Fry's Vegan Country Mushroom Pie

Photo from the Fry's website

Fry's makes a lot of great all-vegan frozen food, widely available at both Coles and Woolworths. I recently tried the Country Mushroom Pie. There are some drawbacks, but I'm looking forward to eating them again.



I'm always happy to pass the Fry's freezer section at the supermarket. They have a great range including burgers, sausages, schnitzels and this pie. While other vegetarian alternatives such as Linda McCartney and Quorn often have casein or other dairy in them for texture, Fry's is deliciously vegan and dairy free. I love pie, especially chicken and mushroom, and was pretty excited to try this pie.

The first thing I noticed when I went to eat this pie is that you have to defrost it first. So, my first step was to eat some banana and peanut butter as a snack while waiting for my pie to defrost. Once it was defrosted, it took almost 40 minutes to bake. My oven isn't the best, so this was longer than the 20 minutes the package suggests, but it's still not exactly "fast food". 

The benefit of all this defrosting and long-time baking was immediately apparent once the pie was finished, though: the pastry is excellent. It's flaky, buttery, tender, tasty - everything you want in a pastry. 

The filling was slightly more disappointing. From the picture on the package, I was expecting a chunky filling filled with mushrooms. In reality, there was way more gravy and fake chicken than mushrooms. In fact, there was hardly any mushroom at all, just a few tiny pieces of stem here and there. The fake chicken pieces were pretty good, with an okay texture but a great taste. The gravy, of which there was plenty, was very gloopy and thick with a very peppery flavour.

Overall, I enjoyed my pie. There were a few surprises, such as the long defrost/prep time and the filling consisting mostly of gravy and fake chicken pieces and very little mushroom. But despite these surprises, it's a pretty good product and now that I know what I'm expecting, I think I'll actually enjoy it more the next time around. It's great as a snack, but I bet it would be better with some chips and salad for dinner, especially since you could soak up some of that gravy with your chips. There are two in a package and I'm definitely looking forward to eating the second.