Recipes

Barry's Vesta Chicken Supreme Recipe

Do you also remember coming home from school to find that your mum had made you a Vesta Chicken Supreme & Rice? It was a dried ready meal which contained 2 sachets, one with the sauce mix, the other the rice. A lot of people hated this 'meal', and it technically doesn't really resemble most Chicken Supreme recipes out there these days which is what makes it unique.

Vesta are a brand name owned by the UK company Premier Foods. I created an Ipetition a few years ago http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/chickensupreme/ in the hope that we could collectively encourage the company to reintroduce this, if only for a limited time. However i've continuously hit a brick wall and my recent request for the ingredients list was responded with a garbled response seemingly making the point of 'it's our recipe and you're not having it'.

This meal was such a delight for me as a growing teenager in the 80's that the taste has never escaped me, and after spending many years in the kitchen doing the day to day family cooking i've developed more of a sense of flavours.

Overview of the dish

The main element of this nostalgic meal to me was the actual chicken itself. I remember being able to almost suck the moisture out of the chicken pieces which although may seem rather gross upon reading this, is actually quite nice. The other ingredients are rather basic. There is an aroma which sets this dish apart in my opinion - one which you'd come in from school and know what was for dinner. It took me some time to work it out, but it's simply green beans.

Anyway, were we go. You may notice that i've used tinned vegetables. I did this as i guessed the original recipe couldn't use anything 'fresh' as it was dried so i gathered that maintaining the cheap element was important to stay faithful to the original taste.

Ingredients

1½ tablespoons of Butter (or supermarket spread equivalent)

5 tablespoons of Plain Flour

2 Knorr Chicken Stock Cubes

1 tin Creamed Mushrooms (283g)

300g tinned Split Green Beans with about 2tbsp of the juice

300g tinned Carrots with about 2tbsp of the juice

Milk - Just over a pint

Fridge Raiders (slow roast flavour)- 3 packets with each piece cut into thirds

Pepper

dried parsley

Easy Cook Basmati or Long Grain Rice

Method

• In a non-stick saucepan melt the butter
• Add in the Flour and stir until incorporated, cook out for a few minutes but don't burn (i've added carrots here but DONT - wait until later as per later steps)
  
• Add a little milk gradually and incorporate into the butter/flour mix until it loosens
• Now it's loosened add the stock cubes and stir until they're dissolved
• Now add in the vegetables and veg water and mix in

• Add the tin of Creamed mushrooms and incorporate

• continue adding the milk gradually with the heat on moderate and incorporate a bit at a time until the sauce is of the correct consistency (vesta sauce was always rather thick).
• Add the fridge raiders and stir in. Bring to a very brief simmer and remove from the heat.

• Add pepper and about a teaspoon of the dried parsley and stir in

• Serve in a rice ring as your mum used to do.