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Believe it or not, I have never in my life had a Fray Bentos pie. That’s unusual, given that my diet consists mainly of peanuts, toast and the occasional banana. You’d think Fray Bentos pies would have slotted quite nicely into that list of nutritionally deficient foods. It might be ... Read review
Advantages: Quick and easy. Disadvantages: Tastes horrible, unless you're from Yorkshire in which case it's a fine gastronomic experience.
...in my life had a Fray Bentos pie. That’s unusual, given that my diet consists mainly of peanuts, toast and the occasional banana. You’d think Fray Bentos pies would have slotted quite nicely into that list of nutritionally deficient foods. It might be because I’m Irish. We are not quite as beloved of tinned pies as the English are. There are other contrasts between the English and the Irish, mind. We’re more whimsical and charming and less obnoxious ... ...friend from Yorkshire, bought a Fray Bentos pie. Yorkshire people all seem to be born with innate pie knowledge. It’s probably to make up for the ridiculous accents. When you get to your local supermarket you’ll find them (the pies, not Yorkshire people) with all the other tinned stuff. I don’t normally supply this level of purchasing information because I can’t be arsed but in this case it’s necessary. Fray Bentos, you see, also make some of their ... more
First of all, a disclaimer. This isn’t about steak and kidney pie. It’s about chicken and mushroom pie. There wasn’t a category for that and when you suggest a product to Ciao it generally takes ages for them to be arsed to add it. I haven’t got that kind of patience, frankly. Anyway, you’ll probably like the chicken and mushroom one more. After all, kidney tastes just offal (apologies).
Believe it or not, I have never in my life had a Fray Bentos pie. That’s unusual, given that my diet consists mainly of peanuts, toast and the occasional banana. You’d think Fray Bentos pies would have slotted quite nicely into that list of nutritionally deficient foods. It might be because I’m Irish. We are not quite as beloved of tinned pies as the English are. There are other contrasts between the English and the Irish, mind. We’re more whimsical and charming and less obnoxious when in pubs abroad. We are more prone to gingerness, though, which levels the balance slightly.
When I do feel like having pie for tea, I generally head to my mum’s house. However, at the moment she’s on a mission to reduce the volume of food she has in her chest freezer. She’s on a hiding to nothing. Dig deep enough in there and you’ll find sides of beef and once, startlingly, a whole lamb. It’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that there’s a few neighbourhood pets crammed in there. Anyway, rather than going for what some would perceive to be the sensible option of buying less stuff and eating the stuff that’s already in there, she chose to remove all extraneous packaging from the food and then use the back of a shovel to pack it all in a bit more tightly. This resulted in misshapen and largely unidentifiable food. Thus, the last time I was there and she was cooking pie for dinner her response to my inquiry as to what was in the pie was, ‘well, I think it’s minced steak. But it could be pigeon. Or cherry. It’ll be a surprise.’ I opted out. On phoning her later I found out that it was actually rhubarb, which she served up with mashed potatoes, carrots and gravy. My stepfather, with infinite wisdom, ate it and said nothing.
I, however, was still without pie. So I went off to Tesco’s and, on the recommendation of a friend from Yorkshire, bought a Fray Bentos pie. Yorkshire people all seem to be born with innate pie knowledge. It’s probably to make up for the ridiculous accents. When you get to your local supermarket you’ll find them (the pies, not Yorkshire people) with all the other tinned stuff. I don’t normally supply this level of purchasing information because I can’t be arsed but in this case it’s necessary. Fray Bentos, you see, also make some of their pies in pudding format. I don’t know what the hell’s up with that. The aforementioned Yorkshire friend assures me that this is quite normal. However, puddings are sweet. Pies are mainly savoury. In an attempt to explain the whole conundrum to me he said that a steak and kidney pudding was just a deep filled pie. If I were you, I’d view the whole thing with suspicion and keep on walking to the proper pies.
When you get it home (I’m aware that I haven’t detailed how much it cost, by the way. I forgot to write that down on the back of my hand. Still, it’s only a pie. It’ll be less than 3 quid. Probably) you take off the lid. With a tin opener. I’m only telling you that because it took me a wee while to figure it out and I was smacking it with a fork and other utensils for ages before I realised. If you leave the lid on you risk one hell of an explosion. I know this because my ginger friend Paula once thought the optimum way to cook a tin of sweetcorn was to bung it in the oven at 180 degrees for half an hour. The ensuing chaos was entertaining but an oven’s quite an expensive thing to replace. I warn you; once you do manage to wrestle the lid off the thing the contents will look uninspiring at best. It just looks like a disc of wet lardy pastry. Anyway, stick it in the oven at 230 degrees (I think. Probably best to check the packaging on that score, though) and sit back and relax for half an hour. Or you could perhaps use the time wisely to prepare some carrots and asparagus as per the serving suggestion. Or, more realistically, you could shove a tray of oven chips in after the pie and go and have a cigarette and read comics (that’s what I did).
