Rating the steak football pie at Doncaster Rovers by Pukka Pies

Pukka Pie at the Keepmoat Stadium, Doncaster

Situated on the edge of town, the Keepmoat Stadium is your standard, new out-of-town football stadium that certainly impresses on the eye. But in these new, slightly monotonous out-of-town stadiums it therefore makes the little things, like the warm welcome given by the match day stewards and the posters they put up to welcome the away fans, that bit more personalised. Seeing a photo of Wycombe's new joint-top league goalscorer "The Beast" Akinfenwa on the wall as I walked into the away end of the Keepmoat Stadium was therefore a welcome addition, and it was good to see a decent selection of pies on offer too. The other familiar sign on the wall was for Pukka Pies, reassuring me that the pies should be of a decent quality.

After a reasonably long journey up to Doncaster I wasn't going to hang about, so after grabbing a steak Pukka Pie from the kiosk and taking a quick photo in my seat, I set about tucking into the crisp, golden flaky pastry. As is often the case with a hand-eaten Pukka, the meat and gravy has slightly tipped to the bottom of the pie, meaning the first bite or two were rather filling-lite. But it didn't take too long to get into the meaty steak chunks and the pie was well filled, not too soggy on the base and crisp on the lid. The capacity was decent, though not filled to the brim, so some points had to be deducted there. But overall, as with many a football Pukka Pie, it filled the hole well and didn't disappoint.

Cut through of the Steak Pukka Pie

The price of the pie was £3.30, which is on the more expensive end of the football pie price range (especially as it was a Pukka) but I would have happily had another. Certainly not the Don of all football pies, as can be seen in it's placement in the PIEremiership Table, but a decent effort none-the-less!

Pukka Pies Steak Pie
Score: 4.36/7
[Colour 4, Capacity 4.5, Consistency 4, Condition 5, Chewiness 5, Cheapness 3, Content 5]

We've rated over 600 pies, including a number of football pies

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More about us and our football pie pedigree:

Sam and Rob being interviewed by BBC Sport's Azi Farni Watch the video on the BBC Sport website

Regulars to our pie blog will know we're the world's leading pie review blog - featuring over 600 pie reviews with multiple football pie media appearances! In 2014 we joined BBC Sport's Azi Farni at Morecambe FC, who make some of the best pies rated on Pierate (let alone football grounds) to discuss what makes the perfect football pie! Watch us featuring in the BBC Price of Football video here.

Check out our PIEremiership article and you'll find that Morecambe FC's Globe Arena is certainly the place to be for top football pies! Top of our football pie league and winners of the British Pie Awards twice, Morecambe FC make their pies in the kitchen on site by hand, rather than just buying them in! Back of the net!!

RAS

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Rating the beef and onion football pie at Stevenage FC by Pukka Pies

Beef and Onion Pukka Pie Review at Stevenage FC

Following a trip to London for Christmas drinks recently, it seemed an obvious op-pie-tunity to tick off another football ground in the area in the search for football’s best pies. This time we visited the Lamex Stadium, home to League Two side Stevenage FC.

Heading through the turnstiles, I immediately walked past the food shack for the away end, which was already tens of people long. However I wasn’t going to risk missing out on pie by waiting til half time, going for some chips and one of the many pies on offer. You’ll see from the photo I was purchasing from the imaginatively named “Tea Bar 4” from a heavily taped up menu board (one wonders what was previously offered under the red tape?!) but the pies had remained at £2.50, which is very reasonable for a football pie these days.

The food menu at "Tea Bar 4" at Stevenage Football Club

The pie itself was a standard Pukka Pies Beef and Onion pie, but presented well in a white plastic tray with plastic fork. While I have to admit it was additional to my needs, as a pick-up-your-pie-in-your-hands-and-eat-it kinda guy, I did appreciate that the option was there for the, perhaps slightly more civilised among us, to eat from a tray using a fork! (Still, nothing will compete with Kate, the #AwayDayPieGirl, and her personalised metal football pie fork!)

