Birds Eye Fish Bake with Mixed Vegetables

...last week and spotted that Birds Eye had a fish bake ready meal on half price offer. There was a choice of Fish bake with Mixed vegetables or with Broccoli and cheese and I chose the Mixed Vegetables version. It was £1.24p which I thought was good value.

It sat in the freezer until tonight when I thought I'd give it a go. I got the packet out and read the instructions on the back which states you can either cook in the oven for 45 ...
...a cardboard box with the Birds Eye logo and picture of the product which looks pretty appetising. It says it is made from 100% fillet and has no artificial colours, flavours or preservatives. Inside the product is on a foil tray wrapped in a plastic bag which you have to remove before you cook.

What I hadn't noticed when I bought it was that the pack was meant to serve two people but it is a normal sized ready meal box and doesn't ... more

I regularly just cook for myself and so often buy easy ready meals. I was in Tesco last week and spotted that Birds Eye had a fish bake ready meal on half price offer. There was a choice of Fish bake with Mixed vegetables or with Broccoli and cheese and I chose the Mixed Vegetables version. It was £1.24p which I thought was good value.

It sat in the freezer until tonight when I thought I'd give it a go. I got the packet out and read the instructions on the back which states you can either cook in the oven for 45 minutes or use a combination microwave and microwave for 15 minutes then grill for 4 minutes. I did mine in the oven and they suggest this is the tastiest way to enjoy the dinner.

The packaging is a cardboard box with the Birds Eye logo and picture of the product which looks pretty appetising. It says it is made from 100% fillet and has no artificial colours, flavours or preservatives. Inside the product is on a foil tray wrapped in a plastic bag which you have to remove before you cook.

What I hadn't noticed when I bought it was that the pack was meant to serve two people but it is a normal sized ready meal box and doesn't look that big so I figured I was bound to be able to eat the whole thing myself. This did however make me look at the GDA to see if I would be getting too much of something and was shocked that half the pack would be 31% of the GDA for salt so I would be getting 62% which surely isn't a good thing and should have given me a warning about the taste. The rest seem very reasonable at (half pack):
Calories - 10%
Sugar - 4%
Fat - 11%
Saturates - 17%

The ingredients states that it has 52% white fish fillet, which then goes on the explain in more detail that depending on the season and catch it can be one of four types of fish; Pollock, Saithe, Hoki or Hake. It also has 17% mixed vegetables including Carrots, Cauliflower, Mushrooms, Red pepper, Mangetout and sweetcorn. I won't include all the ingredients but allergens are Fish, Milk, Wheat and egg.

So I cooked my fish bake and took it out of the oven to a nice cheesey smell. It had gone a bit crispy on the top but the sauce was bubbling up around the sides. I had it with chips and peas incase your interested. Once on my plate it did look tasty with a good amount of vegetables. The sweetcorn, carrot, mangetout and pepper were all obvious but not the mushroom or cauliflower, in fact I didn't even realise it had mushroom in it until I read the ingredients list for this review as I didn't taste them either and I don't like mushrooms so can normally sniff them out a mile off.

I had my first bite and was really impressed the fish was thick and tasted lovely and the sauce wasn't overpowering with cheese and had little flecks of herbs through it. The vegetables still had a little bit of crunch to them and I thought I'm really going to enjoy this. It was after maybe my third mouthful that it started to taste really salty and it seemed to be with the more vegetably mouthfuls. I did carry on eating it and finished it (I was very hungry) but the saltiness really started to take over the flavour and make it not that pleasurable, I was really disappointed. I guess I should have realised when I saw the salt content but I eat pizzas and things with probably a worse salt content and I can't taste it in the way I could with this fish bake. I'm not someone who adds salt to my food except chips so perhaps this is why it was so strong to me.

As I said above I was really disappointed in this dish especially as it was a Bird Eye product. When you go to their website (www.birdseye.co.uk) it states "The home of delicious, healthy food" but how can it be good for you when there is that much salt in it, and I'm sure that quite a lot of people will see this as a dish for one not two as I did. They state no artificial flavours but when the salt overpowers the rest of the taste that is pretty artificial in my opinion.

So would I recommend this product? Not unless you are someone who adds salt to everything they eat, which you won't need to to enjoy this. I certainly won't be buying another fish bake. 

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