Review: The new Tex Mex range from Morrisons

If you didn’t know it already, we’re massive fans of Tex Mex food here at Golightly Gardens – I’ve eaten my own bodyweight in black bean Mission burritos in San Francisco, and Beau lived on Mexican food when he was at uni in the States. Heck, I even grow my own jalapeno chillies. That’s why we were really chuffed to have the chance to try the new Tex Mex range from Morrisons, although obviously we were going to be a tough audience.

We actually couldn’t manage to eat everything we’d been sent in one evening, so here’s the first few things we’ve tried, and I’ll maybe come back and update later as we go along. Fortunately all these new dishes can be frozen so there’ll be no waste! Plus it is really nice to have some goodies ready and waiting in the freezer on rainy Autumn evenings.

We don’t eat a lot of ready meals, but when we do it’s good to have things that you’d never make yourself. There are quite a few dishes like that in this range, including beef ribs that have been slow-roasted for eight hours – I would never put the oven on for that long – and slow-cooked pulled pork shoulder in a smoke-flavoured BBQ sauce. The ingredients seem to be low on e-numbers and fillers, and the price points are reasonable, starting at £2.50 and mostly staying at the £3.00 mark.

Now, on with the review!

We started with the nacho chilli cheese dough balls. They’re just right, with a prickle of chilli, crisp outsides and fluffy bread. They’re listed as medium heat, but I’d say they were mild heat and also I wouldn’t want them to be too spicy anyway. You get 12 for £2.50, and I felt sad when they were all gone.

Next up was the beef chimichanga. If you haven’t had one before, it’s a filled soft tortilla parcel that’s been deep fried. We don’t have a deep frier here so that’s another thing we’d never make ourselves, and it was a double portion, so £3.00 would feed two people. The filling was a medium heat with lots of beef, kidney beans, red peppers and chipotle sauce. Beau remarked on how non-greasy it was, and said that other similar products were too oily. He also said it was lacking the chemically artificial flavour you usually get with these ready meals, which is high praise indeed.

The third dish was ‘Sizzlin’ BBQ Pork & Spicy Wedges’, a non-chilli dish with plenty of pulled pork. This was the stand-out dish that we’ve tried so far, and I had the potato wedges which were chunky and tasty. Beau said the meat was melt-in-your-mouth and very tasty and tender, and the sauce was good too. You get 400g in total and it costs £3.00.

The last thing we tried was the side dish offering in the range: smoky BBQ beans and mac’n’cheese (£2.50 for 400g total). Now, I don’t eat pork, which was in both parts of the dish, so I had to sit back while Beau tucked in. He liked the beans (haricots with lots of different spices and bacon), but said the mac’n’cheese was a bit bland. Having said that, he’s also a mac’n’cheese aficionado, so he might be harder to please than the average person. I think the side dishes could actually work OK as a main course for one person too, served together.

All in all we were very impressed with the range that we’ve tried so far, and the dishes were tasty. The portion sizes were decent but not too lardy, so you would be nicely filled up but not feeling bloaty, and the nutritional information was clear and easy to understand. Most of the dishes were pretty healthy too, and the prices seemed reasonable for what you get.

I would love to see a set of side dishes that is suitable for vegetarians, as side dishes are usually passed around mixed gatherings so it’s better to have no hidden surprises, and many families have veggies among their number. A vegetarian main course would be brilliant too, such as a black bean and cheese burrito, or some vegetable empanadas (hand pies).

Have you tried anything from this new range yet? What did you think?