After the allotted time you will return to find that the pastry has risen really high and has also turned out to look quite tasty. It’s like a kind of pie magic. Then you have to serve it. The one I got was for two people, but you’d need to do loads of vegetables/chips/bread (depending on how lazy you are) to make a proper meal out of it. Serving it is also a bit tricky. If you’re seriously averse to washing up, or are a student, you could eat it out of the tin. If you like your meals on plates, you need to lever the pastry bit off and find a clean bit of kitchen counter to set it on (easier said than done in my house). Then you spoon out the contents and set the pastry on top, creating the illusion of homemade pie tastiness. This is where the wheels start to come off the wagon for Fray Bentos. The contents were at least 80% sauce/gravy. I counted just 8 bits of chicken and 2 mushrooms. I was as outraged as it’s possible to be over a pie related incident. Also, the chicken was an odd colour. Usually, you expect chicken to be white or slightly yellowish if it’s corn fed or organic (which, casting no slurs on the good people of Fray Bentos, I suspect their chicken is not). This chicken had more of a magenta hue. It couldn’t have been raw, as it was in the oven for 30 minutes and was piping hot when I tested it. All that remains, logically, is that Fray Bentos have some kind of training camp for pink chickens. I don’t even want to think about that.
Appearance aside, the pastry bit was lovely in a crumbly and fluffy way. The chicken was eccentrically coloured but tasted alright, the mushrooms took a bit of finding but seemed to be all that mushrooms can be, and the sauce had an unexpected and really quite strong metallic tang. Even putting an amount of salt on that will no doubt have notched my blood pressure up by a few points failed to take it away. In the end I gave up on it and just had the pastry. Now, I’m sure we all know that pastry and chips is a satisfying and delicious dinner but even so, I feel let down by Fray Bentos (and also by Yorkshire people but that’s a different matter). Fray Bentos promised me a lovely pie with chicken and mushrooms. What they delivered was some spectacularly genetically engineered chicken chunks in tainted mushroom soup with a pastry lid.
The moral of the story is: don’t trust Fray Bentos. They lie about their pies. Don’t trust people from Yorkshire, either.
Advantages: LOADS, tastes excellent, smells fabulous, dead cheap & easy to make Disadvantages: None at all
...her mum served up a Fray Bentos Steak & Kidney pie. I hadn't had one of these for quite a long time (well, about three months or so) and now I think I'm going to have to eat them all the time as I'd forgotten how lovely they are. They are the perfect 'winter' food as I think they are really lovely to eat on freezing cold winter nights when you get back home, stick your pie in the oven, and settle down to eat it in front of the telly.
My mate's mum ... ...kidney, together with the marvellous Fray Bentos gravy!!
They are really easy to cook too. You just open the top of the tin with a tin opener and pop it in a ready-heated oven (at about 180 degrees). The tin recommends that you cook it for 45 minutes. Either we have a very hot oven or they got the instructions wrong though, as every time I've cooked one it only takes about 30 minutes before it's ready to serve - any longer and the pastry starts ...
pennywa 10.12.2007
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Fray Bentos Steak and Kidney Pie
Advantages: A quick and easy meal. Disadvantages: Nothing major
What is it about the Fray Bentos steak and kidney pie that is still so appealing?
Every time we switch the television or the radio on we are bombarded with dietary advice, no chips, lower our fat intake, reduce the amount of salt that we consume and I am sure that the Fray Bentos pie contravenes every healthy eating schedule known to man.
In the major supermarkets expect to pay a penny or two over the £1.50 mark for a large (425g) pie but take ... ...It seems that the iconic Fray Bentos pie is stuck in a time warp, overall the design of the tin remains unchanged over the years with the exception of the word `classic` being added to the lid of the tin.
If they changed the way the pie was presented then they would surely lose the beauty of the pie, the fight with the can opener is half of the joy of eating it.
But the can never ends up in my recycling bin, I carefully wrap it in some newspaper, ...
Sarahjh1 02.05.2009
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Fray Bentos Steak and Kidney Pie
Advantages: Very Simple To Cook, Very Tasty Disadvantages: Tends To Stick To The Tin
...and write a review on Fray Bentos Steak and Kidney Tinned Pies. When it comes to pies nothing, in my humble opinion, can beat a Fray Bentos Tinned Pie, especially when it is a Steak and Kidney one. "TINNED PIES!" I hear you all shouting out in disgust, surely not, it must be a typing error, but please don't reach for that Not Helpful quite yet.
