A Tour Of Our French Ready Meals!
Our range of French ready meals is one of our best selling French food ranges, with a few thousand tins and jars sold each year. So we felt a brief tour of this range may be of some use and interest!
French Ready Meals For One
We’ve broken down our range of meals into various categories to make choosing easier and portion size seemed an obvious one!
Our one portion ready meals are particularly suited to todays modern lifestyles and allow you to enjoy a tasty, balanced and 100% natural (completely additive and preservative free) French meal for one person in no time at all. They simply require warming up gently in a saucepan until hot.
All the range is prepared with high quality ingredients, preservative free and in many cases gluten free – although if this is of concern, it is best just checking the ingredients list for each product on our website.
A practical aspect of these meals is that they are ambient (meaning they do not require refrigeration) and long life (typically 2 years) making them very easy to store in a cupboard for when they are needed.
In terms of quality, we feel our French meals taste better than 80% of ready meals you will find in the UK market and better than what many of us can prepare at home.
La Belle Chaurienne range offer the best price point and value for money, whereas Maison Godard and Castaing are the highest in absolute quality.
As an aside most of the range are deceptively low in calories for meals, which taste this good!
French Microwave Meals For One
Aimed even more at the rushed modern life style, these meals are very much the same as the meals for one, but presented in single portion microwave trays, which are ready in 3 minutes.
French Meals For Two
Much the same as for our range of French meals for one person only presented here in two portion jars. These meals are ideal for a couple who want to enjoy a good French meal without spending too long in the kitchen.
And if you are a Family of four, or entertaining, you can just open two or more jars!
Duck Confit
We’ve written about our duck confit range more at length in our duck confit blog posts.
But briefly, duck confit is duck meat, which has been cooked in it’s own duck fat. It is a traditional French delicacy and semi luxury food usually enjoyed for special occasions.
If you enjoy duck, this is a treat meal! Confit tastes delicious and the duck meat has been cooked so long that the meat can almost be cut with a spoon and is very tender.
Duck confit will require a side dish, traditionally roasted potatoes, but it’s very versatile and goes well with any number of sides of your choice …. salad (if you want something lighter), green beans, ratatouille, lentils …
If you’re entertaining, duck confit is very easy to prepare (180c for 20 minutes skin side up until golden brown) and gives consistently good results.
We stock two brands of duck confit – La Belle Chaurienne, which we sell most of and which offers the best value. And if you’re ready to spend a little more, our Castaing brand duck confit is free range and even better!
Cassoulet
Cassoulet is a traditional French bean based stew cooked with pieces of meat (most often duck, but also pork and goose), pieces of charcuterie and more often than not a Toulouse sausage.
Cassoulet is a complete meal in itself and does not require sides (although an optional side salad can just add a little green to it).
It is very easy to prepare – you can pour the cassoulet tin contents into an oven dish and warm it in an oven (preheated to 180c for circa 25 minutes). Or even simpler, pour into a saucepan, add a little water just to loosen it, and warm very gently until hot.
We’ve written a few cassoulet blog posts regarding how to prepare and serve cassoulet.
Like the rest of our French ready meal range, our cassoulet tins have long life (generally 3 years), do not require refrigeration, are 100% natural, gluten free and allow you to enjoy a tasty French meal at home quickly.
La Belle Chaurienne Range
Turning to our suppliers now, La Belle Chaurienne is one of our oldest French food suppliers and one of the ones we work with most by volume.
They specialise in preparing cassoulet (what they are most well known for), duck confit and an increasingly large range of meals for one and two people. All are 100% natural, additive and preservative free.
Our main comment on the La Belle Chaurienne range is that they combine good quality and taste at a very fair price point.
Maison Godard French Ready Meals From Perigord
Maison Godard are first and foremost foie gras specialists, but in recent years they have diversified into preparing very high quality French preserved meals in tins and jars.
We could sum up the Godard range in one word – quality! Of all our ranges of French meals, Maison Godard are the best, the flavours are just incredibly good and very authentic with it. These meals taste like French regional home cooking at it’s best!
Two types of dish they are particularly good at preparing are wine based sauces (such as coq au vin, salmis, civet style dishes) and pork specialities such as as Enchaud, jambonneau and their supremely good roasted pork shoulder!
How To Prepare Our Ready Meals?
Always check the instructions (on our website or the tin/ jar) for each ready meal, but with the exception of the duck confit, all our range of ready meals are best prepared by simply pouring the contents into a saucepan and warming gently. So very easy!
Ready Meals Storage And Shelf Life?
All our meals are preserves and air tight, so the shelf life is generally long – at least one year and usually more.
They do not require refrigeration, which is very practical as it means they don’t take up space in your fridge and can be stored in a cupboard, your garage … for when they are needed! You may have unexpected friends round!
French Ready Meals Dietary And Nutritional Information
At The Good Food Network, we focus mainly on taste, but as an aside most of our ready meals are gluten free, they are all 100% natural and generally surprisingly low in calories for something, which tastes this good!
Our French Ready Meals When Entertaining?
Are our ready meals good enough to serve when entertaining? Yes!
If you are a great cook or chef, then a dinner cooked from scratch will generally taste even better (although you would be hard put to beat the Maison Godard range of French meals from Perigord).
But if you are not a natural in the kitchen, these meals taste good, simply require warming and allow you to enjoy more time with Family and friends!
The duck confit is particularly good and that’s something even a good home chef won’t prepare better.
Good Food Network Recommendations?
All our French range of ready meals are good really, but if we had to pick just a few off the top of our head!
Maison Godard Enchaud Cooked Pork Fillet – it’s just amazing how good something in a jar tastes! The quality of the pork, the way it is cooked, the flavour all are delicious!
Duck Salmis With Cepes Mushrooms – a wine based sauce and porcini mushrooms give this dish great depth of flavour and a certain “earthiness” for want a better word. Very satisfying and enjoyable and works well with fresh egg tagliatelle!