¡Arriba Arriba Andale Arriba! A Mexican pie from ASDA

¡Hola! ¿Que paso? Where’s the biblioteca? Now check out this is a Mexican Beef Pie from ASDA. Have a good look, say hello, give it a Mexican wave. This pie promises “Tasty chilli beef with black eyed beans and jalapeno peppers, wrapped in tomato and coriander pastry finished with a tasty monterey jack and tortilla crumb”. Sounds pretty good, right?! They even caught the eye of the member of staff on check-out, who gave them a long (and longing) look. They’re £3 for the pair – so £1.50 per pie. They’re not particularly big, but they certainly don’t sound like your standard pies so £1.50 sounds about right for an own brand frozen pie.

They take rather a long time in the oven – a whole 50 minutes just for one of these little pies! Wow, not exactly Speedy Gonzales. Still, good things come to those who wait. And that gives you a good 50 minutes to knock back some Cuervo and get in the Mexican mood.

Of course, you might have noticed that this pie doesn’t have a pastry lid – instead ASDA have opted for an unconventional tortilla crumb topping. Technically this does mean it’s not really a pie, but in the words of Senor Chang from Community: “I’ll allow it”.



Once out of the oven, the pie is a nice golden brown and, aside from a few cracks in the pastry, looks rather good. At this stage I’m hoping the filling is moist, because the rest of the pie looks rather dry. On the cross-section above, you can indeed see that the filling fortunately is moist, as it dribbles out onto plate.

The pie tastes really good. There’s a decent hit of chilli – I’m not a chilli fiend by any means but I also don’t shy away from hot foods, and the hotness of this chilli is just about right for me. The beef is, as expected, minced, but it’s alright and not too chewy. The pie is quite small though and there isn’t a huge amount of filling. However, the filling does fill the capacity of the pie with not too much air gap. I think the pastry is a little dry though, perhaps a symptom of being in the oven for so long.

On the whole, I think this pie is decently priced, tastes good, is innovative and used British beef, but does take a long time to oven cook, is a bit too small, with dry pastry and doesn’t have a pastry lid. I’d recommend this pie, but don’t expect it to be similar to what you’d normally expect from a pie.

ASDA Mexican Beef Pie
Score: 4.95/7
TJP

Posted by The Pierateers at 22:25

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Labels: asda, beef