For those of you who prefer to spend a few hours each evening in the kitchen with a rolling pin and your ... ...And that's where Fray Bentos come to the rescue.. ..
Fray Bentos Tinned Pies are home made pies for lazy people, they are ideal for people who lead busy lives and don' t have a lot of spare time and they are a Godsend for people not blessed with anything more than basic cooking skills. I fit into all three of these categories and that's why I love Fray Bentos.
The purpose of this review is to educate those of you who are not familiar with pies ...
micksheff 22.07.2005
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Fray Bentos Steak and Kidney Pie
Advantages: Cheap, edible, easy to cook for the lazy Disadvantages: Messy to remove from tin
...the bits of kidney in Fray Bentos Steak & Kidney Pies is well minced into small edible pieces, yet still retains plenty of flavour to give it a "kidney" kick from time to time. The chunks of steak, whilst not large, are sufficient to make you feel you ARE eating something with steak in it, and the gravy is rich.
You need to be quite dextrous with your kitchen utensils to slice and remove it from the tin, as all the stuff in the bottom runs out from ... ...almost everything we ate was made from scratch, the only thing we ate that came out of tins was the plum tomatoes.
But when you are suffering from post-Xmas financial stress and can't afford the posh version of pies, Fray Bentos Steak & Kidney Pie is a useful option. ...
hellkat 31.12.2004
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Fray Bentos Steak and Kidney Pie
Advantages: fair size Disadvantages: hard to open, bits of metal in pie, not nice :(
...fuss out of having a fray bentos pie, I decided to try one of these for my tea one night
BIG MISTAKE!!
Got it home, that was no bother, and set about trying to open the thing. At first, I thought there would be some sort of key like on tinned corn beef but no such luck.
Testing out the tin opener simply broken the opener! I lost 2 good openers to one tin of pie, and the thing still wasnt opened. In the end we used, wait for it, a screwdriver and ... ...to finally get enough unsealed to pull back. By time time the novelty of the pie was really wearing thin!
You are meant to cook it in the tin, so we did, for around 25 mins in the oven. They cost about 80p from the co-op where I bought mine from.
After the recommended time, the top of the pie was boiling nicely with gravy, which had leaked out. This wasnt a problem but it did make it less aesthetically pleasing however. As it was cooking, the smell ...
macteykith 28.02.2006
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Fray Bentos Steak and Kidney Pie
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extracts, corn flour, dried beef bone stock, sugar and onion, beef fat and flavouring........yep all this in a small almost 1 inch cube.
The cube is very slightly moist and a quick rub with the thumb and forefinger will produce a fine powder, which is used to flavour a lot of dishes. It is now the main gravy additive in FrayBentossteak and kidneypies, and although I am a massive fan of OXO I do prefer the old FrayBentospie with the old type gravy.
The rich beefy taste one gets from an OXO adds a bit of bite to any gravy, but it is not as a gravy enhancer that I find the mighty OXO excels. It is as a warming hot drink on a winter's night. A mug of hot water with the old OXO rub and you've got yourself a very tasty drink, which will warm the cockles and other parts. Their are now several different kinds of OXO cube but it is the beef ...
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Advantages: long shelf life Disadvantages: read on
time; I'm not really sure. Anyway, to be fair to the product, I will talk about the second time I tried it only. The best thing about this pie has to be the yummy crust to which the white sauce gives more flavor as you eat the pie. You will find several chicken pieces for they amount up to 25% of the pie, yet the mushroom pieces, which are only 3.5%, are barely recognizable. This meal is supposed to be for two persons and each serving gives 384 calories. I admit that the second time I tried it was much better than the first, yet now I believe that buying tinned pies is not a good idea, in addition to the fact that it gives many calories. I don't think I will buy it again.
Other variations:
1. FrayBentos Minced Beef and Onion Pie 425g
2. FrayBentosSteak & Ale Pie 425g
3. FrayBentosSteak & Mushroom Pie 475g
4. FrayBentosSteak ...
Advantages: appetising, delicious aroma Disadvantages: hot tin, messy
For years, I have enjoyed the glorious FrayBentosSteak & Kidneypie, but there's only so much of it a girl can stomach without getting a little fed up with the taste. Needless to say, I was delighted when I came across a new option sitting on the supermarket shelf; Steak with Three Veg. Being health conscious (yet still eating pie!), I jumped at the chance to sample this option rather than the usual, cloggy 'kidney option! Into the trolley it went, no hesitation!
The pie sat in the cupboard for about two weeks surprisingly, before I finally got round to eating it. To be honest, I think I'd forgotten all about it! After reading the tin, I followed the instructions, twisting off the lid with a tin opened and popping the pie into the oven (set at 230˚) where it remained for the recommended 30minutes.
When I plucked the piping ...
