Patty King Jamaican Style Chicken Patties

From the Patty King International website:
A golden flaky pastry shell filled with delicious seasoned ground chicken. Ya man it’s fantastic.

Filling: Ground chicken, bread crumbs (wheat flour, yeast), textured vegetable protein, onions, salt, chicken soup base, beef soup base, spices, disodium inosinate, disodium guanylate.

Pastry: Flour, water, beef suet, sugar, salt, vegetable oil shortening (soybean, canola, cottonseed oils), colour.

Allergens: Wheat and soya.

On sale this week at No Frills is butter, ribs, and 6-packs of Patty King International patties at $3. This works out to 50 cents per patty.

It looks great in ad copy, it is not oily in your hand after microwaving, and there is a nice cracked-black-pepper flavour to the filling, but there are a few drawbacks with this product:

• It's so peppery that's all you taste.
• The recommended microwaving leaves you with a crust that is not exactly soggy, but somewhat chewy.
• Read the ingredients carefully (I didn't and I bet lots of people don't): It has chicken, but also "textured vegetable protein" and "chicken soup base", meaning it's not clear just how much real chicken is there.
• It is about 80% crust, 20% filling. Yes, it's that skinny.

Still it is 50 cents per patty. A fatter patty (with maybe 50% to 75% more filling) will cost you about $2 at The Patty Shop. Might be worth a try for the convenience though you might end up eating the whole box of six just to make a filling meal.

A competing product at a comparable discounted price this week -- also at No Frills -- is Schneider's Hot Stuffs. Packs of 2 for $1. But at less grams per dollar, it's unclear whether they will give you any better bang for your buck.