Rustlers Flame Grilled Chicken Breast Steak Sandwich

...in fact in fact promoting Rustlers products.

You may have seen the adverts and/or heard the slogan '0 to tasty in 70 seconds". Having seen these adverts I still wasn't remotely interested in trying them, but given that I now had one at zero cost to myself, I thought I'd give it a go and relay my findings to the good folk of ciao.

PACKAGING

The burger comes in a clear plastic box with a cheerful yellow ...
...the product and a colour photo of the product itself, which looks more of less the same as the product in the box - a good start.

PREPARATION

The whole selling point of the product appears to be the ease of preparation and to be fair to them, it couldn't be easier. Peel off the lid, take out the product on it's little cardboard tray, pop it in the microwave and you're away. Although they say that it's ready in 70 seconds ... more

As I was walking near work the other day, I was stopped by an attractive young woman who asked if I'd like a free burger. Not one to look either a gift-horse, or indeed an attractive young woman, in the mouth, I accepted. It turns out that she wasn't just taken with my boyish good looks and trying to win me over (shame!), but was in fact in fact promoting Rustlers products.

You may have seen the adverts and/or heard the slogan '0 to tasty in 70 seconds". Having seen these adverts I still wasn't remotely interested in trying them, but given that I now had one at zero cost to myself, I thought I'd give it a go and relay my findings to the good folk of ciao.

PACKAGING

The burger comes in a clear plastic box with a cheerful yellow tear-off lid emblazoned with the Rustlers logo, the name of the product and a colour photo of the product itself, which looks more of less the same as the product in the box - a good start.

PREPARATION

The whole selling point of the product appears to be the ease of preparation and to be fair to them, it couldn't be easier. Peel off the lid, take out the product on it's little cardboard tray, pop it in the microwave and you're away. Although they say that it's ready in 70 seconds that, of course, depends on the power of your microwave; an 850 watt micro will do it in 70 seconds, a 750 watter needs 80 seconds and a 650 watter needs a whopping 90 seconds. Why, I could die of hunger waiting that long... or not.

They recommend that you let it stand for 30 seconds, so about 5 seconds after it was done I took it out. What can I say, patience was never my strong suit! They supply a sachet of mayonnaise but, having never been a fan of mayo, I opted to add ketchup and some salad.

THE PROOF OF THE PUDDING

The smell was reasonably appetising, but given that I was pretty hungry, that's not saying much. When I removed it from the microwave it looked pretty sorry for itself and less appetising than it smelled. I can see why they give you mayo, because without some sort of sauce or salad it would be very dry indeed. Once I'd garnished it, it actually looked quite appealing, but the sesame seed bun had that kind of look I associate with McDonalds and its ilk. What I mean is, it looked sort of like fake food, as though the bun was golden brown because of colouring rather than an effect of baking. I was dubious, but I'd come this far...

I took a bite and the taste was... not bad. It wasn't offensive, but neither was it particularly pleasing. It tasted like a synthetic approximation of the effect of a char grill, with a starchy after-taste. Neither flavour nor aftertaste was particularly strong, which is just as well because if it had been much stronger it would probably have been quite unpleasant.

The texture of the chicken was not too bad, though it was clearly not entirely as chicken should be. The bun was more worrying though; after each bite I had to tear the bread off, as the bite alone didn't cause the bread in my mouth to part from the main bulk! I'm no connoisseur of bread, but that wasn't at all as it should be!

CONTENT

A gander at the list of ingredients largely explains the taste experience. Firstly, although the chicken fillet actually contains 85% chicken breast, the bulk of the rest seems to be potato starch, wheat protein and wheat flower - hence the starchy taste and not-quite-chickeny texture. Still, 85% chicken isn't so bad and for them to claim it's chicken breast suggests that it's perhaps not all ground up eyelids a-holes, which would have been my assumption had they merely stated 'chicken'. The other ingredients that would appear to have a bearing on the flavour are mustard powder, garlic powder and onion powder.

As you may expect, it's filled with all the E numbers a growing boy needs, with two in the chicken, 2 in the mayo and a whopping 4 in the bun. E numbers? In bread? Yup, that confirms my existing suspicion - that it's not exactly bread, but some evil approximation that would probably be shunned by the likes of a respectable Hovis or Wharby.

There are a few things to note if you're allergic - sesame seeds, wheat, gluten, egg, mustard and soya, though these are clearly labelled on the back, so it's hard to go wrong.

The energy content is 953KJ (231 calories) per 100g, so given that the total weight is 150g, that would be about 1429.5KJ (346.5 calories). It's actually reasonably low fat (less than 10%) but with all that "bread" and chicken, it's packed with carbs, which is no doubt a big no-no for some.

OVERALL

Personally I wouldn't choose to eat one again and I certainly wouldn't pay for the pleasure. However, they seem to be targeted at student types and general lazy folk, as a quick and easy snack after the pub. It's entirely possible that I'd have enjoyed the whole experience much more if I'd been drunk and to be fair, it did leave me quite full and with all that carbohydrate, it could be just the thing for soaking up a stomachful of alcohol.

They retail for £1.50 at Sainsburys, which I'd assume is typical of the price elsewhere. For that amount per burger, I dare you'd be considerably better off buying some frozen chicken burgers. Of course, that would involve a much longer wait for your food, which may be unacceptable, if you're of the idle persuasion. On those occasions when the bag of crisps you had between your fourth and fifth pints are begging for company and you're so ravenous that you could almost eat your own shoe, you could do much worse than one of these, like, for example a kebab!

If you do decide to try one, you may be better off replacing the bun with a nicer one, garnishing it with more than just the mayo and, while you're at it, chuck the burger in the bin and replace that with a proper grilled chicken fillet - now that would be a good post-pub snack!
 

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