For your money, you also get a small blob of green pea-y mush, and some bland mash. But let's not dwell on the accompaniments - this is a review about the pie.


The pie does not look in very good condition. The bake is very uneven, with uneven glaze and what appears to be pretty bad boil-out on the lid. The colour ranges from very pale to very dark, covering the full range of the brown rainbow.

Slicing open the review reveals a mediocre amount of pie filling that spills limply out onto my plate. The beef and onion filling is edible but doesn't make me smile. The puff pastry is unremarkable.

Yes, this is a low-cost pie, but I wouldn't rate it very good value for money. It barely filled me up, and didn't look like the attractive 'oozing' pie that adorned the box. They must have found the world's smallest plate for that photo.

To me, this was not a 'pub classic'. Disappointing, with few merits - this 'Chosen By You' pie won't be chosen by me in the future.


ASDA Pub Classics Pie & Mash
Score: 2.2/7
TJP

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#MakeAPicnicAPiecnic

The Pierateers enjoying an ASDA apple pie at a Piecnic

Bray's Cottage Pork Pie - a great piecnic option!

So when you’re reaching into the fridge for some picnic goodies, just add a pork pie to your hamper. Or if you’d rather something sweet than containing meat, just grab a box of fruit pies to sweeten the meal. It really is that simple! So simple in fact that we’ve boiled it down to two, easy-to-follow steps:

1) Add pie to your picnic
2) You now have a piecnic

All that leaves me to say is – why wouldn’t you?! Enjoy the sunshine this summer and make your picnic a piecnic. Just add pie!

Why not rate your pie at the Piecnic?!

Here’s some pie companies that have got on board:

The Real Pie Company are encouraging you to have a fruit pie as part of your piecnic:

It's a glorious day today.. Having a picnic, so why not try some of our scrumptious Fruit Pies. Buy them for yourself or loved ones
— The Real Pie Co (@TheRealPieComp) July 26, 2014

Sarah from Bray's Cottage regularly tweets about piecnics (or "pignics" - but let's face it, we'd rather have pie in the title ;-) )

“@PaulEele: The best pork pie EVER!! :-) @Brays_Cottage” < How kind! :) x #pignic
— Sarah Pettegree (@Brays_Cottage) June 8, 2014

Here's Chunk of Devon PIEmoting their pies for your picnic!

Our Award winning Pork Pie for your perfect picnic! Look out for our Pie Van! @pierateers #MakeAPicnicAPiecnic pic.twitter.com/ts0MpyuEJF
— Chunk of Devon (@Chunk_of_Devon) July 28, 2014

RAS

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¡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

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As part of my challenge to eat Pie for every meal for the whole of British Pie Week I decided to treat myself to a pie which I suspected should be pretty good, an ASDA Bistro Ultimate Steak Pie. What made me think this pie would be good? Partly because it is a premium pie, costing £2.88 for the one 250g pie. But the main reason is that this pie was reviewed previously by my fellow Pierateer TJP in March 2011. He scored this pie 6.49 in his review 'Make no Mistake, I Ate the Great Ultimate Steak Pie'. He noted the 'quality chunks of steak' and the 'great steak:gravy ratio' and it has held the title of our top supermarket pie for quite some time.

However when I tried this pie for dinner on Day Two of the challenge I found it to be disappointing in nearly every department. There were only a few small chunks of steak in the pie, the filling was mostly gravy. To make matters worse the meat that was in there wasn't even good, there were some quite fatty bits to it. The pastry seemed too hard, if you look at the video, it was difficult to break into the pie. This meant the pastry was a little dry. There was far too much pastry to filling, I felt like I was just eating pastry. The overall taste to the gravy was nice enough but it wasn't enough to moisten the pastry. The pie had a good capacity, with it being quite tall, just like last time. This was cruel in a way because it made the disappointment of the pie being empty even greater! For a premium pie I felt like I was being really ripped off having paid so much for an empty pie.


