Top 8: Layering it on with the best shop-bought beef lasagne
Lasagne is a handy freezer food for rainy or lazy days. It’s a terrifically comforting dish and a favourite with children.
A reader recently asked why I never award low marks to products. Surely, I must have tasted a lot of awful dishes. Was I afraid to offend? The answer is in the title: Top 8.
We taste plenty of low markers and eliminate them quickly to bring you the best of what we find, so you don’t have to waste your time and money.
Our Top 8 food products are rigorously tested. Tasters are asked key questions: ‘Would you buy it, and is it good value?’ When we get a consensus on both, there’s a rare 10 out of 10.
The criteria we applied to this week’s beef lasagne selection were no different. We included lasagnas with low scores as they are the best of a poor bunch with the top markers excellent.
Lasagne is a handy freezer food for rainy or lazy days. It’s a terrifically comforting dish and a favourite with children.
Those with thickeners and stabilisers such as modified maize starch, affect texture rather than taste and produce a less rich result than a genuine béchamel white sauce. Amounts of fats were as expected from a creamy sauce – 7-10%, with protein much the same, making it quite satisfying.
Have a green salad with it (there’s good kale and spinach available at the moment) to enhance the nutritional benefits of the meal.
A generous 50% of ragu made from Irish minced beef is full flavoured and gently deepened with tomato, white wine, herbs and vegetables. Layered with firm pasta and a béchamel sauce, just as we would make at home, this was the favourite of tasters. Good value for top quality. Also available in single and double portions. At Rochestown, Cork - home delivery is available.
9.5
A newcomer to our list of outlets, this bar and restaurant with a shop is a find. While only allergens are listed, we found plenty of meat in well-defined layering of good quality béchamel and pasta in pretty perfect proportions. We bought it frozen.
9
A good 30% minced beef is paired with a flavoursome 2.5% smoked pancetta, a decent 6% Chianti wine, and tomatoes. The béchamel is creamy and well-flavoured with warm nutmeg, cinnamon, white pepper, turmeric and allspice. The cheeses used are grana padano ( a close relative of parmesan) and less traditional cheddar. The result is a full-flavoured, satisfying meal which all tasters liked.
9
A deliciously meaty sauce has an interestingly flavoured béchamel, which has hints of warm spicing with a fresh tomato flavour, which tasters particularly liked. With new owners, this venue by the harbour in Monkstown, Co Cork, has a small takeaway range.
8.5
With 20% Irish beef and 20% chopped tomato, we liked the addition of dry-cured smoked bacon lardons, a decent 3.8% red wine and beef stock. Relatively low fats at 5.4% (others are not worrying at 6-7%), the creamy béchamel sauce is flavoured with mozzarella and grana padano cheeses and nutmeg. The layering is well-defined.
8.5
A decent 28% beef with tomato, layered with flabby pasta sheets and a gloopy textured white sauce was disliked by two tasters. The gloopiness could have come from, among others in a long list of ingredients, modified maize starch with canola oil, whole milk and cheese powders. Others found the tomato flavour too strong. A high 8% tomato concentrate paste is likely to blame.
6
This looked appealing with nice layering, and the beef at a decent 28%. However, even with tomato 17%, and a béchamel sauce flavoured with Parmigiano Reggiano (1.5%) with less traditional cheddar cheese (1.5%), the taste was disappointing. Even dry-cured bacon lardons and Chianti red wine didn’t bring up the flavour for our tasters.
6
I had high hopes for this mix of Bolognese sauce made from 47% Irish beef in a tomato sauce with onions, celery and white wine. However, tasters agreed it lacked flavour and found the meat taste barely discernible. The béchamel sauce, which includes ‘hard Italian cheese’, while lacking in flavour, overpowered the overall balance. The grated cheddar cheese on top didn’t add to the result.
6
