Asda Chicken & Gravy "Topcrust" Pie

Description: Succulent British Chicken in our rich gravy, topped with a light and flaky golden puff pastry lid. 

Cost: £1.98 for 1 pie, however I had a result here as I happened to be in Asda before closing time and they had reduced this pie down to £1.19!

Cooking: 40minutes on number 4 from frozen. 20mins if cooked from chilled.

Verdict: First impressions? Well previously I had tried the Asda Chicken & Gravy puff pastry pie, which is very similar to this one. This one differs in that its a Top Crust only pie, so no pastry base or casing to it. Interesting idea, and because I really liked their previous pie, i felt I had to give this one a try also.

In the oven it went, 40minutes on number 4 as per the instructions.

Out it came after 40mins on the dot and what a nice looking pie it was. Certainly one person portion. Cut it open and the pastry is nice and flaky. The first challenge I had was trying to get it out of the foil container and onto my plate. Because it has no pastry base, the contents stick to the foil container. Not wanting to waste any of its precious filling I spent some time scraping every last piece onto my plate.

The contents were pretty much the same as their other Chicken & Gravy pie. Nice big lumps of chicken, thick gravy, all smelling gorgeous.

How did it taste? The chicken tasted very nice. Had a nice roast chicken taste to it, lovely & tender. The gravy was onion based and complimented the chicken nicely and there was just the right gravy to chicken ratio. (Pie has 30% chicken in it) The pastry was also very good and I didn't actually miss not having a pastry base which surprised me.

I felt this would be a perfect pie to have for a nice Sunday dinner - it would go well with some roast potatoes & a Yorkshire pudding!

Calorie count is only 335 calories per pie so this is quite a healthy pie!

Rating?   8 out of 10. (Very nice, certainly up to their previous chicken pie standards)

Hollands Meat Pie

Description: A tasty mix of seasoned beef and pork wrapped in our unique golden shortcrust pastry.

Cost: £1.40 for 2 pies.

Cooking: Number 6 for 35mins from frozen.

Verdict:  Following the large amount of interest my last Hollands pie review generated, and how good their pie was, I felt I had to try some more. Luck was in and down my local supermarket they had double reduced the Hollands Meat Pie down to just 44p for 2. Now that's what I call a bargain!! You cant even get a bag of crisps for 44p and here I got 2 pies!

As before, Hollands have their own website and sure enough this pie is shown on there - the picture of the pie is actually how the pie looks inside. That alone is a rarity these days to have a pie which looks like the picture the maker shows you.

 http://www.hollandspies.co.uk/  

This meat pie looked a bit smaller than the previous Hollands "Potato & Meat" pie id tried, so i decided to cook both for my tea rather than just one.

They came out of the oven piping hot and I tucked in. The first thing I noticed when I cut the pie open was that it wasn't how I expected inside. Normally when you think of a meat pie you assume its lumps of steak in a thick steak beefy gravy - maybe with a hint of onions. But no. In this case Hollands use a mixture of beef & pork for their filling and no gravy. It actually tasted just like a hot pork pie! The texture of the meat, the way the filling looked, all looked like the inside of a pork pie. The seasoning was nice, slightly peppery / spicy and the pastry was their trademark style - lovely, crunchy, filling - definitely very nice pie pastry.

All in all another tasty Hollands pie which I enjoyed. The filling was not what I expected from the name, but was still enjoyable. Maybe if it was labelled a "Beef & Pork Pie" it would more suit the filling. I also found the filling whilst very tasty to be a bit "airy". My only other critique was the size. 1 pie was not enough, and 2 was just a bit too much. Maybe if it was 1.5 times bigger it would be an ideal size! Or maybe im just greedy?!


Calorie wise, each pie is 405 calories.

Rating? 8 out of 10. Definitely a pie to try and another cracking pie from Hollands.