Today we pit Boots vs Sainsbury's in our latest taste test comparison of the UK's favourite festive meals deals..
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00:00Hi, my name is Jack Marshall. I'm a digital food and drink reporter with the Metro City
00:08World Group and welcome to another one of our taste test videos. Now people may have
00:12seen our previous taste test video where we assessed and pitted a couple of the UK's favourite
00:18meal deals up against one another. We did Tesco's festive offering up against M&S's
00:22festive offering and we're doing another one of those today between Boots and Sainsbury's.
00:26Now Boots' meal deal is obviously very well known. It's one of the go-to spots that loads
00:30of people go for their lunch and Sainsbury's is another one of the offerings which is getting
00:34increasingly popular. Just like Tesco is, you know, classic supermarket meal deal with
00:38your main, a snack and a drink. So without further ado, let's compare them. So the Boots'
00:42one was a turkey feast sandwich. Now this one was good in the sense that it was turkey
00:48not just chicken where they just like repurposed and slapped a bit of cranberry on a normal
00:51chicken sarnie. That was a good point. My only issue was it just wasn't much meat in
00:56there. They did that classic thing where they kind of packed the visible bit of the sandwich
01:00and then the further you got into it the less meat there was. It was fine. It was that classic
01:08thing where you kind of enjoyed a few bites but then the main flavours started to go missing
01:12a little bit. The bread was seeded which was nice. That gave it a nice texture, nice touch,
01:17kind of earthy, nutty taste to it. It had a nice texture overall actually. It wasn't too moist,
01:22it wasn't too kind of sloppy but it wasn't dry either which is, you know, that's the main thing
01:26you want to avoid with these sandwiches. But like I say, as much as I like things like the cranberry
01:32was nice and, you know, stuff like, you know, a bit of bacon, you taste that every now and again,
01:38overall you just, it needed more filling in it which, yeah, you can't really get past that point
01:43on a sandwich like this but it was fine. Didn't really blow my mind. Three out of five. The snack
01:48however was the chocolate log. That was much better. Now when you're with these festive
01:53meal deals you can often get a side or a snack which is very similar to the main itself. Something
01:58turkey or pork or, you know, cranberry based and it just feels like you're eating more of the same
02:03thing so a sweet option is probably the way I'd go and having a little like yule log like this
02:06was really good. It was also surprising in the sense that you had really nice sponge
02:12which had chocolate chips inside it so they hadn't, you know, scrimped there and it had a
02:16little flake on top so I thought that was really good. That gets a four out of five. It had a bit
02:20of a different dimension to what you might normally get from different sides so that was positive.
02:25Onto Sainsbury's. Yeah, straight off the bat I was disappointed with this sandwich as well
02:30because it did exactly the same thing and it packed out the visible part of the sandwich
02:33and the more you got into it, the more you bit into it, the less filling you start to get. So
02:37a bit cheeky. Loads of pre-packaged sandwiches end up like this. It's just how it is. They try
02:43and sell you on the juicy looking part and then the further in you get, the kind of less appealing
02:48it becomes. I've got to say with this one it was more notable than with the Boots one however. It
02:51got to the point where my last couple of bites, even though there was cranberry and a bit of
02:55bacon there, my last couple of bites were just dry. I was just eating dry brown bread crust which
02:59no one particularly wants that is it? It's not the best thing for your lunch. As much as I did say
03:05previously about having like a sweet snack to go with the savoury sandwich is a nice touch,
03:10I went for a savoury option on this one because it was distinctly Christmasy. They had pork,
03:13mini pork pies with stuffing in them and these were actually really nice. I expected them to be
03:17really dry again but they were actually, they had a nice bit of moisture to them which I think came
03:23through from the stuffing. The only thing I'd probably say they fell down on was the fact that
03:29the pastry almost got a bit soft but that's always going to happen with pre-packaged sandwiches. It's
03:33pretty impossible to make pastry kind of crunchy given that it is in that pre-packaged environment
03:39but the taste was really good. I really liked them actually, they were good. I was not cynical
03:44about them but I wasn't expecting too much from them and they probably delivered more than I was
03:48expecting so I'm going to give them a four out of five. Now price comparison wise, the Boots one is
03:53£3.60, the Sainsbury's one is £3.75, very similar. I'd have to give the edge to Boots in this scenario
04:00because I just thought the sandwich was a little bit better. I did like the sweet snack even though
04:05the savoury pies were nice but yeah. So that's our review of Boots and of Sainsbury's.
04:12Let us know if you are an absolute adherent to one of the two. I know Boots has a lot of fans
04:17about their meal deals so let us know what you think. Let us know if you've tried their
04:21festive meal deals this Christmas, if you've had previous ones in the past which you much preferred
04:25and they've gone massively downhill. Just let us know. Stay tuned, we're going to do one more taste
04:29test comparison of some festive meal deals later this week. We're going to do Aldi against Boots
04:34and I think that's going to be a bit of a blockbuster. So yeah, thanks for watching, stay tuned for that. Cheers!