This mild Indian style chicken curry was in an Aldi Too Good To Go bag I grabbed back in December and I gave it a try that day. I’m not normally the sort of person that opts for ready meals, I enjoy cooking, but sometimes they can be a handy option. But is this one worth it?

Well, it does come in with 31g of protein per pack thanks to a mixture of the chicken and some of the sauce involving lentils too. It also says it is one of your five a day but it didn’t have any actual green or obvious vegetables with it so instead I opted to do some tenderstem broccoli, that I also got in the selection, with it.

Adding the broccoli made this feel like a full meal although the quantities for everything else, in terms of the chicken, sauce and rice, were fantastic. For me it was just missing a little bit of freshness but it was an easy fix to microwave up the broccoli for a few moments whilst I was letting the curry rest after cooking.

It does also mention how it is low fat and comes in at 412 calories a pack, which for a main evening meal even with adding the broccoli to make it a little more, is a pretty solid number. I would say though that if you are seeking out protein because of being a gym go-er then you probably want more calories than this. If you’re trying to increase protein to increase the amount of time you feel full for whilst being in a calorie deficit then this would work. It was tasty enough too.

The only real big downside to the ingredients is that this pack has 20% of your recommended intake of salt in. You cannot taste it as you eat it, and actually a lot of people that choose foods carefully are under in recommended salt each day, but it does mean you will find yourself being incredibly thirsty after the meal and this could lead you to feeling a little bloated.

But there is one much bigger downside than the salt. The chicken itself felt dry. Perhaps before heating it, as per instructions, in the microwave it was just right. I obviously didn’t check. But after cooking and going to eat it the chicken pieces, even right in the centre, were dry. I found myself cutting them up a little to put some of the sauce it came with inside the chicken to make it a more enjoyable bite. If it didn’t include the chicken, whilst it would reduce the protein, but instead something like vegetables or even chickpeas then this would have actually been a far better meal overall.

The flavour was indeed mild heat wise and it felt more like a faux-creamy curry than anything else. It was tasty, simple and smelled pleasant enough. It certainly wouldn’t win awards for being anything fantastic, at least not in my book, but I do appreciate that this is lower in calories than a few of these sort of ready meals and most certainly lower, due to portion control, than if you were to order takeout.

I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to buy this from Aldi again, even at the decent price of £2.89, but if somebody offered me a bite I wouldn’t turn it down.