Beef and Onion Pukka Pie Review at Stevenage FC

I said it before but I’ll say it again - pie, tray and fork for just £2.50 puts a lot of clubs to shame (many Premier League clubs charge well over £3 for just a pie of the same brand!) But the big question was how the pie rated!

The lid was golden and flaky, as I’d expect from a well-cooked Pukka Pie, though Sam and I have certainly been to enough football games to know all is not always well when it comes to just a golden topped pie lid! Digging into the content, the beef and onion flavour was nice – not too liquid a gravy and a nice meaty mince flavour, however the capacity of the filling wasn’t great and to my disappointment I did notice what I had feared…

Crisp base of the Beef and Onion Pukka Pie at Stevenage FC

Mince had started to solidify on the bottom crust of the pie, much like the meat encrusting on your saucepan base if you forget to keep stirring your bolognaise properly! A classic sign of over-bake on the base of a pie, which was confirmed when I turned the base over and saw the over baked base. No soggy bottom in sight here but the other end of the pie base spectrum with an overly crisp base that was rather too solid to easily bite through. It had formed an almost biscuity layer, much like the Pukka rated at Wycombe’s ground recently.

While I enjoyed the rest of the pie, that base was severely over baked and screamed of sitting in a hot locker for too long. Alas this is a regular criticism of football pies, sometimes exasperated in smaller grounds where there is only one main kitchen pumping out pies for the whole ground. Not the worst pie I’ve had at a football ground, but that still doesn’t help it get a great position in the PIEremiership table – our football pie league.

Pukka Pies Beef and Onion Pie
Score: 3.68/7
[Colour 5, Capacity 4, Consistency 3.5, Condition 2.5, Chewiness 3, Cheapness 4.5, Content 3.25]

We've rated over 600 pies, including a number of football pies

In the match itself, an end-to-end battle led to an entertaining but goal shy 0-0 draw between Stevenage and Wycombe Wanderers. The two best chances went Wycombe’s way, with a near comical goal from the Wycombe keeper Scott Brown who took a free kick from the half way line that looped over the keeper, hit the underside of the crossbar and almost went in bar a goal-line clearance, and an Akinfenwa header which hit the post and went wide. (Note: The BBC article incorrectly assigns the comical free kick to our defender, but being at the game I can confirm it was our keeper who took the free kick – you can’t miss his kaleidoscope kit, believe me!!)

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More about us and our football pie pedigree:

Sam and Rob being interviewed by BBC Sport's Azi Farni Watch the video on the BBC Sport website

Regulars to our pie blog will know we're the world's leading pie review blog - featuring over 600 pie reviews with multiple football pie media appearances! Two years ago we joined BBC Sport's Azi Farni at Morecambe FC, who make some of the best pies rated on Pierate (let alone football grounds) to discuss what makes the perfect football pie! Watch us featuring in the BBC Price of Football video here.

Check out our PIEremiership article and you'll find that Morecambe FC's Globe Arena is certainly the place to be for top football pies! Top of our football pie league and winners of the British Pie Awards twice, they make the pies in the kitchen on site by hand, rather than just buying them in! We recently interviewed previous Head Chef Graham Aimson on his new adventure, but hope the pies at Morecambe stay top of the league in his absence!

RAS

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Wycombe Wanderers/Pukka Pies - Chicken & Mushroom Pie Review

We have eaten many pies at Wycombe Wanderers matches over the years whilst we follow our home town team through thick and thin. Sadly though in recent years the pies served at their home ground of Adams Park have been pretty terrible. They are currently languishing near the bottom of our Football Pie League. You can read more about this in our 'Pies & Lows of Following Wycombe Wanderers' article.


