Okay all cooks cheat, from a jar of sauce to ready made pastry sometimes life is too short.  I include myself in the list of those who cheat. For instance while I enjoy making pastry, I’ll happily buy the pre-rolled stuff for a quick quiche or something similar just to save time.

I also like to try different products that come out just to see if they are any good. So the other day I noticed that Schwartz do some slow cooker mixes and I thought they would be worth a bash. So I bought two, Beef and Tomato Casserole and Chicken Provencal.

I started with the Beef & Tomato.  Its fairly simple, couple of chopped red peppers, chopped onion, beef, a tin of tomatoes and some tomato puree.  Add in the mix and throw it all in the slow cooker.  I have to say I wasn’t impressed at all.  Firstly the mixture was too dry and there wasn’t enough sauce forming, I ended up adding water (initially about a third of the tin the tomatoes were in).  Secondly the flavour was just naff, it just tasted of the dry spices and I’d have been as well just eating the stuff straight out of the packet.  So I improvised, bit of worcester sauce, 4-5 tablespoons of a hot plum chutney (recipe to follow) that I’d made but wasn’t enough for a whole jar went in, as well as a dollop of red onion marmalade (another recipe to follow).    Now I had something that had flavour and depth to it and tasted edible. (there was enough – just – for 4 portions)

Next was the Chicken, its almost the same ingredients as above (but chicken thighs instead of beef obviously) and straight off I added in extra water.  I suppose it would depend how much liquid was in the tinned tomatoes, but I could see it wasn’t enough again.  This time the flavours were much better, nothing startling but I didn’t feel I needed to play about with the mix and I just let it cook.  (Again it just made 4 portions)

Would I buy them again? Definitely not.  Would I recommend them? Nah, just do it yourself.  I can, and do, make better casseroles from scratch without the packet mix but you never know until you try.  In the end I did create a few meals for the freezer that I can have over the next few weeks when I’m short of time so wasn’t a total loss.