Tried & Tasted: Beef Lasagne

Most people love the meaty Italian dish, lasagne. The delicious layers of pasta, cheese and meaty sauce provide a wholesome, filling and flavoursome meal.  With calorie and fat content in mind, the Tried and Tasted Team were set the challenge to find supermarket versions which would stand the taste bud test but still fit in with your daily calorie quotas.

Table 1: Beef Lasagnes Compared

Brand	Tesco, Light Choices	Weight Watchers	Asda, GFY	Waitrose, Low Saturated Fat	M & S, COU
Rating	OK	OK	Poor	Very Good	Good
Comments	A larger serving size than the others, but smaller on taste. Not outstanding - some enjoyed this dish more than others	Low in calories and low on flavour I'm afraid, although we did discover an after taste (but it wasn't great)	Way too much unappetising sauce; it didn't taste better than it looked either	Our favourite turns out to be middle of the road on calories and fat, but full of flavour and texture that stood out from the rest	Highest in calories, but lowest in fat, making M&S an appealing alternative to our winner. All our tasters gave this a vote
Appearance	Lots of sloppy sauce on top	Looks to be all béchamel sauce with herbs on top	Like milky jelly, very lumpy and anaemic looking	Looked homemade and wholesome	Tastes better than it looks
Smell	Odourless	Smells like lasagne! Strong oregano too	Bland	Lovely. Rich tomato & beef aroma with a good mix of herbs	Cheesey
Taste	Too herby and lacking in meat and tomato flavours; also rather stingy on the pasta	Tastes of béchamel and herbs but not a lot else	Bland, boring, dull, tasteless... I think you get what our tasters thought	Rich with a great balance of flavours and unlike some you could definitely taste the different components – yummy!	Good flavours coming through, including the creamy sauce, meaty goodness and hearty filling pasta
Texture	Pasta was good, but the tomato sauce too runny and meat gritty in size	Watery	Way to much of the yucky sauce and not a lot else	Decent sized chunks of meat, plus veg and pasta was just right	Creamy sauce and most amount of meat and pasta of the bunch
Serving Size	430g	400g	400g	400g	400g
Calories/ serving kcal	426	340	344	388	435
Fat/serving g	11.2g	9.2g	9.6g	10.4g	8.8g

 

Conclusion

The team conceded that trying to find the perfect lasagne in ready meal format would not be simple but it does seem that low calorie, low fat lasagne presents a particular challenge. The dishes we tasted showed a real mixture of results, good and bad. Waitrose did not win on calories but we are talking lasagne here; this dish was tasty, filling and almost homemade. Marks & Spencer provided a dish nearly as tasty. Asda’s GFY and Weight Watchers may have been better value for the calories but not really worth the taste.

Guide to Our Ratings:
= Outstanding | = Very Good
= Good | = Ok | = Poor