There has been a recent upturn in performance on the pitch but this sadly hasn't been matched by an upturn in pie form. On Saturday I attended the entertaining 0-0 draw with top of the table Exeter and was pleased to note that there was a change in pie supplier. Instead of the dodgy 'Bisto' brand pies, Wycombe have enlisted the help of the ubiquitous Pukka pie empire. As I got near to the front of the queue in the lower tier family stand I could see just one pie remaining. With all my mental strength I willed those in front to order something else. A couple of burgers disappeared and I was home and dry at the front of the queue. I had no choice of flavour, it was a Pukka Chicken & Mushroom or suffer the ignomy of a non-pie choice. My delight soon turned to dismay. What I had been served very much looked like the kind of pie that would be left til last. A gravy explosion had rented a gaping hole in the side of the pie. What was remarkable was that somehow the gravy had dried and burnt like a grotesque gravy icicle hanging off the edge of the crust. I had never seen anything like this before in many years of pie reviewing. This was a bad omen, indicating the pie had been cooked for too long. Indeed the sides and base of the pie were very burnt and dried out. It was quite difficult to actually eat because the pastry was so hard, especially at the bottom. It was also far too hot and took ages to cool down. This indicated the problem was probably down to the hot locker the pie had been sat in. Being set so hot it hadn't just kept the pie warm, it had continued cooking it until the pastry had become not much more than a husk to hold the filling. Fortunately the Chicken & Mushroom filling was still enjoyable. There certainly was scope for more pieces of mushroom and chicken but there was by no means an embarassing lack of content. The creamy sauce maintained a good balance of chicken and mushroom flavours (although I do like my mushroom to be subtle). It actually made a nice change to my usual choice of steak pie. However, this couldn't recover what was overall a very disappointing pie due to the pastry! Next time I will have to try and get a pie before the game rather than half time. Hopefully it won't be so dried out!


Chicken & Mushroom (Wycombe Wanderers/Pukka Pies) 
3.34/7

SJL

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Southend United/Pukka Pies - Chicken Balti Pie Review

Update 07/03/15 I had the same pie again in the 2014/15 season and it was very much to the same standard. If anything, I feel I may have been a bit harsh on it, the filling is quite tasty. I was glad to see that the curry pie mark on the wall was still there a year later! Come on Southend, do you never clean Roots Hall?!

I love a trip to Roots Hall, the home of Southend United because it means a trip to Southend. The Pierateers are known to be lovers of the crazy golf on the seafront. The recent match between Southend and Wycombe saw all the original Pierateers attend the match. We were all sat in the away end which has an indoor food counter selling Pukka pies near the entrance. It is nice that the food outlet is indoors but do bear in mind that this isn't a new stadium. Southend have been planning to move for sometime and it is a little run down, but old stadiums do at least have a bit of character. Roots Hall certainly does. Something interesting that we noted was that there was a mark on a nearby wall which looked exactly the same as the filling of the curry pie I had ordered! Does this indicate an angry fan had been throwing pies around?


So upon going to the counter I was pleased to encounter a good range of Pukka pies. Many of these we have reviewed previously in other places however the Chicken Balti stood out to me as one which had yet to be reviewed. It arrived warm in a plastic wrapper. This plastic wrapper option is fairly common at a football ground, I think because they have to heat up lots of pies at once it allows them to do some in advance and helps keep them warm. It seems like they heat the pies inside the wrapper and I am always amazed at how it doesn't melt. Actually I say that but this one did melt onto the metal foil case a little. It got me wondering whether this Pukka pie was the same as an unwrapped Pukka pie. This variety do often seem to arrive dried out, but this may be more down to the nature of keeping them warm for some time.



Condition - 5.0/7 - The pie arrived in good condition with a little curry sauce having oozed out the sides.

Colour - 3.0/7 - The colour was good in that it was nice and brown but it was too matt effect and not enough gloss effect indicating a potential dry pastry problem. This didn't appeal to me. There was a little bit of yellow curry sauce on the outside which had oozed out.

Cheapness - 4.0/7 - At £2.70 this was a pretty standard price for League Two.

Capacity - 5.4/7 - This pie was quite tall which gave for a decent Capacity.

Content - 5.5/7 - I enjoyed the content of this pie, it was quite spicy, which I liked, often football curry pies lack a bit of a kick. It didn't taste of generic curry sauce but what I expect Balti to taste like. However, the meat content was a bit lacking and there were only small pieces.

Chewiness - 4.0/7 - There wasn't any chewiness of the filling as it was mainly mushy. The pastry was really quite dry and was flaky rather than chewy. There wasn't really much to get your teeth into with this pie and it did miss the optimum texture.

