Newport County Football Club/Peter's Pie Reviews

Welsh pie maker Peter's are a bit like an old friend of Pierate. Common at fish and chip shops and also served at our home town football club we have eaten quite a few in our time. We also reviewed quite a few of their pies although it is notable we haven't reviewed any for a while. It is also notable that I haven't see many at football grounds recently, which is apparent by the lack of Peter's pies in our PIEremiership Football Pie League.

A trip to Peter's heartland in Wales help rectify this as Pierateers Rob and Sam headed over to the Newport County vs. Wycombe Wanderers match. Upon entering the away end of Rodney Parade we were a bit worried to see that the catering options were dominated by burger and chips. However, when we asked they went and fetched some hot pies from another outlet. Phew!



Newport Football Pie Review

Rob went for a Chicken Pie and Sam opted for the Steak at the steep price of £3.50 which had me frustrated again at the #PieHighPrices. This price was surprising given that Newport have told the BBC Price of football survey that their pies cost £2.60. We wondered if away fans were being fleeced with a higher price than home fans (as we found at Cambridge).



Peter's Steak Pie at Newport County

Whilst it was nice to reunited with Peter's pies again, after having reviewed nearly 600 pies we have tried a lot of very good pies. It is perhaps the case now that we have higher expectations than when we started on this pastry journey. Hence I did find my pie a bit disappointing. To be fair, this may not have been the fault of Peter's. It wasn't cooked very well. Often the case with football pies cooked in a rush, it had soft and stodgy pastry which didn't hold together well at all, I am not sure why so many football ground sell pies like this. My Steak pie fell apart completely although Pierateer Rob seemed to get on a little better with his.

Find out where this pie ranks in our Football Pie League



Peter's Chicken Pie

The filling for my steak pie wasn't bad. It had quite a lot of meaty chunks in a fairly standard, but tasty, onion flavoured gravy. The meat wasn't too chewy but it wasn't as soft as I remembered from Peter's pies. It also wasn't as flavoursome. Overall, if it wasn't for having no other pie option in the ground, I wouldn't be choosing to get this pie again.

The chicken pie eaten by Pierateer Rob had similar flaws to it. Again the pastry was far from ideal, collapsing under the soft and stodgy pastry. The chicken filling was quite nice, with the creamy sauce blending well with the chicken chunks. However it took a number of bites to even reach the chicken filling, with a rather large air gap and not overly strong capacity. And while the pie lid was quite crisp and tasty, the rest of the pastry was nothing to write home about and disintegrated far too easily. For a football pie, the filling flavour was reasonable (which doesn't say much for some of the lower rated pies in our PIEremiership table!) but he wouldn't choose to eat it again.

Peter's Steak Pie
3.75
[Colour 4/7; Consistency 3/7; Cheapness 3/7; Chewiness 3/7; Condition 4/7; Content 4/7; Capacity 3.75/7]
SJL

Peter's Chicken Pie
Score: 3.79/7
[Colour 4/7; Consistency 4/7; Cheapness 3/7; Chewiness 4.5/7; Condition 3/7; Content 4.5/7; Capacity 3.5/7]
RAS

Pierate is a pie review website charting a course to find the ultimate pie. For all the pies we have reviewed have a look at our Pie Rankings or find pies of a particular flavour under Pies: Categorised. Make sure you Follow @pierateersand let us know your thoughts!

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If you’ve kept your eyes on the pies, you might have noticed a new competitor enter the pie supermarket-place. Manufactured under the Heinz brand, these ‘Big Pies’ from Peters Pies are aiming to take a slice of the £1 price-point pie. But are these pies late on entering an already crowded marketplace?

I popped down to the local ASDA to get my hands on three of these pies. Priced at £1, that certainly sounds like great value for something that so readily promises to be “Big on Flavour”. These three pies are “Steak and Vegetable”, “Chicken and Leek”, and “Steak and Onion”.

We note that the Heinz “Big” brand (including soups, frozen meals and canned meals) is aimed primarily at the male market, thus these Big Pies will be a competitor to the male-orientated Hungry Joes pies we reviewed previously. Furthermore, Wales-based Peters Pies already produce a number of other similar pies already reviewed on Pierate. But clearly Heinz and Peters believe there is still a gap in the market to exploit – and let’s face it, who doesn’t want more pie?!

*Note that four different flavours of Heinz Big Pasties were also launched alongside these pies, but we have a strong (some say irrational) dislike for pasties on Pierate!*

So how to they rate on the Seven Cs?

