Thai green curries are warm, ambient and have a refreshing zing as we head into autumn
I’m not a huge fan of ready meals but there are times when exceptions have to be made. A lamb hotpot or a beef wellington are far too time consuming to cook at home, and a ready-made supermarket concoction for a few pounds seems a small price to pay. And Charlie Bigham’s ready meals of course, I love every single one of them.
But there is one ready meal in particular I go for. A Thai green curry is my ideal autumn dish, a perfect thing to tuck into after the light, slimmed-down dishes of summer. I’ve tried cooking green Thai curries myself several times from scratch and I can never get it right, I don’t know why. The temptation is to use too much lime juice, and somehow I can never recreate the ambient heat of the curry with its refreshing zing and subliminal sweetness. My attempts always tastes distinctly odd, no matter how closely I follow the recipe.
It’s with a stomach yearning to be satisfied after a particularly restrained summer diet that I embark on trying four supermarket green Thai curries this week, from Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, M&S, Tesco – to see which, if any, hit the mark.
Sainsbury’s Thai Style Chicken Curry (£3.50)
Sainsbury’s ‘Thai Style Chicken Curry’ looks bang on brand with suitably green packaging and after a few minutes in the microwave, I have to say I’m pleasantly taken with this one. It’s got the full lime zestiness you expect from a green curry, thoroughly refreshing on the palate, the vegetable are soft and seem to meld beautifully with the sauce, as do the succulent pieces of chicken. If I had a complaint, it’s that it lack any kind of spicy kick but on the whole – a very decent effort. 4/5.
Waitrose Thai Green Chicken Curry (£5.10)
This tastes otherworldly delicious. I’d like to assure readers that I’m not a mole for Waitrose and I don’t make it my life’s mission to enthusiastically praise everything they do. But their ready meals… my goodness, I mean, even Charlie Bigham’s might struggle to compete with this absolutely knockout green curry. It’s zingy with a strong lemongrass flavour, it’s spicy enough, the slabs of British chicken are exquisite and the bamboo shoots give a real earthy substance to the dish. It may not be the cheapest ready meal but the extra £1.50 or so is worth it for the added dining pleasure. 5/5.
M&S Green Thai Chicken Curry (£5.30)
I’m of two minds about M&S Green Thai Chicken Curry. Everything about it is painstakingly authentic with attention to details, it has beautiful slabs of British chicken with flavours of coconut, ginger and lime, green beans, water chestnut and coriander. Yet it all comes together too heavily, the vegetables are hard, crunchy and stir-fried in a Chinese style, proving a bit of a distraction from the flavour of the dish, which is altogether more rugged and almost hoppy-tasting. Aficionados of Thai food may like this one best, my housemate certainly did, but to the casual diner it may be an acquired taste. 3/5.
Tesco Thai Green Chicken Curry (£3.30)
Another pleasing-looking ready meal in proper green packaging (I like to see literal branding in action), Tesco’s Thai Green Chicken Curry is an averagely zingy dish, with goblin shades of khaki and olive green. It’s utterly devoid of taste or satisfaction of any kind. This is your standard ‘can’t be bothered to cook’ option for the middle of the week, a low-cost ready meal that fills you up but isn’t prepared with love. This is a bland gruel and my heart and my stomach are yearning for more. Next! 2/5.
And the winner is….
Waitrose! I hate to be yuppyish or sing the graces of the nation’s self-consciously high brow supermarket (just look at a map of their locations) but they do ready-to-eat food incredibly well. That said, Sainsbury’s offers a perfectly tasty option at a relatively cheap price and M&S earthy offering, while not to my taste, may intrigue those with an adventurous palate to seek it out.
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