Waitrose Spaghetti and Meatballs

My husband and I sometimes buy ready meals for when one of us is out for the night so that the other one left at home with the kids, rather than having to cook for one, can just quickly heat something up.

This time it was my husband's turn to go out so I popped this spaghetti with meatballs in the microwave. This ready meal from Waitrose contains spaghetti made from free range egg pasta and the meatballs are a concoction of beef and pork and these are covered in a rich tomato sauce.

The plastic container containing the product has a sealed plastic film over it which needs to be either pierced if cooking in the microwave (which gives best results according to the pack) or removed if cooking in the oven. In the microwave this only takes between four and a half and six and a half minutes depending on the power of your oven or in a conventional oven this takes 25 minutes. In both variations the product should be left to stand after cooking for two minutes. The container then comes in a cardboard, recyclable sleeve which has all the details of the product and nutritional values on it etc.

The pork and beef comes from animals that have been reared with care by British famers who share Waitrose's values!

Per pack this contains 507 calories, with 26.5g of fat, of which 5.7g is saturated so this is not too bad although not the greatest either if you are watching your waistline. There is quite a lot of salt in this, containing 2.06g and also surprisingly or not so surprisingly if you watch foody programmes contains 13.5g of sugar.

The traffic light system on the pack has a green for sugar and saturates so deems this acceptable, amber for salt and red for fat.

This meal should be kept refridgerated and it is suitable for freezing but needsto be defrosted thoroughly before cooking. If frozen this should be used within one month and if kept chilled should be consumed by the use by date. For those who have allergies this contains egg, gluten and milk.

The pack states that Waitrose ready meals are "taste and flavour guaranteed, with added re-assurance that we use meat, poultry and fish produced to the same high quality and welfare standards that you would expect from Waitrose"

This ready meal serves one and costs £2.39 atlhough they are currently doing an offer of any 3 ready meals for £6 which is pretty good.

My opinion:

For a ready meal this duo was actually quite tasty. I did feel that the spaghetti was a little bit too soft as I like mine with slightly more bite to it but that's a personal taste and it was still to a satisfactory standard. The meatballs were of a fairly decent size and quite succulent and well seasoned with no grisly bits in. The sauce was quite thick which isn't always the case in these sort of ready meals and was very tomatoey and rich in flavour which I was particuarly pleased with. I found that the quantity was just right although I did bulk my meal out with a small green salad and a slice of bread and butter which came in handy to mop up the left over sauce.

On the whole I was very pleased with this meal and would eat it again for the ease of cooking and the satisfactory taste and could recommend it to you.

Thanks for reading and rating. x