First up is the Heinz Big Steak and Vegetable Pie

Out of the oven, this pie looks pretty standard. I’ve seen many a pie look exactly like this. Golden brown puff pastry lid, with paler, slightly-too-soft sides. There’s an attempt with crimping, but nothing particularly exciting. There’s no boil-out which is good, and also no cracks, so the condition of this pie is okay. Overall, the appearance of this pie is satisfactory but nothing very special.

Notably, though, this pie is not as big as one might expect for a Big pie. It is actually surprisingly small, and I pray that it is stuffed full of content otherwise I might be left still a bit hungry.

Hmm, no, it’s not really stuffed full of content. I’d say that’s about half-full, which in our books is a poor air:filling ratio. I am quite disappointed with that. Furthermore, the filling seems to be quite lacking in the “vegetable” promised by the name. There was a bit more vegetable than the solitary pea seen the photograph – but only a little bit more. The chunks of steak and wholesome vegetables certainly weren’t rolling out of the filling like the photograph would suggest.

The filling did taste quite nice – quite soupy. The steak was okay – not too chewy, and for the £1 price tag I was reasonably impressed. But what this pie really lacked was quantity of filling. I worry that Heinz/Peter’s have gone down this “Big” branding route, implying that these pies are for satisfying big appetites, but consumers will ultimately be left disappointed by the lack of “Big”ness.

Heinz Big Steak and Vegetable Pie
Score: 4.4/7

Heinz Big Chicken and Leek Pie

Like the steak and vegetable pie, this is a very classic look for a cheap supermarket pie – light golden brown puff pastry with pale sides.

Oh my, look at that enormous air gap at the top of this pie. That’s got to be less than 1/2 filling, right? More like 1/3? This is rather disappointing, especially given the photograph on the packet.

I wonder why on earth the pastry looks so different in my pie to the photograph. There seems to be a secondary layer of the puff pastry that has slipped down like a veil over the filling (which is remarkably not rolling attractively out of the pie as in the picture). Don’t you think the pastry on the box looks more like shortcrust that puff pastry?! Interesting.

Nevertheless, we soldier on. The filling is actually very pleasant. There is a nice taste of the leek, and the chicken chunks seem genuine and tasty. I like the filling – more so than the steak and vegetable, actually. The pastry, however, is pretty terrible in my opinion – it looks bad and tastes bland.

Heinz Big Chicken and Leek Pie
Score: 4.6/7

Heinz Big Steak and Onion Pie

We’re nearing the end of our romp through this Heinz/Peters pie selection, as now we come on to our final pie – the Steak and Onion. It looks very much like the previous two pies. Nothing huge to complain about – very plain. I’m having my pie with some peas, because you have to eat your greens when you’re eating so many pies! (Although SJL did do some science recently to show that eating a pie for every meal for a week can mean you lose weight!)

Again, this pie is rather underfilled, although not quite so badly as the other two – plus this pie doesn’t have the odd ‘pastry-veil’ hanging down like the chicken pie. I didn’t like the filling in this pie quite as much, though, and the steak seemed a little chewy to me. Again, I thought the pastry was bland and added little to the party, and the big chunks of potato seemed to be there just to take the place of steak rather than bringing anything to the table themselves. This isn’t really a pie I’d be desperate to put in my fridge/oven/mouth again, although it was by no means terrible. If I had some small change in my pocket and wanted a pie, and this was all that was available, then I’d go for it. Otherwise, I believe the other two Big pie options would be preferable.

Heinz Big Steak and Onion Pie
Score: 4.3/7

So overall, I felt these pies were cheap (great!) but underfilled and lacking in big appetite-bustingness, and with the exception of the chicken and leek they were a rather uninspiring entry into an already busy supermarket pie market.

Those scores again:

Heinz Big Steak and Vegetable Pie
Score: 4.4/7

Heinz Big Chicken and Leek Pie
Score: 4.6/7

Heinz Big Steak and Onion Pie
Score: 4.3/7
TJP

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Wycombe Wanderers/Peter's Pies - Chicken Curry Premier Pie Review

At Pierate we well know that football and pies are a match made in heaven, just have a look at our pie football league table. However, all too often the pies can be mass produced sub-standard fare, not living up to the excitment on the pitch. That was why it was so good to see the Morecambe Football Pies score so well in our recent review. But you can get good pies even if they aren't as hand crafted as those offered by Morecambe. The quest to find these took me to Adams Park, the home of Wycombe Wanderers Football Club.