Consistency - 4.0/7 - As an overall package, this pie just about worked. The high liquid content of the filling made up for the dryness of the pastry but it was all a bit too mushy with no bite to either the filling or the pastry.



A decent performance by the Southend pie but not enough to challenge at the top of our Football Pie League. The fact that this pie arrived wrapped and was also so dry encouraged me to do a little research, is a Pukka pie always the same or do they sell variations of the same pie. Looking at their website it seems that there is quite an array of options for buying Pukka pies for catering. You can get them pre-baked, unbaked, frozen, unfrozen, wrapped or unwrapped. With all these different options, in addition to the cooking options, no wonder there is such a variety in Pukka performance from one football ground to another.

The match itself was dominated by Southend up until they scored in the 63rd minute. After this Wycombe seemed to wake up a little and stopped just aimlessly hitting long balls. The Wycombe equaliser was gained in comical style after a strong strike from Paris Cowan-Hall ricocheted off the cross-bar, hit the back of the Southend keeper and then slowly trickled over the line.

Chicken Balti (Southend United/Pukka)
4.41/7

SJL

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Pukka Pies Peppered Steak Pie Review
Mention “peppered steak” and “pastry”, and I bet you’ll think of a Ginsters peppered steak slice. Well that’s what I thought of anyway (oops, maybe I should mention that I thought of a slice!).
But no, the reality is that Pukka Pies are now selling Peppered Steak Pies!
Naturally, faced with a new Pukka Pie flavour, I just had to try one.


As you can see, the colour is the classic golden Pukka Pie colour. On opening the pie for the cross-sectional view, you can see there is a slight air-gap at the top of the pie, although nothing too disastrous.
However, as you can see in this photo, the contents do look quite gloopy, with not a lot of discernable steak pieces. But more importantly, if you look closely you can see some black specks within the filling – because yes, this pie is rather peppery. And by rather peppery, I mean rather too peppery! They weren’t lying when they said this was a peppered steak pie, because my word the pie tastes strongly of pepper. For me, there was too much pepper.
On the positive side of things, the pie was cheap. Pukka Pies tend to vary in cost in supermarkets from about £1 to £1.80.
Pukka Pies Peppered Steak Pie
Score: 4.11/7
TJP

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Pukka Pies Steak and Cheese pie review
There’s no punnage and japery to be found here with this solid performance from Pukka Pies.

Contrary to some other steak and cheese pies we’ve tried (often steak and stilton), the cheese in this pie is actually cheddar. At £1.80, it’s a price you can’t really complain about – and you’ll even find them cheaper than that when they’re on a deal in the supermarkets. So how does it rate? Let’s open up this puff pastry marvel and have a look inside.

My first impression is that there is a bit too much of an air gap to my liking. I like my pies filled to capacity, but this is filled to barely over 50%. It will lose marks there. There a good amount of gravy though, but not too much that it isn’t oozing out over my plate. The puff pastry is very light and flaky; in fact, it’s rather too flaky, I think! It is rather crumbly and creates a bit of a mess over the plate when you try and cut it.
The steak isn’t chewy, and the gravy is of a pleasant consistency albeit a little bit gloopy. Previous steak and cheese pies I’ve tried in the past have been quite overwhelming in their saltiness, but this pie wasn’t. The flavour of the cheddar came through nicely without being too overbearing. It was certainly a pleasant and cheap affair, but the lack of capacity in this pie and the very flaky pastry let it down somewhat.
Pukka Pies Steak and Cheese
5.06/7
TJP

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Pukka Pies Microwaveable Pie Reviews: Chicken Balti Pie and Potato, Cheese and Onion Pie

The Earth spins on its axis. The sun rises. The moon falls. The sun falls. The moon rises. We're machines of perpetual motion, working hard all day, on and on and on to make money. Pounds. Dollars. Yen. Euros. Rupees. Stock market news wraps itself round shimmering buildings dressed in glass. Suited men and women hurry up escalators, down escalators, up flights of stairs, down flights of stairs. We rush to get to work. We rush to get out of work. We rush to make money, then we rush to spend it.

