Fray Bentos Vegetable Balti Tinned Pie Review
Fray Bentos is a very well known brand name in the United Kingdom associated with canned products such as corned beef and meat pies. I'm not sure when I first heard of this brand as I've only been aware of it for maybe three years at most. It isn't a brand name you usually see here in western Canada. I kind of suspect I might have run across it when I was researching canned foods in military rations, possibly for French ration packs which include many different kinds of canned entrees of better quality than what you would find in an American MRE (meal ready to eat).
After I found out about the canned pies, I was quite intrigued by them as I thought this could be pretty strange and pretty cool at the same time. A canned pie that you bake in the oven to have a nice crispy and flaky golden crust sure sounds like some kind of shelf-stable miracle. I like a good meat pie myself and I actually thought I would never try a Fray Bentos pie as no one imports these into Canada and sells them at a reasonable price. I've never bought some of the more exotic military rations either as they tend to be pretty expensive. Civilian MREs are not cheap either, but you can buy cases of XMRE and Mealkit Supply MREs in 12 meal cases at a reasonable price around $10-$13 a meal in Canada plus shipping.
I ended up buying the Fray Bentos Vegetable Balti Pie in the British food section of a Safeway supermarket earlier in 2021 for $7. This was a pleasant surprise as I never really expected to see these in Canada, but I can also see how a vegan pie is much more easily imported than a meat pie (customs regulations and all that). I had read that the vegetable balti had gained some distinction over in the UK as it was actually pretty tasty. I like curry and I like pie, so I figured trying one these pies would be a winning situation because of this. I would have preferred a steak and kidney meat pie, but this is a pretty good second choice!
The brand name comes from the port of Fray Bentos in Uruguay. The town processed beef here for export until the 1960s, but the brand has existed since the 19th century and it is an iconic British brand. Baxters now owns the brand, a name which I associate with canned soup. These tinned pies have a cult following in the UK and some people even stockpiled these in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic as they are cheap to buy in the UK (a pound or two) and they last a long time like any canned good. I also remember reading about complaints about people being unable to open these tins and I can say I didn't have this problem. The Fray Bentos pie came in a big tin which felt really sturdy and you would need a good can opener to get one of these open (you should have a good can opener in any case). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fray_Bentos_(food_brand)
So what is a vegetable balti? I have to say I didn't know when I first heard about balti too. Like many foods I review on this blog I ended up looking for information on the internet. A balti gets its name from the time of iron pot it gets cooked in and it is a curry that originated in northern India and parts of Pakistan. The dish also surfaced in Birmingham, Great Britain, in 1971 or in the 1970s. A balti has vegetable oil, onions, ginger, garlic, garam masala, tumeric, tomatoes, salt, and other spices. There are many variations of the recipe. You basically have vegetables in a gravy-like, tomato curry sauce that has to taste pretty good with these ingredients.
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| The bottom of the tin. It is pretty hefty at 425 grams. The pie has 26.4 grams of fat for the whole pie with 570 kcals and 5 grams of protein. Vegetables include tomato, peas, onion, carrot, red peppers, and potato. Plenty of calories in this. Serves 2 according to the tin. |
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| I removed the top of the tin fairly easily with a good can opener and it revealed this pastry dough underneath. It didn't look particularly appetizing at this point, but you have to bake a pie! |
I preheated the oven at 450 F and baked the pie for 25 minutes or so. I removed the pie from the oven just in time to have a lightly scorched crust, and let it cool down. I was surprised by how nicely the crust crisped up and rose. This looked very pie-like for sure.
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| Nice looking pie crust. I almost over baked it, but caught it before things burned. |
The pie smelled really good. There was a nice tomoto curry type smell to it and the aroma was savoury and tantalizing. I cut in with a knife and got a nice fork-full of pie crust and pie filling. My first bite confirmed what I was smelling. It was tasty. The pie crust was flaky and crunchy as advertised and the balti sauce had good tomato and curry type flavours to it. Not too spicy and it had nice savoury notes and tasted quite good. Not quite as much filling as I imagined, but there was a good amount of veggies to it. I bought two of these and I'll definitely look forward to having the second one some time in the future. The pie didn't disappoint and it was kind of neat to bake a tinned pie! If you're a vegan, this pie would likely be nice to have on hand as long as you had some way to bake it.
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| A piece of the pie showing the crust. |
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| You can see you get a nice crust in this cross-section. Underneath is plenty of balti sauce and veggies. |
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| Another shot of the pie and a fork-full of pie. The photos don't do it justice as it tasted better than it looks. |
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