“Auntie Bessie’s Perfect for sausage Yorkshire Puddings”.
This was what I spotted on TV yesterday, while innocently watching Poirot.
Given the recent ad campaign for really easy instant coffee, you can be assured that I got my own little grey cells working and dug a little
deeper.
This astonishing product weighs 220g, for which you get six
of these small ‘boat-shaped’ puddings, each one of which will hold a single sausage.
They cost £1.65 at Ocado and £1.29 at Tesco.com and are,
apparently, “ready in 4 minutes|”
They contain: “Wheat flour, whole egg, egg white, water,
vegetable oil, skimmed milk powder, salt”.
Well, there’s nothing too bad there – so let’s do a little
comparison.
The
recipe I use is from Delia’s Complete
Cookery Course. It is foolproof. Yes. I can do it easily.
Her
original measurements, for four servings, are:
75g
plain flour
1
egg
75ml
milk
75
water
salt
and pepper
2
tablespoons beef dripping
So
let’s translate that into hard cash – using the best possible ingredients at
the ‘poshest’ supermarket.
Duchy
organic plain flour (British) from Ocado comes in at £1.89 for a 1.5kg bag. So
for Yorkies as per St Delia of Norwich, it’ll be 0.094p.
Waitrose
semi-skimmed milk at Ocado is £1.18 for 2.27l – so let’s call that 0.038p.
Duchy
organic, large free range eggs at Ocado – a pack of 12 is £4.70, so that’s 39p.
Kerrygold
lard – 49p for 250g. Let’s be generous here and call it 30g (approximately 15g
per tablespoon). So that’s 0.05.
That’s
£0.572.
We
forgot the salt and pepper? Well, you can imagine what difference that would
make.
So
double the amounts you make and you’ll still
be better off than either the Ocado or Tesco price.
You
still need to heat your oven – and you still need to cook them. The Yorkshires
might take longer when they’re made fresh, but if you’re doing a Sunday roast,
then you’ll already have the oven on for far longer than that anyway.
And
if you’re just planning a few sausages for midweek, then they’ll also need
considerably longer than four minutes.
Mind,
Ocado is currently offering a pack of these, plus six Waitrose “pork
and red onion sausages” (400g and usually £2.79), plus a 500g tub of Waitrose
Essential Gravy (usually £1.79) for just £5 the lot!
The thing is, I can get half a dozen good, basic pork
sausages from my butcher – and I mean so good that they don’t shrink – for just
£2.50.
So we’d be up to £3.72 on my own ingredients – and really,
gravy will not cost £1.28 to make from a large sliced onion, a little fat and
flour and some water or stock (if I have some homemade stock defrosted). In
fact, I’ll probably still have money left over for a couple of large carrots to
peel and slice and boil too.
That Waitrose gravy obviously
does include more ingredients that I’d use:
Water,
Onion, Beef Stock Paste, Cornflour, Vegetable Bouillon, Rapeseed Oil, Garlic,
White Pepper, Celery Powder, Beef Stock Paste Contains Yeast Extract, Beef
Bones, Water, Salt, Beef Extract, Vegetable Bouillon Contains Salt, Dried
Onion, Sugar, Leek Powder, Sunflower Oil, Black Pepper, Turmeric.
Mind,
via Tesco.com, there’s an “Auntie Bessie’s Homestyle Gravy”, at £1.70 for 150g.
Ingredients:
Beef
Stock (39%) (Water, Roast Beef Rib Bone, Onion, Tomato Puree, Carrots, Leeks,
Garlic Puree, Parsley, Bayleaf, Thyme, Rosemary), Water, Onions, Corn Flour, Beef
Fat, Muscavado Sugar, Salt, Colour: Plain Caramel, Garlic, Bayleaf, Thyme,
White Pepper, Star Anise.
The
final point is that the description of these Yorkshires serving six is also
deceptive.
Each
one is designed to hold a sausage. So if there are six Yorkshires in a pack
that does six servings, that means one sausage per person.
In
other words, this is either a side dish – or it’s hoped you’ll eat several at
one go, thus increasing your intake of starchy carbs in order to make your
amount of protein enough for a main meal.
So
whether as a side dish or the heart of a main meal, this is more expensive than
making such a dish from fresh.
The
little grey cells tell me that Hercule would turn up his nose at such processed
fodder. As in most cases, he’d be correct.
