The tins retail for around £3, which is certainly high-end pricing for a tinned ready meal. I was lucky enough to find a tin of Venison Casserole reduced to clear down to £1.49 in a Tesco in Edinburgh, which was a little more reasonable. I wondered whether they were trying to get rid of the tins as they weren't selling well; it was only when I got home that I realised that in fact the tin had already passed its best before date by a few months, so shouldn't have been on sale at all.Still, such a trivial matter as a historical date has never put me off trying tins before, and the idea of a luxury item like venison in a tin appealed to me so much that it there was no question of it doing so this time.
So - to the kitchen! "Lean chunks of venison in a delicious meaty gravy with vegetables", the label promised. Opening the tin, it certainly looked like a rich, unctuous sauce, so I had high hopes as I waited for it to heat through in the pan.
The vegetables listed in the ingredients were simply carrots, onion and mushroom, but this being Grants' gourmet range, they were a little more impressive than the usual ready meal offerings. Instead they use lovely little miniature mushrooms and whole silverskin onions. Even the carrots are sliced rather than diced, which for some reason in my head seems a little classier.
Only needing a light snack at the time of trying this, I didn't really feel the need to bulk out the meal with potatoes, or covering the casserole with a pastry lid like the website suggests, but I was able to "Scotch" things up a bit with a tattie scone - and a bottle of the really rather fabulous Organic Porter from the Black Isle Brewery, which I visited when up in the Highlands following on from my time at the Edinburgh Festival. (In fact all their ales are fantastic and well worth a try if you ever spot them in a shop or pub).The gravy was indeed delicious and meaty - lovely and thick, with the rich tomato flavour of the puree given extra body by the red wine, but balanced by a slight sweetness from the redcurrant jelly. The ingredients on the label also listed malt extract, which I can't really detect (my porter is already pretty malty itself) but was probably providing a nice deep bass note to the flavour. The vegetables were also good - keeping the little mushrooms and onions whole helps them retains a bit of bite, which makes a nice change from the pappy, mushy things you find in most tinned ready meals.
But what of the venison? Well, here I must say I was slightly disappointed. There were decent-sized chunks of meat, but most of them were rather sinewy, and somewhat tougher than I had hoped for. I wondered whether a gentler, slower cooking before being canned could have prevented this on both fronts, breaking down the sinews a bit more and giving a softer texture to the chunks. But venison is a very lean meat, and notoriously easy to overcook when just serving it normally, so perhaps it is not best suited to being tinned. It's also not quite as gamey in flavour as I had hoped for - I think had this been a blind tasting I wouldn't just have thought it was beef, but I'm not entirely sure.I think therefore I might have felt slightly cheated had I spent £3 on the tin, but at half price, it's pretty good overall, and certainly a cut above your average tinned ready meal. Of the rest of Grant's gourmet range, the Boeuf Bourguignon sounds quite nice, and it would be interesting to try the Irish Stew, just to see how much better it is than the budget version I tried back in March!
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