Ahhh, pie... The perfect winter warmer. Hearty, warming and absolutely delicious - well in their meat-based incarnations anyway. Sometimes the vegan alternatives can be a bit hit or miss.
We've already tried the Birds Eye Green Cuisine option and it was a really convincing alternative which took us right back to our childhood. James especially, likes trying meat alternatives - he went vegan for the health benefits - and so still wants to experience those flavours and textures where possible. So when we saw these pop up as an option on online shopping, it was rude to not give one a shot!
So is this pie as Pukka as the name suggests? Let's take a look.
First things first, the pastry. After a 30 minute stint in the oven, the pasty on ours came out lovely and crispy on top and the bottom of the pie was lovely and moist from the gravy inside, but the outside stayed remarkably dry - something the frozen pies always struggle with. Genuinely for vegan pastry they've done a cracking job with this.
So that's a big tick for the pastry, but what about the filling. This was a vegan chicken and mushroom pie and to be honest it tasted pretty much just like our memories of the non-vegan option. The gravy was slightly creamy, but still lovely and thick, the 'chicken' pieces didn't resemble any sort of meat, but were just soft enough and just squishy enough to mirror the texture well and the odd chunk of mushroom just blended in with the rest. While that description might not sound good, this is exactly what you want from a pie and we loved it.
With the pastry being spot-on and the filling being good too, it's really hard to find much to fault with this one. The only thing, if we're being really nit-picky, is that there could have been a little more filling, but it really didn't detract from the overall experience. All things considered, we'd say this beats out the Green Cuisine frozen pies on flavour and texture and this is our king of vegan pies for the moment.
Rating - 9/10
Delicious, filling and what a pie should be.