So where do we stand having tried two such different versions of the same pie? This did seem like it was the same product, with the same shape although slightly different box. But this was three years ago so there could have been changes in the manufacturing process, slight changes of ingredients. But, with any product there is going to be variation. With a mass produced pie, it seems that unfortunately this can mean on occasion that the machines hardly fills some pies while others are well filled. Normally on the Pierate ship we don't tend to adjust a score if there is a small variation between two versions of the same product, but in this case we feel we must, the new score and the old score will be averaged. However, it may be that this is not just a natural variation and the standard of this product has fallen. If we get any feedback that this is the case we will void the original score.

The main thing is that despite a decent average score be warned that you may get this terrible version! We have been particularly disappointed with a lot of ASDA pies recently, the Steak & Ale, also from the Bistro range, was equally full of empty promises. In fact empty pies seems to be an ASDA speciality with their Steak & Stilton also severely lacking and their Blackcurrant pie coming with a huge airgap. If you then mention the deceptively large crust on the Rhubarb pie you might question if ASDA pies are best avoided!


Ultimate Steak (ASDA Bistro)

2.00/7
SJL

6.49/7
TJP

4.23/7
Average

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ASDA Rhubarb Pie Review

Here’s a photo of a rhubarb pie. Looks quite large for £1, right?!

And here’s the cross-section:

Wait, what’s that?

Is that…is that all crust?

Wowzer! That sure is some hefty crust right there. To give you some perspective, here’s what it looks like while you’re eating it.

Now, I don’t want to suggest for one minute that ASDA have been deceptive here, trying to make their pie look larger than it actually is…but I’m not going to lie, I can’t see any other advantage over having such an over-sized crust other than to “artificially inflate” the size of the pie. It’s not like having the extra crust was a benefit in any way – the pastry was dry and I left most of it.

Removing the outer crust around the edge left a central part of the pie that was actually quite moist and enjoyable, albeit rather sweet, thin and sad. The filling – what there was of it – was quite nice. I like rhubarb, and this had some acceptably-sized chunks within. But the sheer thickness of the pastry meant that this pie had a pretty poor capacity.

Overall, I was left feeling rather deceived by this pie. The addition of the practically inedible outer “wing” rather fooled me into thinking I was purchasing a larger pie than I was.

ASDA Rhubarb Pie Review
Score: 2.8/7
TJP

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ASDA blackcurrant pie review

I bought this blackcurrant pie from my local ASDA for the grand price of 25p. Well, 50p for two pies – and that was reduced from a £1 for the pair. I was very intrigued by this pie – not so much for its blackcurrant flavour, but more for what was lying beneath that bump on the right-hand side.

Here’s a cross-sectional view of the left-hand side of the pie:

And here’s the view of the right:

What’s going on here?! As you can see, the air:filling ratio on the left-hand side is quite impressive, but on the right the air:filling ratio is appalling! This is very surprising, and such a lopsided pie is not something I think I’ve personally come across before. Look at that enormous gap of air!

The content itself is okay. The blackcurrant filling has quite a jammy texture, which is quite nice but I’d have preferred a few more whole blackcurrants rather than just what was essentially jam. The pastry was a bit pale in colour and also a bit dry, but it held itself together well.

Overall, it was the enormous air gap on one side of this pie that really let it down. Perhaps if I had bought a different pack of these pies then I wouldn’t have been faced with this issue, but I have to rate what is in front of me. I also bought these pies reduced, so I have to rate these pies at the normal price of £1 for two.

ASDA Blackcurrant Pie Review
Score: 2.98/7
TJP

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ASDA Beef and Mushy Pea pie review

Beef and mushy peas in a pie? Pies and peas traditionally go together in the UK, and more traditionally in the North of England.

But rather than at a football match, I found this pie in my local ASDA in London – and it was sporting a blue badge of just £1 (trial price). But is £1 even too much to pay for this hearty treat? Let’s find out.

That is quite an impressive cross-section there. The two layers of the pie are perfectly delineated, although the thinness of the pastry sides has meant this pie has collapsed somewhat when I cut through it. The puff pastry lid, however, has a decent flakiness to it, and is a lovely golden brown colour. The pie is filled near enough to full capacity, although there is a slight air gap if you look closely enough.

