So I was housesitting recently and there wasn't much that I fancied in the house so off to Tesco I went looking for a nice curry in a box that was going to taste relatively nice. I saw this Birds Eye Chicken Curry with Rice for £1 (down from £1.20) in the freezer section and decided it would be good as I like lots of Birds Eye products and I promptly picked up a couple for my fiancé and I.

The packaging is very basic, a cardboard box and then a tray that contained the rice over on one side and the chicken curry on the over side. There was nothing dividing up the two which was a bit of a shame for me as I like to serve them up separately and just dig in to increase the takeaway kind of feel.

The curry was very easy to cook, just stab the plastic film lid or take it off completely and put it in the oven for around 40 minutes until it's cooked. Your usual bog standard ready meal that you whack in the oven and just leave for a period of time before it's ready to serve up. Nice, simple & no effort really required (apart from stabbing the film possibly).

The curry looked very appetising on the box but once I got it out I could tell that there was no real chunks of chicken in the curry which was disappointing straight away as the packet showed big pieces of chicken that looked very appetising and this is naturally what I made my decision based on, that and price anyway.

Once cooked there was a fairly nice smell coming off the curry and the whole thing didn't look too bad. I served it up and could immediately see that the 'chunks' of chicken actually looked like those chicken slices you buy in the chiller for putting in to sandwiches and they were very stingy when they were filling up our portions. The sauce was quite thick and there was a lot of it, certainly enough to cover the rice. The chicken was thin and measly and did not particularly have any of the curry taste to it even though it had been sitting in the sauce for who knows how long in the freezer at my local supermarket. The curry sauce was mildly spicy but there was really no spicy flavour to it. The rice was bog standard rice that was yellow in colour but again did not have any real flavour to it.

The whole dish was lacking flavour in a big way and the sauce was just sloppy and horrible and I even tried mixing all the sauce and rice together once I'd eaten the four small pieces of chicken I got but this just made the whole thing was even less flavoursome and it was so off-putting that I ended up leaving over half my plate which made me quite annoyed as about two hours later I was ravenous again and there was still nothing decent to eat in the house.

I would definitely not buy this chicken curry again and based on it's lacklustre taste and measly amounts of chicken I would not try any of the others in the range as they are all similarly priced and I'm sure they won't be much better. I wouldn't recommend this curry as everything about it was rubbish and sloppy and horrible and I'm sure it helped contribute to a funny stomach that I got the following day.

I would rate this 0/5 if I could but as 1 is the lowest rating than can be given I guess 1/5 it is. Avoid this if you can, it's not a patch on a homemade curry or one from a takeaway and although it was only £1 I've tried lots of cheap curries in the past that have been delicious and tasty and I've actually managed to finish them all. Don't bother with this product you may as well just eat some watered down curry sauce with plain, boring rice and a couple of scraps of chicken.

Summary: What A Disappointing 'Chicken Curry With Rice' Mr Birds Eye.