Description:
Generously filled with marinated British steak in our rich ale gravy, wrapped in butter-enriched short crust pastry.
Cooking: 40minutes on number 4 from frozen.
Verdict: First impressions? Well, through the packaging this looked like a nice pie. Id tried a couple of the ASDA Bistro pies before, with mixed opinions, so was keen to try this Steak & Ale pie to see how it compared to the Steak version id previously tried.
I cooked this one from frozen, so 40mins in the oven isnt long to wait whilst i prepared some lovely new potatoes and some chopped carrots.
On the plate the pie looked good, cut it open and loads of lovely thick gravy came out. Quite a surprise compared to the previous steak pie id tried which was seriously lacking in gravy. The crust was nice and crumbly.
Now for the critical moment. What did it taste like? The pastry was nice, stodgy, crumbly and tasty. The gravy was nice and thick with lumps of tender steak. The steak tasted like slow cooked stewing steak, very nice with a good flavour.
I was half way through the pie when I remembered this was actually a steak & ale pie! But id not actually tasted any ale yet. So I carefully had another taste of the gravy. There was a very mild faint taste of ale, but it was really hardly noticeable.
I also noticed that by now the crust was getting a bit sickly. It was very sweet. Checking the packaging i realised why, it was "butter enriched" when it didnt really need to be.
Ive been fortunate to try quite a few steak & ale pies and so have quite a lot I can compare this one too. It didnt hit the mark for me at all. Sure the steak was nice, and overall it was slightly better than their Bistro Steak Pie, but compare it to the Pukka Pie Steak & Ale its like night & day, no comparison. So this isnt a pie id buy again.
Calorie count is 781 calories per pie, which seems quite high for quite a small pie, but on pair with the other ASDA Bistro pies.
Rating? 6.5 out of 10.
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