However, it is rather pea-heavy, with there seemingly being more pea in this pie than actual beef. The beef and onion mince also looks pretty standard and what I’d expect of a cheaper supermarket pie. I can’t help but think that the excess of peas simply bulks out the pie, at the expense of putting mince beef in there. That’s more than the “good dollop of mushy peas” which the description promotes – it’s a very good dollop!

So this review really goes down the same lines as other supermarket beef and onion pies, except with the addition of mushy peas. Cheap, but nothing special in my mind.

Plus I know that beef pies and mushy peas are a traditional mix, but it’s certainly not one that I am a personal fan of. I found both the mushy peas and the mince to be rather tasteless. On top of this, the mushiness of the beef mince combined with the mushiness of the peas meant that this pie was altogether very mushy indeed. It left me clamouring for something to bite onto – thankfully the edges of the pastry lid had a bit of crunch amongst the general mush. I’m not elderly quite yet, so while I still have my teeth I don’t want my food to come ready-mushed.

ASDA Beef and Mushy Pea pie
Score: 3.26/7
TJP

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Taking this "big fill" "heat and eat" pie out of the oven, it's taken on a nice golden colour, and the puff pastry is glistening quite nicely. The pastry does look a little light and thin though, but the condition of the pie is good.


In this cross-sectional view, you can see the thin-ness of the pastry - I'd prefer it to be a bit thicker. The pie isn't completely filled to capacity - I wouldn't call it "big fill" - but the air:filling ratio is still satisfactory. The chicken is not at all chewy, but it's the consistency and taste of the gravy that is the main selling point of this pie for me. It is smooth, tasty and the perfect thickness. The content is certainly tasty and the roast chicken flavour very unique and not something I'd tried before.

See where this pie ended up in the Pierate Pie Rankings or find other pies of a similar flavour. Make sure you Follow @pierateers and let us know your thoughts!

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Pie lovers, cover your eyes! I'm about to show you a picture which I think is so shocking it will give you nightmares for weeks. Remember, what is seen cannot be unseen. I'll put it as small thumbnail to give you a taste of the horror - click for the bigger picture if you dare.

Click for full trauma

What you witness above (GRAPHIC CONTENT) is what I call "over-gravy". The lack of solid content (you know, meat) in this pie is, in my opinion, quite overwhelming to the senses. Oh boy...is someone chopping onions?...I...I need a minute...

Good colour

As you can see from the photo above, the pie had taken on a lovely pie colour after cooking. The puff pastry had puffed nicely, although this still has the appearance of a standard mass-produced supermarket pie. It doesn't look very exciting. Upon cracking open the pie, the contents are even more underwhelming. A tidal wave of gravy splurged out of the pie and formed a gravy pool on the plate. To me it seemed the pie was essentially a balloon of gravy which I had just burst.

Pool of gravy - where's the steak?

I actually had to check the packaging again just to ensure this really was meant to be a steak pie, because at the moment this was just a sauce pie. Sure enough, the packet did promise tender chunks of British beef - so where were they? I went steak-fishing in the ocean of sauce, and this is what I found:


Yes, that's it. And bearing in mind that this pie was quite small, I don't think this picture actually quite does justice to how small those small bits of steak are. I'd count only two actual 'chunks' of steak - the remaining three morsels of beef were, in my view, pretty much just a few strands of beef lumped together. To me, this lack of steak and overly-liquid content of the pie was highly underwhelming. The content and capacity of this pie was therefore significantly lacking. The two bits of steak weren't too chewy, although not of great quality, I felt.

The sauce did taste nice - as I've mentioned before in my review of the Higgidy Steak and Stilton pie, I am a fan of stilton.

Overall, I think this is a bit of a shocker here from ASDA. I suppose I should have suspected that much for £1, though.

ASDA Steak and Stilton pie
Score: 2.51/7
TJP

See where this pie ended up in the Pierate Pie Rankings or find other pies of a similar flavour. Make sure you Follow @pierateers and let us know your thoughts!

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SJL decided as his pie pledge for British Pie Week to go a whole day eating only savoury pies. No food would be eaten that wasn't encased in pie pastry, which meant no veg or mash with the pies either!