Pukka Pies' 3 1/2 minute pie

Chicken Balti cross-section

First thing that strikes me is, in my opinion, how dry this pie is. I need to wash each mouthful down with water. The pastry is dry (and deliberately so, I imagine, so that it doesn't go chewy and soggy in the microwave). The lack of gravylicious gravy makes the meat dry, and I find the bottom of the pie has a tinge of burn to it so that the pastry is a bit crispy and...dry. The chicken is actually fine otherwise - not too chewy - but I feel that there's significant compromises being made here so that the pie is microwaveable. I'm really not convinced that a microwaveable pie is what the people want, and certainly not if this is the end result. The balti tasted alright, I suppose. But there wasn't any richness to it, or any smoothness. I wanted to melt away with this pie, into exotic far-away lands. Instead, I had to keep sipping at my glass of water while desperately trying to find some gravy to dip my chips in.

Incidentally, I also found this Pukka Pies 3 and half minute microwaveable Potato, Cheese and Onion pie, also in the frozen section of the supermarket.

Pukka Pies Potato, Cheese and Onion microwaveable pie

The problem with this pie turned out to be quite the opposite to the chicken balti pie reviewed above. The end result of the microwaving process was quite a soggy pie. Examining the base of this specimen, however, it seems that I've managed to burn it. It seems quite odd to me how the crispiness of the pie differs throughout its various sections.

The overall taste of the pie was, in my opinion, quite strong in it's cheese and oniony-ness, to which my personal palate isn't suited. Perhaps you need to give this pie a go if you are a fan of cheese and onion, but since in my household the cheese and onion crisps are the last to go from the multipack, I'm not convinced that fans of cheese and onion do actually exist.

These microwaveable pies are certainly convenient, but I am personally finding it difficult to nail the cooking process. I have had a pie that's too dry, one that was a bit soggy, and one that was really quite soggy. Am I doing something wrong? Or should we all just stick to oven cooking pies in the future?

Pukka Pies Microwaveable Chicken Balti Pie
Score: 3.2/7
TJP

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50 Pukka Years!

Celebrating 50 years of Pukka Pies

So there we have it. On Thursday 20th June 2013, we celebrated 50 pukka years of Pukka Pies! And what a 50 years it has been, a company rising up from the Storer family kitchen to a whopping 60 million Pukka Pies sold each year. That's a lot of pie!

Take the Steak and Kidney Pukka Pie, which still uses the same recipe as it was originally designed with. Pukka Pies continues to go from strength to strength and it is a pleasure to see them in fish and chip shops and football stadiums (and supermarkets to!) up and down the country.

And as if working for Pukka Pies wasn't an awesome enough job already, to celebrate the 50th Anniversary they've only gone and given their employees a bonus Pukka Pie Holiday (way better than a bank holiday in our eyes!) While we sadly couldn't make it to the 50th celebrations, we hope everyone had a pukka time at Pukka Pies HQ. Oh, and of course the Pierateers had to have a Pukka Pie last Thursday to celebrate in our own special way!

Check out our Pukka Pie reviews here:

The 4 minute pie? Surely it's not possible!
We are family, yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah...
Are you a Piefectionist?

Or check out when Pukka Pies hit the headlines here:

Pukka Pies await £40 payment from football club
Snooker Championships get Pukka deal!

Or find out the answer to:

The age old question: Do (Pukka) pies taste as good in Wales?


And finally, to end an article like this, there's only one thing you can say: Here's to the next 50 years... Pukka Pie anyone?!

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If you've ever bought a Pukka Pie, you'll know it's essential not to compromise - and always oven cook your pie rather than microwave it! So imagine my surprise when I spot these frozen Pukka Pies that are specially made for the microwave. Also shocking is the crumbly shortcrust pastry - a shock departure from the puff pastry that adorns the standard Pukka Pie.

After 4 minutes in the microwave (700W), the pie is sitting nicely with some alphabet potato shapes. But my first doubts about the microwaveable pie arise - you would usually have a pie with chips which takes a good 14 minutes in the oven anyway! So unless you're having the pie on its own, you're not really saving any time. However, the potential rapid access to a pie makes the microwaveability a winner!

