I tried supermarket chicken tikka masala ready meals – the winner was cheaper than Lidl and blew me away

CHICKEN Tikka masala is Britain’s favourite dish – so which supermarket does it best?

We tested curry and rice ready meals for one from major supermarkets like Tesco, Asda, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s, Aldi and Lidl.

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Here is our verdict on which is the best for quality and value for money.

We tasted all the curries and gave them a score out of ten for taste, taking into account how healthy they were based on levels of salt and saturated fat.

Then we gave them a separate score out of ten for value money.

Here’s how the curries scored out of 20 overall:

JOINT WINNER – Tesco Chicken Tikka Masala with Pilau Rice

• £3.25 for 400g, 81p per 100g
• Salt per meal = 1.6g (27% of recommended daily intake (RDI))
• Saturated fat per meal = 7.9g (40% of RDI)

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Tesco’s chicken tikka masala had a mild, creamy sauce with a strong tomato taste and not much spice, containing a fair amount of chicken.

The rice was a quality long-grain rice containing flavourful cardamom pods – and it stayed separate and didn’t clump on cooking.

This was also the joint-lowest in salt of all the products tested, although it had quite high saturated fat levels.

Overall, the sauce could have been tastier but the quality rice lifted the overall score.

• Taste = 7/10, Value for money = 7/10
• TOTAL SCORE = 14/20

Asda Chicken Tikka Masala with Pilau Rice

• £3.25 for 400g, 81p per 100g
• Salt per meal = 2.4g (40% of RDI)
• Saturated fat per meal = 5.5g (28% of RDI)

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Asda’s version had a tasty sauce, with more depth of flavour and spice than Tesco’s curry, but it contained the least chicken of all the products tested.

It also tasted very salty – not surprising considering the meal contained 40% of your daily salt allowance.

But it was the rice that really let this one down as it was broken into bits, so went mushy and clumpy on cooking.  

• Taste = 6/10, Value for money = 7/10
• TOTAL SCORE = 13/20

Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Chicken Tikka Masala with Saffron Pilau Rice

• £4.25 for 400g, Nectar Price £3.50, £1.06 per 100g
• Salt per meal = 1.6g (26% of RDI)
• Saturated fat per meal = 8.4g (42% of RDI)

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The Sainsbury’s curry was the only one that contained visible pieces of vegetable – chargrilled peppers.

There was a good amount of chicken and it had been chargrilled for extra taste, so the dish looked good on the plate – but unfortunately it didn’t taste as good as it looked.

The sauce had a strong, sweet, tomato soup vibe and the rice was bland and broke up on cooking.

At £1.06 per 100g, this was also the most expensive meal we tested.

• Taste = 6/10, Value for money = 6/10
• TOTAL SCORE = 12/20

Morrisons Chicken Tikka Masala with Pilau Rice

• £3.75 for 400g, £1 per 100g
• Salt per meal = 2.5g (42% of RDI)
• Saturated fat per meal = 10g (50% of RDI)

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The rice in the Morrisons meal was a decent quality long grain but that is where the good news ended.

The sauce was bland but with a bitter aftertaste and the chicken had an unpleasant soft, mushy texture.

This meal was also by far the least healthy, containing 42% of your daily salt allowance and a whopping half of your total daily saturated fat allowance in one portion.

It was also the second most-expensive we tested, at £1 per 100g, and not worth the extra cost.

• Taste = 5/10, Value for money = 5/10
• TOTAL SCORE = 10/20

JOINT WINNER Aldi Bilash Chicken Tikka Masala with Pilau Rice

• £2.49 for 400g, 62p per 100g
• Salt per meal = 2.3g (39% of RDI)
• Saturated fat per meal = 5.7g (29% of RDI)

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Aldi’s curry was a little gloopy but it had a tasty sauce with plenty of spice.

The rice was slightly lower quality than some of the other meals, like Tesco’s, and there wasn’t a huge amount of chicken.

But for just 62p per 100g, this was by far the cheapest meal we tried and it was better than some of the more expensive options.

• Taste = 6/10, Value for money = 8/10
• TOTAL SCORE = 14/20

Lidl Deluxe Chicken Tikka Masala with Fragrant Rice

• £3.49 for 400g, 87p per 100g
• Salt per meal = 1.9g (32% of RDI)
• Saturated fat per meal = 7.1g (36% of RDI)

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There was so little curry with this ready meal by Lidl, it seemed like it was mainly rice.

Both the rice and curry were disappointing.

The rice had a strange plastic taste to it, while the sauce was too spicy and had strong flavours of cinnamon and fennel – which didn’t go well in a tikka masala.

We couldn’t finish it.

• Taste = 2/10, Value for money = 6/10
• TOTAL SCORE = 8/20

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This post first appeared on thesun.co.uk