Waitrose & Partners’ is launching a new premium frozen food range which features twenty-four options. According to the retailer, frozen food is truly back on the menu in 2019, as searches for “Frozen Ready Meals” on Waitrose.com were reported to be up by 500% compared to last year.
The new ready meals range from classic pies to quick-and-easy ramen noodles, using cooking techniques such as sous vide and en papillote. Included in this new range are the underused and sustainable British Ray wings. These will be presented with lemon butter and capers cooked in such a way as to retain all of the juice and flavor for a succulent finish.
Other highlights include the Italian-inspired Slow-Cooked Pork Belly, Keralan Cod, Squid & King Prawn Curry, King Prawn, and Miso Ramen, and Middle Eastern-inspired Chicken Pilaf.
“In developing this range, we wanted to make sure our customers were getting top quality ingredients and a range of flavors, textures and cooking techniques. We believe there is something for everyone in this range and by using our innovative freezing techniques it means we can offer extremely fresh produce, ready to cook straight to our customers,” said James Bennington, product developer at Waitrose & Partners.
The new range will hit the shelves in brick-and-mortar stores, as well as online at the end of May.
In related news, the company has announced it is launched the world’s first home compostable ready meal packaging as it moves nearly nine million products out of black plastic.
The new packaging will initially replace many of the retailer’s Italian ready meal trays, thus saving 158 tons of black plastic. The new cream-colored containers, which are fiber based and similar in texture to cardboard, are now certified home compostable for the first time.
The majority of black plastic packaging is colored using carbon black pigments which do not enable the pack to be easily sorted by the systems widely used in plastics recycling. As a result, black plastic packaging can commonly end up as residue and disposed of in landfill.
