Description: Generously filled with tender British steak in a rich gravy, wrapped in crisp, golden and buttery shortcrust pastry sprinkled with cracked black pepper.
Cooking: 25minutes on number 4 from chilled.
Verdict: First impressions? Well, saw this when I was picking up some milk & bread yesterday morning and couldn't resist it. Following the recent revival in pies (strangely enough which seems to have happened since I started doing my blog), a lot of supermarkets have released more "upmarket" looking pies, over & above their usual value ranges. I hadn't seen this particular Asda pie before, and not only was it marked up as being part of their "bistro" range, it also made a very very bold statement by calling this the "Ultimate Steak Pie"!!!! At £2.88 for a single pie, this was priced up quite a bit more than their cheaper ranges.
Cooking time was reasonable. 25minutes isn't long to wait for what promised to be a slice of heaven. And having just got back from a 2 week vacation I was suffering pie withdrawal.
I cooked it up with the usual potatoes & peas.
On the plate, the pie looked good. Cutting it open and I started to have doubts. There wasn't much gravy in the pie. There was an acceptable amount of steak - nicely cooked meaty chunks - not the minced up mush you`d get in value pies. But the gravy was lacking. I was expecting something a bit thicker and more of it. The crust wasn't quite as crispy or tasty as I've experienced before. It was okay, but was missing something. It didn't quite live up to the description.
Overall, I was left a bit disappointed by the experience, and for nearly the price of 3 boxes (12 pies) of the tesco value pies, I was left wishing id bought another pie. I had to think quite hard about what score to give this one, and because the steak was good quality and nice, but its the rest of the pie which lets it down slightly, I've given it the score I have below.
I wouldn't rush out and buy this one again, but I will be trying others in this "bistro" range to see if they are any better.
Calorie count is 828 calories per pie, which seems quite high for quite a small pie.
Rating? 6 out of 10.
