Fray Bentos Meat Pies
Now a slimy dribble orf its former glory, this once iconic brand synonymous with the creation orf Empire, that fed Blighty and her forces through two world wars, lies unloved and rejected in supermarkets because the snowflake generation cannot work oit how to open the fucking tins. Now only old cunts like Yours Truly remember the succulent meatiness and rich gravy that rewarded the deft application orf a tin opener or a pocket knife in the interwar period. The company has passed through many hands in its history and weathered storms various such as typhoid and mould in its products and seems now to have positioned itself as the premium supplier to the dosser market. The meat option orf choice at the food bank.
So what awaits the crackhead who sacrifices a few fingers and manages to open the tin? Grey bits orf old cow floating in a shiny gelatinous mucous that tastes orf nothing but salt and the cheese between a dosser’s toes. No scrumptious pastry as orf yore, just a soggy lid floating on a tin bowl orf dubious filling.
Needless the Metros and the Millenials all thought briefly that the pies were cool and on trend but like all fads it’s soon fucked. What to do with a heritage industry now trading on “cheap” to make a profit? Pass it orn down to the poorest in society. They have no taste.
Nominated by Sir Limply Stoke
It’s basically dogfood, isn’t it. Foul bits of old horse and rat skinned off the corpses and drenched in a sugary sauce to disguise the taste of botulism. Peasant tucker or grub for pîkeys. The muck that must be in those tins… like a pack of hounds have shat in it.
Buy some vegetables and make a stir-fry.
16
One of my greatest childhood memories is having a FB steak and kidney pudding, mash and peas with Giga-Rigsby who very selfishly decided to pop his clogs in December.
Things of wonder, they were. Big bits of steak, silken gravy and kidney present but unobtrusive.
Weird how you can associate what was even then probably a shit pie with pleasant childhood memories. Miss them both terribly.
8
Your assessment at the end of your cunting Sir Limply reminds me of the title of the Dead Kennedys album, “fresh fruit for rotting vegetables”. All very apt for much in society today.
Agree about getting in to Fray Bentos tin though, my Mum was deft at it, different generation though. I just ended up burning myself.
4
A very good album, I had forgotten it.
2
Never had a FB, so cannot comment on its quality. But it comes as no surprise Millennials have no idea how to open the tin!
As far as they’re concerned if there’s no “How To…” on YouTube, they’re completely stumped!
6
Dick ‘two pies’ Fiddler must be spinning in his… umm… whatever he spins in.
5
Small world, Sir L.
1
My previous and more expansive rejoinder having been unceremoniously binned!
Must be doing sthg right, eh?
1
Lots of posts keep getting binned randomly at the moment. Blame Wordfence.
1
Feels better to blame Admin.
2
Wordfence needs a good cunting!
0
Grade A, Cap’n!
0
Used to love these when I was a kid. The tins made good camping bowls too. Haven’t eaten processed stuff for decades so it is sad, if the cunting is to be believed, that these pies are now crap. I await Mr Fiddlers assessment.
4
Summarises the decline of the country, really. Unwisely, and some time ago, tried another FB offering, the chicken pie. Same plan – a few small bits of anonymous bird in sludge. Fucking fowl (sic). Note to self – buy some puff pastry and casserole steak and make four times the quantity for less unit cost.
4
Looks about as appetising as Spam, hell the shit log I dropped this morning looks more appetising you poor plebs actually eat this shite?!
It takes a 1 or 2 hours to make a proper steak and kidney pie from scratch or if steak is too expensive get some stewing beef and make some lovely meat and veg pies this fray bento stuff looks gag worthy I don’t even think they sell this here in canada… thankfully
5
I hadn’t realised you were a Canuck, eh. Are you West Coast or East, eh?
Titslapper the Moosefucker. Eh.
3
Neither west or east coast m8 I’m in the central prairies right smack dab in the heart of it all
moosefucker eh? well that would be quite a challenge do you know how rare it is to even see a moose on sight let alone try to fuck it?!
