The pros: Â Trader Joe's Steak and Stout Pie has a delicious pie crust, directions were on point, surprisingly filling for a small pie.
The cons:  Trader Joe's Steak and Stout Pie is also a calorie and nutritional bomb. Microwave is not recommended if you want the crisp pastry crust which means if you are hungry right now you are at least 45 minutes from eating this.
The verdict: Â For $6.49, this might confuse you with a discontinued freezer product by a similar name: Steak & Ale Pies. I never had the chance to try those out so I can't compare them to this. What are getting here are two shrink wrapped pies that look small.
They cook perfectly if you follow the directions. Mine took 45 minutes in the oven and they were nice and hot. None of the filling leaked out of the pies. The directions say that it can go in the microwave, but I'm sure the pastry would suffer as a result. The pastry is thick but delicious. The pastry is likely the main source of calories here (and more than a your day's needs for saturated fat too).
The filling was a bit more of a miss for me. My expectation was a brown gravy with the flavor of a stout. I got some of that, but there was a lot of tomato and celery flavor here too. There is a hops taste from the stout in the gravy as well. The steak was tender.
The potatoes were soft and the carrots still had some texture. It's not a bad meal and you won't need anything else after eating just one. Is it worth 800 calories? For me, that's a no. Nice to try but it wasn't 800 calories good.
The box:
The nutritional information:
The ingredients:
How to prepare:
How Trader Joe's describes this product:
Out of the package you get two shrink wrapped pies that look like this:
After being cooked you get:
And cut in half:
Would I buy this again? Â While the pastry was tasty, I'll pass on buying this again. I was looking for a more hearty beef flavor, instead I got more tomato and celery than I was looking for. It's not a bad product, but it's not worth 800 calories either.
Want to see more items I've reviewed from Trader Joe's? Click on Thoughts & Reviews of Trader Joe’s for a searchable list.
Did you try it? Let me know what you think in the comments section!
I've bought this twice, so I've eaten four of these pies. And that's enough. I microwaved them so that might be part of the problem. But the ratio of bread to meat was way too high. The filling was decent enough, though scarce, but the bread, and there was lots and lots of it, tasted like cardboard. Really wanted to like it, but given the filling/bread ratio, just not all around tasty enough.
Hey Sandy! Thanks for sharing your thoughts here. I think I've only bought these once or twice since writing the original review. So my feelings are very much with yours. They were better in the toaster oven than microwave, but it was still way more pastry than filling.
Wow. I bought this product twice. Each time, there were only 3 tiny pieces of meat and 2 pieces of potato. Gravy clinging to the sides. Crust is great but it just doesn’t cut it. Still hangry.