Blog

I’m currently thinking out a big post on the difference between enjoying food and enjoying cooking, which will probably arrive next week. In the meantime, though, I’ve been making some revelatory discoveries – convenience foods which are actually good!

The entire thing started when I discovered the Freshly Frozen Company’s boil-in-the-bag lamb shanks, which they claim to have been “slow cooked”, and which arrive vacuum sealed in a temperature-safe bag. Hmm. Cooked slowly in a sealed bag then frozen. Could it be…

Yep, I’m pretty sure that this stuff is basically sous-vide lamb shank, available to buy and eat whether you’ve got a water bath or not. And it’s gorgeous. The meat’s tender but still juicy, falls off the bone, is full of flavour, and the sauce is rich, thick and tasty. I’d prefer a slightly larger shank, and there’s generally too much sauce, but honestly, for zero-hassle food, this is pretty staggering – and you can microwave it in about 16 minutes.

They aren’t full of terrifying additives either – just xanthan gum, a couple of modified starches, and an acidity regulator I don’t recognise but looks to do roughly the same job as Sodium Citrate.

(Buy ’em from Sainsburys in the UK – anyone know a US supplier?)

Second up, a friend of mine recommended porridge as an excellent way to start the day. My historical hatred of the stuff seems to have faded, and I was getting a bit tired of breakfasts consisting of two eggs and whatever cold meat was in the fridge (largely because eating two eggs and a pack of ham every day is expensive), so I ventured out to see what Progress had wrought.

And I discovered one of the best-designed convenience foods ever.

See, Quaker Oats have apparently been moving with the times. And since their product line is pretty simple (In that it’s "oats"), they’ve obviously had time to think about their market. Enter… the oat packet.

Small waxed packet of oats. Tear it open, dump into a bowl, fill the packet with milk (yes, it’s waterproof and designed to be exactly the right size so that you don’t need to find a measuring container), dump that in the bowl too, and microwave for just under 3 minutes.

Hot, filling, tasty breakfast. Incredibly filling, actually – to the point where I’ve nearly forgotten to eat lunch a couple of times since starting eating them. No additives at all apart from soya lecitin, which apparently stops it all boiling over in the microwave (they actually tell you this on the packet – handy tip!). 20 packs for £2.95.

And finally, that old favourite of penniless grad students and film directors – ramen. I became rather familiar with ramen a few years ago when I decided for various complicated reasons to cut wheat out of my diet for a bit. However, not all ramen are created equal.

A knowledgable friend of mine tells me that the quality of ramen can easily be determined by the number of different packets of sauce and flavouring you get with the noodles. One packet – bad. (Mmm, Supernoodles). Two packets – OK. Four packets? Well, that’s Indomie.

Mostly offering Indonesian-style dishes like Nasi Goreng, I was absolutely stunned at the taste of these 30p ramen when I discovered them a month or so ago.

They’re pretty heavy on the MSG, so if you dislike that you’re not going to be a fan, but otherwise they’re incredible. Fry an egg and some vegetables to go with them, and you’ve got a dish that you probably couldn’t tell came from a ramen packet. In five minutes. For a decent lunch. For 30p.

There’s some damn good convenience food out there these days. Anything you’d recommend? Or are there things out there you’d recommend that we avoid at all costs, instead?