Value for money

Steak pies

Steak pies

Pieminster€3.99 for 270g, €14.79 per kg

What’s that? Only 10 sleeps until the Electric Picnic? For many people of a certain age, one of the highlights of the boutique festival in Stradbally in recent years has been the pies from Pieminster. They are now available in Superquinn and the country should rejoice.

These are excellent. The shortcrust pastry is quite light and has a nice crunch to it. The small pieces of carrot retain a decent bite, the beef is lovely and the gravy full of flavour. We were underwhelmed by the blue cheese and had the packaging not told us it was there, we may not have noticed.

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Verdict:the star turn ****

Denny Steak Pie€4.69 for 500g, €9.38 per kg

This family-sized, new-to-the-market pie from an Irish company looked amazing coming out of the oven and was a sight that would have gladdened the coldest of hearts. It has a golden brown crust which has a nice lightness to it. The big chunks of meat were okay but lacked the melt-in-the-mouth texture which, based on the homely appearance of the pie, we thought we might be getting. There was plenty of gravy which was somewhat moreish. It is pretty cheap, would feed a family and will probably be widely available.

Verdict:a family pie ***

Tesco Steak Pie€0.89 for 150g, €5.90 per kg

This is the cheapest of the pies tried but it looks it. The filling had a greyish colour that wasn’t particularly appealing and there wasn’t a lot of it so when we cracked open the pie we were just a little dismayed by the empty space within. The meat was surprisingly good – not a patch on the Pieminster meat, but fine – but the puff pastry topping was poor. It lacked the light airiness we were expecting and was just a little bit on the gloopy side.

Verdict:below par **

Ginsters Large Cornish Pasties €1.25

Okay, so this is not a pie exactly, but we figured that seeing as how it has, broadly speaking, identical ingredients, we’d allow it into the test. It was very nice indeed and the large chunks of potato and swede in the mix gave it a dimension that its pie cousins were lacking. Each pasty was absolutely stuffed with a filing that we found to be pleasingly salty. The beef was mostly irrelevant to the occasion, mind you, and it was on the dry side and there was very little by way of gravy for the (incredibly crumbly) pastry to soak up.

Verdict: a nice alternative ***