Tesco meal deal

My little basket was overflowing with eleven Tesco sandwiches, and the shop was busy. People were looking at me. After buying them, I had to stand in a delayed post office queue with all those sandwiches in my shopping bags. It was quite a behind-the-scenes look at my life in England.

For this 2022 taste test, I wanted to find my favourite Tesco meal-deal sandwich. The meal deal I described was a sandwich, a side and a drink at a discounted price from the supermarket chain. I was testing eleven sandwiches, leaving out wraps and triple packs. I also hadn’t bought prawn cocktail because I couldn’t have prawns.

The one I hadn’t seen before won

Pulled beef and Red Leicester surprised me. I hadn’t seen that sandwich before, and I was intrigued. I loved beef and cheese, and this one wasn’t dry. It actually had flavour. There seemed to be a little butter or mayonnaise on the bread, although I wasn’t sure which.

Looking closely at the beef made my conviction waver a little, but the taste was good. I gave it four out of four and a half meat globs and wondered whether anything would beat it. Nothing did. In my final ranking, it was the winner, with tasty meat, cheese and sauce. I wanted to eat the rest once I’d finished filming.

Alanna holding a sandwich close to the camera, showing the pulled beef and orange cheese filling.
The pulled beef and Red Leicester sandwich that became my favourite of the eleven. Still from the original video at 05:57, resized and converted to WebP.

Chicken, bacon and stuffing came second. Stuffing wasn’t something I remembered seeing in sandwiches in Canada, apart from really around Christmas. I liked all those ingredients, so I’d had high hopes, and this time the sandwich lived up to them.

There was a decent amount of chicken, bacon, some sauce and stuffing that brought seasoning and flavour. It had enough meat and enough taste for me to be happy eating it. Compared with the egg-and-mayonnaise sandwich, which I’d found mushy and bland, the stuffing really helped.

The familiar choices did fairly well

Chicken, bacon and lettuce was my personal classic. It had meat, lettuce, sauce and bacon as the second meat. It wasn’t exciting, but I thought it had the elements of a good sandwich. If I’d forgotten lunch, was out somewhere and was starving, I would have been all right buying it. It took third place.

The BLT came just behind it. Bacon, lettuce and tomato on what looked like seeded bread, with a thin mayonnaise-like sauce, made a perfectly adequate sandwich. I couldn’t expect the world from a Tesco meal-deal sandwich, but it was pretty tasty.

Tuna and sweetcorn did better than I’d expected, too. It was more flavourful than the egg sandwich and wasn’t very dry. I wondered whether part of my reaction was simply that I hadn’t eaten tuna in so long. It wouldn’t have been my go-to, but it ended up above several combinations I’d expected to enjoy.

Good ingredients didn’t guarantee a favourite

Chicken, mozzarella and pesto looked as though the largest ingredient was tomato. I couldn’t really taste the chicken or cheese. Pesto was the main flavour, so to me it was basically pesto bread. It was all right, and sat below the tuna in my final order.

Chicken and chorizo was a bigger disappointment. I loved chicken and chorizo, and it had a red pepper sauce, so I thought I’d like it a lot. Some edges were just dry bread, which I tore off, and the overall taste seemed weird to me. I was surprised I didn’t like it.

Barbecue chicken, bacon and cheese also sounded promising after the successful beef-and-cheese sandwich. Instead, I found it mushy and couldn’t work out where the bacon was. There was a weird taste I didn’t like. In the final ranking, I put it below the chicken and chorizo.

Plain was better than actively unpleasant

Just ham, with no mayonnaise, was extremely boring, but at least it didn’t taste bad. It was ham, a little butter and white bread, exactly what it said it was. That redeeming quality put it above the egg-and-mayonnaise sandwich, which I found flat and mushy despite liking both egg and mayonnaise.

Smoked bacon and ketchup came last. Cold, non-crispy bacon with ketchup on white bread was one of the saddest sandwiches I’d had. I didn’t know whether it was somebody else’s favourite combination, but it certainly wasn’t mine. After eleven sandwiches, the unfamiliar pulled beef and Red Leicester had won, with chicken, bacon and stuffing behind it. I was shocked by that winner, and I’d had a lot of fun finding it.

Watch my original video about my eleven Tesco sandwich verdicts.