A look at the content. There are obvious chunks of chicken and the pie is filled to capacity. Excellent! Or "pukka", as Jamie Oliver might say!



I really enjoyed this pie. The meat was not chewy, and the pastry was tasty. As expected with a pie that is microwaved (especially from frozen), the pastry was a little soggy and lost out on the crunchy flakiness that you would achieve with an oven pie. But you have to balance the convenience with taste, and I would say that on balance the convenience did not act too considerably to the detriment of taste. Great work Pukka Pies! Now invent some new flavours :P

Score: 5.5/7

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You may wonder why we’d review an All Steak Pukka Family Pie when we’ve already had the delight of an All Steak Pukka Pie... but that would be your error! You see the Family version could be argued to be a whole different ball game. After all, the size of a Family pie is definitely 3, if not 4 times bigger than your average chip shop Pukka, so you definately get a slightly different flavour as a result. In fact, the pie was eaten by 2 people to ensure that it could all be eaten in one sitting and give a more accurate review score!




The foil tin informs you that with Pukka Pies you “don’t compromise!” – but with a greater crust to filling ratio in the Family version, the Pukka Family pie does unfortunately compromise some of its score as a result of this poorer crusting. While it wasn’t as soggy as the smaller versions (in fact, it was very crispy!) the over-crustacean of the pie was a drawback noted by both reviewers. The filling – both its meatylicious steakiness and the lovely gravy - was however very good and it would defo be recommended for any family or indeed any very hungry pie fan! Scoring just lower than the individual Pukka Pie, it should still be on everyone’s birthday wishlist.

Score: 4.3/7

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Tonight I have been most eating an All Steak Pukka Pie.

Everyone knows Pukka Pies, they are one of the most iconic brands of modern Britain. If you're partial to a pie from the chippy then you've almost certainly eaten one. "Calm down, we've all had a few, so why do you need to write a review?" I hear our loyal readers saying. The answer is simple. Never in the course of pie production has so much been owed by so many to so few. This family business sends out 50 million pies and pasties each year from 'the most modern pie production facility in Europe'. It is my duty as a true Pierateer to walk this familiar road once more for the sake of putting the record straight.

But enough of that, on with the review. As you can see from the piecture there is a good amount of filling in this Pukka Pie, they could've crammed in more but then it might have leaked so i'm not going to complain about that. It is of course not all steak. Ample amounts of a deliciously thick gravy has become something of a Pukka Pies trademark. There is a good amount of meat in there which was flavoursome but slightly too chewy. Then to my horror I realised that one of the pieces of meat was just a huge chunk of fat. To be fair though, I have never had this experience with a Pukka Pie before.

The pastry is very soggy which is possibly not the connoisseur's choice but it does actually taste alright. However it all adds to the slightly stodgy feel of Pukka Pies. I've tried eating more than one Pukka Pie at a time and its not the best experience, they're just too heavy.

Overall there is a reason why Pukka Pies are so popular. They are good middle of the road value for money pies. You also know exactly what to expect when you buy one. This was from Sainsbury's but it tasted identical to those sold in a chip shop. So unlike their adverts getting a Pukka Pie is a compromise but its like the compromise of buying a Ford instead of a Jaguar. You don't want to break the bank but you still need to get from A to P.

Colour 6/7
Consistency 6/7
Capacity 4/7
Chewiness 2/7
Cheapness 5/7
Content 4/7
Condition 5/7

Score: 4.6/7

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Here are the Pierate Ship we are thrilled that one of our followers has already drawn our attention to a pie-related news story. With your continued lookout we can be sure that no thrilling pie news goes under our radar (or out of view of our telescope up in the Crows Nest).

Yes, this is the news that one of Britain's favourite pie manufacturers, Pukka Pies, will be sponsoring the 2009 UK Snooker Championships which takes place in December. We're slightly baffled by the link between pies and snooker, though we can be sure that with such a large television exposure there will be a huge "cue" at the chip shops!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/snooker/8356164.stm

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