Frozen Mince

During Sainsbury's transition of their value line branding from Low Price to Basics in 2005, my local store were selling discontinued products at bargain prices. One of these happened to be the Sainsbury's Low Price Frozen Mince. It was an interesting if bizarre product, if memory serves: for about 75p after deductions I had in my possession 1.5kg of frozen pellets consisting of about 40% beef and 20% pork, with soya protein, fillers and other things like flavourings and preservatives making up the rest. Cooking the pellets in a pan made them dissolve into a fine powder, with which you would then add, say, pasta sauce to make bolognese, binding agents like egg whites to make meatballs, and so on.

For a time I received a lot of attention from my friends and the university hall cooking group I was in, not because the Low Price mince made me popular, but because people were concerned that I might actually die from sustained consumption of this product. I recall my fellow hallmates doing a double-take when I joined them for dinner eating spaghetti with powdery bolognese sauce, and even the famous Marcus "Pierre White" Lim went so far as to condemn it as dog food. Back then, this product was perhaps the ultimate representative of Sainsbury's value branding prior to the revamp, and the reason why consumers were intrinsically adverse to the idea of buying supermarket value brand products.

Well, I'm still alive, 8 years later. Since starting this blog, I have wanted to retell this experience to readers who might take an interest to this, but have until now lacked the determination to finish a kilogramme of low-grade mince. Recently however I have been told that I will have to move to a new location yet again, and that would mean that I lose use of the deep freezer. Add to that the recent scandal involving Tesco and their Tesco Value frozen burgers containing 30% horse meat, and I have a one-time opportunity to present this product and use it in a variety of ways over the coming weeks.

Unlike its predecessor, the Sainsbury's Basics Beef & Pork Mince is purely meat, specifically, 65% beef and 35% pork. Of interest is the cooking instructions saying that the frozen pellets can be fried in a pan without oil.

As a light introduction to this product I decided to recreate one of the recipes I previously featured on this blog, by combining the mince with a can of Sainsbury's Basics Baked Beans I bought a while ago for no particular reason.

Surprisingly, the pellets turned into familiar looking cooked mince, which was a relief, as I was frankly not looking forward to my days of eating meat powder.

I was glad that I have gotten acquainted with the Basics frozen mince, which, combined with the Basics baked beans and left to simmer for awhile, provided much needed warm comfort on a bitingly cold winter evening. The mince does contain some small amounts of gristle, but for the price, this is probably worth it. It does take up a lot of space in the freezer however, so plan accordingly.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Pork & Beef Mince	£3.00	1kg	+£3.49 for 1.5kg	100% beef mince