The day began with a pack of 4 Asda Mini Pork and Apple Pies which were consumed on the train into London. The train was quite packed and there was standing room only. Other people looked concerned by SJL's choice of breakfast. However, the pies were noted to be a great choice for breakfast, the sweetness of the apple stopped the pork being too overpowering. There wasn't much fat or gristle detected. The pastry was also not too solid, as it can be for hot water crust pastry. At £1.28 for the pack the price was fairly competitive with the Tesco pork pies reviewed recently.
4 pies eaten @ 50g and 184kcal each

Asda Mini Pork Pie Selection

Upon getting to the office SJL made the error of picking up some free fruit on the way in. Realising this mistake the offending banana was carefully put aside for tomorrow.
Lunchtime came and SJL had a plan. To counteract the heavy pork pies, he headed to The Little Greek Pie Company shop on Tottenham Street where the pies come in filo pastry. Upon arrival SJL was sad to find the shop had closed down, although the pies can still be brought in some other shops. Now desperate for a new pie to review SJL headed to EAT on Tottenham Court Road. What attracted SJL was that EAT proudly advertise that they serve pies, with this fact written about 7 times on the outside of the shop. A Steak & Ale Pie was ordered at £4.15, although SJL was careful to not get the accompanying mash. The pie was satisfying, with the inclusion of some vegetables which was a pleasant surprise. The meat was tender however SJL felt it tastest slightly like it came out of a tin. The pastry was firm enough to eat with your hands but still quite gooey on the inside. However did it do enough to justify the much higher price tag than a standard Pukka pie from a fish and chip shop? Two colleagues also got into the spirit of BPW by grabbing EAT pies along with SJL.
1 pie eaten @ 250g and 670kcal - Total 5 pies eaten @ 1406 kcal

EAT Steak & Ale Pie

The afternoon saw SJL open another two packs of Asda mini pies. Two Asda Snack Cheese & Pickle Lattice Pork Pies were eaten and 1 Asda Mini Pork & Stuffing Pie devoured. One pie was taken along to a meeting as 'brain food'. Both types of pie offered similar pastry to the ones eaten in the morning. However the pork and stuffing was found to be more fatty. All we considered by SJL to be good variations of the standard pork pie. Without the additional flavours this many pork pies would have been sickly. There were excess pies which were offered to colleagues although only one colleague took up the offer. At this point SJL found the taste of pie beginning to seriously repeat on him. Lots of coffee was drunk to try and suppress this.
1 pie eaten @ 50g and 199kcal
2 pies eaten @ 60g and 219kcal - Total 8 pies eaten @ 2043 kcal

The Cheese & Pickle Pork Pie

After leaving the office SJL had a sudden urge for a pie a bit more special than the others consumed so far. The others had been solid performers but there were certainly no gourmet pies. Hence SJL headed to Canteen on Baker Street which had been reviewed before and he knew they served some top London pies. However this is a restaurant so SJL was pleased when they agreed to do a take away pie for him. Unfortunately he didn't realise he was ordering a whole pie meal in a box! This unfortunately came at the standard restaurant price as well. However, this didn't stop the Canteen Celeriac, Mushroom and Leek Pie from being a fantastic pie. The Canteen pies always seem to achieve such a fantastic Colour and Condition. The pastry was gooey on the inside and crispy on the outside. The flavour was unusual but worked well. The crunchy celeriac and the soft mushroom provided good counterpoints to each other. The only downside is that the meal seems quite small for the price, especially when not eating the veg and mash!
1 pie eaten @ ~ 250g and 600kcal - Total 9 pies eaten @ 2643 kcal

Canteen Celeriac, Mushroom and Leek Pie

Arriving home the family had already been tucking into an Asda Chicken & Gravy Pie and Asda Steak & Winter Vegetable Pie so SJL grabbed a couple of slices of the action. At this stage perhaps SJL had just eaten too many pies but these failed to impress. Allegedly the chicken pie had puff pastry but this wasn't noticable as both had quite dry pastry. They were also quite thin so not a lot of Capacity. The chicken pie tasted particularly mass produced. The steak and winter vegetables at least gained some points for doing something a bit different. However there are nicer pies at this price.
1 pie eaten @ 138g and 337 kcal
1 pie eaten @ 138g and 382 kcal - Total 11 pies eaten @ 3362 kcal

The two Asda family sized pies

There were some near misses, at one point SJL accidentally ate some cabbage but this was safely spat out. One noticeable effect was a constant thirst due to the salty pies. But in the end a whole day was covered with only pies eaten and a record number of pies consumed in one day on the Pierate Ship. A learning experience, this showed that other food really isn't necessary. Why isn't everything encased in golden pie pastry?

