Birds Eye Frozen Fish/Chicken vs Fresh and Sausages

MallyGirl

Fusspot wrote: »

I do have a slow cooker but I find food doesn't taste the same in it and I don't want to do fresh chicken in the oven as I find it too dry.

For dinner last night I chopped an onion and put it in the slow cooker, put 3 chicken legs on top, sprinkled with a bit of chopped chorizo (because it needed eating up), S&P, and some smoked paprika. It sat on low all day. Towards dinner time I chucked in some chopped mushrooms after skimming off the fat as I had left the skin on the chicken. Not dry at all even though I had added no liquid. Very tasty and very little effort. I had defrosted the chicken legs over night.
I am gradually working out what we like from the SC - we don't like any sort of mince dish as it goes watery, but a slow cooked massaman curry on the other hand goes down a treat.

Mr_Singleton

Petula wrote: »

pay no attention to the sweeping statements brigade

What makes 'ready meals' (covers a LOT) healthy or unhealthy is what's in them, just the same for home cooked versions. Pay attention to the ingredients list and nutritional information and, if there is a choice, how you cook them.

You do the best you can do with what you have to work with, those that judge can take a flying leap :rotfl:

I made bread today using a total of 4 ingredients.... interestingly the last time I looked supermarket bread had about 15 ingredients.

Make a meal now put it in the fridge..... would you want to eat it after its been sat there for a month? No?? thats what your doing when you eat ready meals. Why do ready meals contain so many synthetic (bad for you??) nutrients? its because the industrial manufacturing methods used to make them strips them of there natural ones. To try and claim that a 'ready meal' cooked in a factory making 250,000 meal portions a day is healthy is just plain silly in my view. Its why the food industry is so highly secretive about its practices.

suki1964

End of the day, life is a balance

Myself I don't see that jars and ready meals are a problem, if used as part of a balanced diet

And being able to understand labels


I don't know if you have the same adverts in GB as we have. Right now McDonald's have an ad on to about how their nuggets are pure chicken breast

They claim, no nasties, just pure NI chicken

However they don't show how one is made, nor explain the chicken breast is actually mechanically retrieved , reformed and shaped



I do buy processed chicken. However I choose to buy real chicken, goujons instead of fingers, fillets instead of steaks


It's learning what the description means that's the key in my mind


Op, you need to learn what labels are really telling you and then base your choice on knowledge

Butchers sausages can sometimes be worse for you then supermarket sausages. Butchers don't have to show a label declaring all ingredients

My rule of thumb is buy whatever is less messed about. You don't get chicken or fish steaks in the wild, nor fingers

Check the meat / fish content compared to others. If I'm buying a bit of chicken I want it to be 95% or more ( in prepared as we know there's seasonings, water etc added )

Buying frozen veg, makes sense. Usually fresher then fresh. When DH worked away, he lived on the frozen steam veg, and microwaved spuds to pad out his ready meals. He survived for years, his health didn't suffer


But he did so much enjoy being home and having a home cooked,from scratch meal

Blackbeard_of_Perranporth

I was warned about double processed foods on my Production Engineering apprenticeship. That is food processed once, then processed again. Such as the bakery make a loaf of bread. Then the sandwich maker uses that loaf, to create sandwiches! Or in the ready muppet meal salted meal type, we mechanically butcher the meat, coook it and add twopence worth of spuds and veg, and charge a fortune for it.

Me, I take fruit salad to the mill, made fresh each week. Pineapple, orange, sometimes I include apricot if available. It lasts all week. It costs about £2 for all fresh. I could get pre chopped in a protective atmosphere, nitrogen, for £1.50 a shot, but my Friday pack up is probably fresher than the store packed, which was at the factory, stored for two days, processed day three. Shipped to warehouse day four. Shipped to shop day five. Put on shelf day six. Sat there fir two days before being picked. Eaten on day ten.

Or the pineapple. Shipped to warehouse day two. Shop. Day three. Sold day four. Eaten day five to nine. Even Fridays fruit salad fresh made is less old than the factory prepared food.

I know my choice!

[Deleted User]

I don't eat or buy ready meals only because
A I have the time to cook my own
B. I can make twice as much for half the price
I have no disregard for the products though, as its probably easier and tastier today than they were when they first started appearing on the shops shelves and freezer.
Frozen veg are a boon for folk who perhaps are pushed for time or space and any veg if its frozen will have less waste than fresh.
So I can see things from both sides I have friends who because of age and various infirmities can only manage to cook from freezer to table but as long as they are happy to eat it then good for them and its better for an elderly person to eat something than just exist of toast and tea.
So if its what you like then go for it I must admit my one stipulation is a decent high meat content sausage I would rather pay a bit more for a decent banger than eat one that looked like a dead finger
But then one or at the most two good bangers are better than four indifferent ones.Plus when I buy the more expensive ones I always portion them up in packs of two and freeze anyway

Slowly57

I think we can all pick and carp about food choices forever - but at the end of the day it is down to the individual. Some folks don't have the means or inclination to be fussed. Quite frankly, you get so many scares around health and food - if you wait long enough, it often becomes a bit contradictory. Also, I do think that some teeth-sucking and tutting media are all about food shaming and sentimentality - rather than being pragmatic. They often contain a lot of common sense but you really do have to sit through a load of patronising guff to get at it.

I think it has got to the point where people are too anxious to shop for food, never mind cook it!

[Deleted User]

Indeed Slowly 57 if my old Mum god rest her had fussed about food back in the 1940s-50s none of us kids would have eaten. We had a choice eat it or go without and we all survived eating the most revolting stuff at times.

I thinkI have a cast-iron tummy. I remember eating a tinned fish called snoek and it was appalling, but eat it we did and survived, and I hate to think where it came from

I have never seen it since and boiled tripe and onions was another 'delicacy' that I have nightmares about Like eating a boiled washing up cloth. ready meals in comparison would have been a doddle :):)

Blackbeard_of_Perranporth

Still want that pre packed over priced food?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3948162/Salmonella-warning-supermarket-bags-salad-Broken-leaves-help-bug-grow-washing-won-t-make-difference-experts-warn.html

-taff

If you like frozen sausages, buy ones from the supermarket and freeze them yourself. If you find them on yellow sticker day/time, so much the better.

Turkey breast steaks are quite cheap, you can dip in flour, then egg, then breadcrumbs, add some thyme to the breadcrumbs, messy but really nice. You can also freeze them and stick them in the oven if you like.

Butternut squash will make a thick soup/stew, you can add more veg stock to thin down, some chilli/parika/cumin or whatever for spice.

Yu could try cooking your chicken in the slow cooker, it will be juicy but it probably won't be brown, but if you're not eating the skin anyway, itll be fine.

You don't sound that confident, but honestly, as long as you don't burn it, most food will be edible when you finish.

I have to keep telling my OH that once you've mastered something, like spag bog for example, you just apply the same principle to any similar meal. So chilli, shepherds pie, hotpots, mince and gravy etc, all come from the spag bog....or vice versa...

machasraven

I used to analyse food and the one thing I will say about all the additives in your food is that they only ever test them separately as safe for comsumption not for any reactions when mixed. I now very rarely ever eat anything that is not cooked from scratch.
Even though butchers sausages do not have an ingredients list they are tested for contents more often than supermarket food.