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:

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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.

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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.

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We couldn’t finish it.

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

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