Tasty Little Numbers’ Chicken Tikka Masala with Basmati Rice [By @SpectreUK]

Tasty Little Numbers promotes healthier living with smaller portions and whole numbers of calories in all of their products, such as 100 calorie chocolate bars and crisps, and 200 calorie Heat and Eat Snack Pots. After recently sampling a few of the brand’s crisp flavours, I thought I’d try Tasty Little Numbers’ Microwavable Heat and Eat Chicken Tikka Masala with Basmati Rice. There was an endearing quote on the label on the top of the plastic pot; “Curry up, let’s do it” which supports the idea that ready meals are generally home cooked microwavable fast food for people who are either lazy (like me), or don’t have the time to prepare and cook a meal from scratch (which seems a bit of a dark art to me anyway). The ingredients of this Heat and Eat Chicken Tikka Masala included; 28% chicken breast, 6% brown basmati rice, and the remainder was tomato, onion, garlic, ginger, lemon juice, rapeseed oil, creamed coconut, and comflour amongst other things. There was a plastic fork and napkin provided, but I used a metal fork instead as I have seen what super heated meals can do to plastic forks. I first punched some holes into the plastic film on the top of the small looking flat bowl before heating the pot for a minute and a half. The bowl’s size made me wonder if this meal would go any way to filling my large(ish) tummy.

I broke open a bag of mini poppadom style crisps to dip into the Masala sauce. The meal inside the pot was at first too hot to peal the plastic film back with my bare fingers, so I cut the film off with a sharp knife. The Chicken Tikka Masala smelt good with a medium spice. From the delicious smell I couldn’t wait to tuck in, but gave the meal a quick stir first and left it to cool a little. The Chicken Tikka Masala tasted great with all the flavours from the ingredients merging perfectly together. There were chunky pieces of succulent chicken and not much rice (6% as mentioned above), but I prefer it that way as I’d rather have lots of scrumptious medium spiced sauce to dip my poppadoms in. My only problem with this meal was the same that had I found with Tasty Little Numbers’ crisps, which was that I just wanted more. The meal’s 200g equated to 200 calories, but I would have been happier with 300g (300 calories, I guess), as this would probably have been sufficient sustenance to keep me going for a while, without being over or under full, besides 300 calories is still less calories than many main ready meals on the market and would help the average person to lose a little weight. Perhaps 400 calories worth would be better in a range of bigger portions for greedier people (like me)?

By Spectre