Roast dinners are a much-loved dish in the UK, but with soaring food prices, they can be an expensive meal.
Meat, vegetables and gravy have all jumped up in price, with the minimum checkout price for a family roast coming to at least £20. However, Morrisons stores sell a microwave version for £2.49. While trying to cut costs, Chronicle Live reporter Aaron Morris gave the dish a go.
Kershaws Homestyle Beef Dinner comes with roast potatoes, carrots, peas and a Yorkshire pudding. The microwave meal has a 3.2/5 star rating on Morrisons' website. So how did Aaron find it?
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He said: "Presentation-wise, it also wasn't the worst meal I'd ever set my eyes upon and everything seemed to look rather pleasant. The roasties looked crispy but still full of fluff, the carrots and peas looked a little well done and dried out but still decent enough, and the miniature Yorkshire pudding was floating atop a sea of gloopy gravy. Delightful.
"The only thing that was not plainly visible to the eye was the meat itself, but I soon found that it had sunken to the bottom of the gravy bowl."
The roast potatoes were pretty perfect, according to Aaron. He added: "I tried all of the portions bit by bit, to get the full flavour of each. The roasties caught my eye first, so I went in. What I will say, is that I'm a big fan of frozen roasties anyway - the likes of Aunt Bessies seem to hit the nail on the head with it in terms of texture, whereas when I make them myself, they end up harder than granite.
"Lovely and ruffled on the outside for texture, but brilliantly soft and fluffy on the inside - they're a winner. Well played Kershaws.
"Unfortunately, that's where the pleasantries end. Moving onto the carrot and peas combination, they were indeed as thought well over done. Drier than sticks and very, very sweet like tinned carrots, I wasn't a big fan. I usually have mine honey-roasted, so I do like a little sugar on them, but this took it to new extremes.
"If blindfolded, you could easily mistake the carrots and peas for candy, rather than veg. The gravy, although initially appealing on a sight and smell basis, was highly disappointing also, tasting like cheap and nasty meat.
"It was also far, far too salty. And the beef at the bottom of the almost gelatinous pool tasted just as bad. Also it was deceivingly chewy for how razor thin it had been cut, and had to be chewed for about a minute before it went anywhere.
"I hoped that the Yorkie would have been a saving grace, but alas, it was brutal. Completely tasteless, and it had the texture of a glove which had been left outside on a snow day...not ideal when you're hoping for a light and airy bowl to slurp up the rest of your gravy."
Despite the potatoes being a plus, Aaron gave the dish a one-star rating, and said he'd never eat a microwave roast dinner again.
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