Sainsbury's slow cook range

Sainsbury’s hopes to capitalise on the growing sales of premium ready meals with its new range

Sainsbury’s has launched an 18-strong ready meal range that promises to offer the taste of slow cooking in a fraction of the time.

The pre-prepared Slow Cooked range, which includes BBQ beef brisket and Korean chicken wings, all take around half an hour to heat up in the oven.

Prices start at £4 for a toffee apple-flavoured pulled pork and go up to £8 for two British lamb shanks with mixed beans, pulses and redcurrant jelly.

This makes the new range slightly less expensive than its Taste the Difference brand, which charges £10 for two slow-cooked lamb shanks in a red wine jus.

The Slow Cook range is predominantly formed of indulgent treats such as gammon shanks with maple sauce and duck with blackberry sauce, but there are also healthy options. Eleven of the meals are red on at least one ‘traffic light’ of fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt, while the remaining seven are amber or green on all measures.

The launch could enable Sainsbury’s to capitalise on the growing sales of premium ready meals. The value of the ready meal category value increased by 5% to £151.1m in 2015, shows data from Kantar Worldpanel, with chilled, premium and own-label products showing most growth.