In the past Wycombe pies have suffered from 'dry pie syndrome' where, despite potentially being decent pies I have found them to have sat around in a heater too long and hence dry out. This seems to have improved with myself and Pierateer ARL both picking up pies in good Condition. I opted for the Chicken Curry and ARL opted for the Steak which we have reviewed before. Both of these were from the 'Peter's Premier Pies' brand. I can tell this because they are much taller than the shallow 'oval' pies in the standard range (we have also reviewed these). For some reason the chicken curry pie came in a very plain packaging and didn't say 'premier' on it. However, according to their website, Peter's don't do a standard chicken curry pie so it must be 'premier'.

The choice of the premier range by Wycombe is a good one. The two offerings from the Welsh company that we have reviewed before both scored very well (Steak 5.75 and Steak & Fullers 5.20). At Wycombe they are retailing at £2.70 for just the pie. This may seem high compared to other hot pies, but of course football grounds tend to be more expensive so we take this into account. If you look at the BBC price of football raw data this is about average for League 2.


The pie looked quite good, standing tall which gave a good Capacity. The Colour looked a bit pale in places which hinted at soft pastry, which was indeed the case. I would like to see more of a golden colour. The pie passed the 'hand held' test which is vital for the perfect football pie. The pastry held together and the filling was thick. The Content was vibrant, not overly spicy but just enough to give it some flavour. It didn't do anything particularly special given that it was similar to standard chip shop curry sauce. The small amount of onion was a welcome addition. The chicken did retain some bite although it was suspiciously homogenous and of course tasted a bit mass produced. However, I still really enjoyed this as a change from steak pies which have been really in form for me. The pastry was a little too soft in my opinion, it was nice that it slipped down so easily but there wasn't much to get your teeth into. It also felt a bit stodgy.


Overall, this line up of Wycombe and Peter's is a good partnership. They have a bit of creativity going for the chicken curry pie option which hit the back of the net. It was vital that the pie was good because it was an otherwise disappointing game and result for Wycombe, losing in the last minute of injury time 1-0 at home to Accrington Stanley.



Chicken Curry (Wycombe Wanderer/Peter's)
5.02/7
SJL

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A pie eating competition of any sorts sounds pretty exciting. Imagine the glory that your feats of pie eating would bring if you won? The chance to gorge on pies while people look on and cheer is the stuff that dreams are made of. But what if you could stuff your face full of pies AND raise money for charity?!

Well with Peter's pies you can do just that! Peter's pies have teamed up with George Thomas Hospice Care in Cardiff to bring you a charity pie eating competition!

There are men and women’s challenges in two categories: fastest pie eaten and the most pies eaten in ten minutes.

The competition is free to enter; all challengers have to do is raise sponsorship for the hospice before they compete.

The event will be held at 7pm on Monday 24th February in Walkabout on St. Mary’s Street, Cardiff.

To request a fundraising pack, call Nicky Piper on 02920 524150 or email nicky.piper@gthc.org.uk

Good luck from the Pierateers to all who enter!

http://www.petersfood.co.uk/whats-new/hungry-for-pie-eating-success-sign-up-for-the-peters-and-george-thomas-hosp


SJL

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Peter's Steak Pie review

London 2012 venue 'The City of Coventry Stadium'

The pastry was golden and the filling piping hot (possibly even too hot – I had to wait a while for it to cool down!) The gravy was delicious and complimented the meat well, with my main disappointment being that the chunks of meat were a bit too large and therefore meat was not well spaced evenly throughout the pie but more in clusters. But the pie itself was a good effort, particularly appeasing the footie pie fan within me. While not a gold medal winning effort, it was certainly worthy of a medal and the Olympic movement should be happy with the pies on offer. What I only found out later was that this was in fact a Peter’s Steak Pie, for the branding had been removed pre-Olympic Games due to there not being an official Pie sponsor of the Olympic Games. It only begs the question “why is there not a pie sponsor for the Olympics?!?!”

Score: 5.75/7

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What is a pie? Listen in. We'll tell you what a pie is right here.

Peter's are a major manufacturer of pies in the UK and it was decided to investigate the difference between what they call a pie and what they call a slice. I've heard some people say that a slice is a type of pie. Let me show you they are quite different! There is an important quality of pies that we have mentioned before on this site, the height to width ratio. A slice and pie differ quite strongly in this area and this determines how much filling you get with your pastry. Hence it is not an arbitrary difference, they won't taste quite the same!