Asda - Mini Pork & Apple Pies - 4.35/7
EAT - Steak & Ale - 4.25/7
Asda - Mini Pork & Stuffing Pies - 4.30/7
Asda - Snack Cheese & Pickle Lattice Pies - 4.35/7
Canteen - Celeriac, Mushroom & Leek Pie - 5.85/7
Asda - Chicken & Gravy Pie - 3.35/7
Asda - Steak & Winter Vegetable - 3.85/7

SJL Pie Count Day Two: 11
SJL BPW Total: 12


Pierateer RAS feels quite small and insignificant sitting next to SJL’s quite incredible #onlypiesallowed challenge today, but that didn’t stop him attending the Aston University Pie Night put on by Catering@Aston and having a very nice Chicken and Mushroom Pie (see separate review) and also providing Mr Kipling Apple Pies to another three colleagues at work. A number of colleagues had a look at the pie blog and planned to suggest good pies they’d eaten.

RAS Pie Count Day Two: 1
RAS BPW Total: 3


After the enormity of SJLs efforts on Day 2 of BPW, Pierateer TJP feels that the single medium-sized Pork Farm pork pie purchased from Sainsbury's delivered little to the Pierateers accumulated pie total. It was a decent enough pie, however, and the full review will be coming soon.


TJP Pie Count Day Two: 1
TJP BPW Total: 3

Day Two Total: 13
British Pie Week Total: 18

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Following the recent emptypiegate scandal, I thought it would only be fair to give ASDA a chance to redeem themselves. I head to the supermarket giant's frozen section and pick up a pack of 4 ASDA Steak and Gravy pies (624g) for a bargain-bucket price of £2. £2 for four pies? ASDA seem to be giving them away at that price, especially since my recent ASDA pie purchase set me back £2.88 for a single pie. Is this a false economy, though? Have I bought another empty pie of disappointment?

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Peppa Pig and Evie

Before I start, let me just clarify that no Peppa Pigs were harmed in the making of this pie. And also that Peppa Pig didn’t eat all the pies, as I fortunately got my hands on one before we met her.


Score: 5.4/7

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ASDA Bistro Ultimate Steak Pie Review

After seeing this badboy "Ultimate Steak Pie" advertised on the television, I felt it was my duty to take a detour on my way home. It was by no means my local supermarket, but I just had to visit ASDA to get my hands on what could potentially be the biggest overstatement of the year. How could a pie be the "ultimate" pie? Could it really be that good that all other manufacturers would raise their hands and say "No, you've got us there, we can't better that so were packing up and pawning all our assets"? I simply had to find out.


Taking this pie out of the box, it has a special feel already. If feels solid, weighty, dense. If the eating doesn't go so well I could use this as a paperweight or doorstop. I love the appearance, and how it's sprinkled with black pepper. This is high quality at its most obvious.

Pie in oven. Such a beautiful sight for any Pierateer, especially when it's an Ultimate Steak Pie!




Cracking open the pie, the quality chunks of steak are immediately apparent. There's a great steak:gravy ratio, and the content is a decent proportion of the intra-pastry cavity. It is a taste sensation - everything about this pie is fantastically excellent. The pastry is perfectly crunchy, and the meat melts in the mouth like it should do. Good job ASDA!!




ASDA Bistro Ultimate Steak Pie
Score: 6.49/7
TJP

Note: This pie has now been ranked as 4.23/7 due to a second rating of this pie that was extremely disappointing - see the video to see how bad this second rating of this pie was. I Made a Mistake, I Ate the Great Ultimate Steak Pie

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