Weight Watchers Classic Cottage Pie Ready Meal

Weight Watchers Classic Cottage Pie is another member of the growing range of Weight Watchers ready meals.

This low fat cottage pie is described as ‘minced beef and lightly sauteed onions cooked in a hearty gravy with tender pieces of carrot, topped with fluffy mashed potato.'

Each 400g pack has 342 calories and is worth 9 Weight Watchers ProPoints.

The Weight Watchers range of ready meals are doing a great job of meeting the healthy levels of fat, sugars and salt. This cottage pie has low levels of fat, salt and sugar as well as having a reasonably low calorie count.

This cottage pie can be cooked from chilled or frozen, either in the oven or microwave. However, it's best cooked in the oven so the potato topping can achieve that lovely, crisp golden look.

In its frozen state

I bought a couple of 400g packets which I served up between four people. This was easily enough as I’d cooked plenty of vegetables to accompany the meal.

Surprisingly, 400g is quite a lot for one person and half the pack provides a decent sized portion for one. It doesn’t say anywhere on the pack how many it’s meant to serve, but even if you eat the whole pack, it’s only 342 calories so is unlikely to do any damage to the waistline.

After cooking

The meat and gravy mixture is very rich with plenty of onions and a few bits of chopped carrots. The ratio of meat to potato is about half, which is good as some ready meals bulk up on the cheaper ingredients, i.e. potato.

Regarding taste, the meat part does well compensating for the lack of fat by including a tasty mix of ingredients such as Worcester sauce, garlic puree and tomato puree. However, I found the potato to be quite bland and for me this really served as a filler.

Available in larger supermarkets in the ambient ready meals section.

Nutrition Information per 400ml pack: 342 calories, 19.2g protein, 42.2g carbohydrate, 4.0g sugars, 8.8g fat, 4.0g saturates, 8.0g fibre, 1.3g salt.