In the red corner we have a Peter's Mexican Chilli Beef Slice weighing in with a width of 15 cm and a megre height of just 2.75 cm. This gives a paltry height to width ratio of about 5.5 to 1. However this was a very nice product, considering it wasn't a pie. Its important to note that other pastry products aren't bad but the best of them will never be as good as the best pies.

Representing pies we have a Peter's Meat and Potato Pie. This has a shorter width of 10 cm and stands tall at 4.5 cm. This gives a beautiful height to width ratio of nearly 2 to 1. This gives the optimum pastry to filling ratio that we've been talking about here on The Pierate Ship. Just look at the picture of the two products side be side. This pie was delicious providing a lovely mellow flavour after the spicy slice. It was also very good value as Peter's normally are.

Peter's are one of the most popular manufacturers of pies in the UK and thus their standards are embedded in the mainstream pastry products market. Therefore they give an excellent bench mark for where the average man on the street draws the line between a pie and a slice.

The line will of course blur at some points but why risk it? Just grab yourself a healthy height to width ratio and don't make the school boy error of getting a slice by mistake!

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Peter's Steak and Kidney Pie Review

It may all seem like a case of déjà vu to our blog fans, but fear not! You’re not getting a repeat review of the same old Peter’s pie – this review is based on the standard Peter’s pie range (as opposed to the slightly more upmarket “Premier” range reviewed earlier this week, as we fail to leave any stone unturned (or should I say pie eaten) in our bid to bring you all the pie ratings you so dearly crave!


Taking a look at the packet, there’s one thing that immediately leaps out at you – “Peters – passion for flavour”. What a bold tagline! And with that, I ripped open the packet, slammed the pie on a plate and into the microwave it went for those long 90 seconds of pie heating heaven! But alas, when the pie came out, it didn’t fill me with quite the passion for eating as I had hoped for. And what certainly didn’t help was the huge piece of steak gristle I found upon splitting the pie in two! Shocking really! And certainly not off to a good start.


While I can confirm that the rest of the pie’s contents were nice and meaty, and the gravy was a very nice flavour, I couldn’t help but be slightly downcast after that initial bite. The pie did have quite a nice flavour, when you removed the gristle, but to say that it made me passionate would be a bit of overkill.

Overall, the colour was good, though it was a bit chewy and could have had a stronger capacity. Not the cheapest pie I’ve ever purchased, and would rather have the more luxury Premier Peter’s pie option. But alas, this was the only pie left in the local small supermarket!

Peter's Steak and Kidney Pie
Score: 4/7

RAS

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Peter's Premier Pie Steak and Fuller's Ale Pie Review

When something calls itself 'premier' or 'luxury' the initial instinct is often to be suspicious. I often refer to myself as the modern Albert Einstein but no matter how many times I say it, it doesn't become true, unfortunately.

Most of us in the UK are familiar with Peter's, one of the biggest selling pie brands who recently celebrated 40 years of pie making. This latest 'Premier' offering does look a bit more tasty than their standard pies, with a bigger size and of course bigger capacity. It is Steak and Fuller's Ale flavour which is fortunate as the Fuller's beer they have chosen is London Pride, one of my favourites.

Getting it out of it's very appealing case I took advantage of the quick microwave option. Have a look at the piecture, there is a good amount of content, it is in prime condition and has a lovely colour, so my initial impressions were very good. But we all know the proof of the pie is in the eating!

Just as I was about to eat it, it kind of collapsed. I put this down to the microwave option which unfortunately can make pastry a bit soggy and is not recommended for getting the best out of your pie. BUT we all know that a 99% perfect pie in 1m30secs is very tempting compared to the 100% in 25 minutes time! However I feel for this pie the pastry was very much in the Pukka pies style of a bit stodgy and soggy and it can't all be blamed on the microwave.

The gravy was delicious with a piefect amount of ale. It made me want to head down the pub, but alas there is little time for the pierateers to do such things when there is a whole world of pies waiting for them.

The main let down for this pie was the consistency or lack thereof. About half the pieces of meat were verging on what I would expect from a top of the range pie, but the other half were overly chewy. This is what I feel prevents it from claiming a spot in the Premier League. However, on balance it is good value on the cheapness front and I was a fan of this pie. It would probably make it into the Championship and with the pie market becoming ever more competitive it could prove to be an excellent new signing by Peter's.

Peter's Premier Pies Steak and Fuller's Ale Pie
Score: 5.2/7
SJL

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