Despite it being most identified animal with canada they are almost never seen up close and you would probably find more of them in norway or sweden. Honestly I’ve only seen a moose once in my lifetime when i was hunting and fishing with a friend. Deer sightings tho are much more common saw a pack of them in my backyard just last week no joke
5
Is it just me, or can anyone else see Mohammed’s face in that meat pie?
6
Perhaps it’s from the menu….you know… Allàh carte.
🎆
12
👍🏽, Cap’n!
1
The dogs and I still enjoy them. The dogs get the gristly lumps of meat and I have the pastry and gravy tipped over chips and marrow-fat peas,all covered in HP sauce.
I will admit that they’re not what they were. They’re smaller for a start. I have to have two every time these days just to fill the hole caused by the lack of meat in them. The pastry is still good if cooked in an Aga, as is the gravy. Perhaps you could have a word with your Meals on Wheels provider and see if they can do anything about your flaccid meat, Sir Limpley?
In the current climate of pedantry, I must add that you’d have been doing well to enjoy the “succulent meat and rich gravy” during the interwar period, Sir Limpley. Fray Bentos didn’t introduce the tinned-pie until post-war.
Fuck Orf.
15
No apologies if I, in some minuscule way, am contributory to that “climate of pedantry” to which you allude, DF.
The pies themselves are nevertheless anachronistic, which was, I suspect, Sir L’s mischief. The carbon-footprint of their réchauffage greatly exceeds any possible food-value, so they scant warrant a place in a Swiss nuclear bunker (their otherwise natural milieu).
Absolute filth.
2
I vaguely remember the Fray Bentos health scare from the dim and distant past, didnt even know the brand was still going.
1
Nasty, synthetic pastry made with cheap animal tallow. Chunks of prime, meaty goodness such as lip, arsehole, eyelid and kneecap; likely from goats and squirrels; the remnants of what was dug out from under 25 Cromwell Street along with Munroe Bergdorf’s pelvic leftovers.
What isn’t there to like?
7
From your vivid description, and for no other reason, I had the judges from the X-Factor pop into my head!
1
That concoction in the photo looks like the inside of one of my compost bins. What the fuck is it?
4
Never had one Sir Limply.
1
Fray Bentos tinned pies similar to those Mr Kipling apple tarts ie 50% fresh air.
The Parking Stanley’s round here don’t fall for it though. They tell me that Kennomeat is still the best ingredient for a modern lamb bhuna
2
Many moons ago my dear old grandad was a paint sprayer at the (then) Morris car factory out Saltley way in Brum. He told me that ‘the Turban types’ (as he put it) used to dip their ‘funny bread’ into tins of Kit-e-Kat cat food at lunch time (true!).
Tasty, no doubt.
3
I can well believe it Ron.
Kennomeat, kit-e- kat, Pedigree Chum……it’s all the same shit/different label!
2
I found myself in Fray Bentos once – the town in Uruguay not the tin. The slaughterhouse/production plant was long gone and it had been turned into some kind of museum although I had no desire to visit it.
Apparently tank crews in WWII nicknamed their vehicles Fray Bentos because the soldiers felt they were fated to become minced meat in a tin!
5
A pie in a tin is the height of civilisation!
Love FB (S&K) pies, FB obviously standing for fat bastard, nonetheless get the oven spanking hot then wrestle with the lid with a sturdy opener,that is anything made in GB or over 40 years old, new or cheap chinky crap efforts are simply not up to the job, the waft of oily meaty goodness that assails the nostrils of the drunken gastronome is a feast in itself.
Oven open pie in, pour oneself yet another Guinness and swayingly peer through the 220 degree window of magic as the puff does its puffy thing the tantalising aroma building, 25 minutes and it is done, Krakatoa hot steaming Uruguayan goodness ready to be consumed direct from the can, life does not get better than that.
Oh yes, FB pies, the mark of civilisation.
5
A good backup when you can’t be arsed to cook.
However the last one I stuck my fork in, one did wonder through the pastry where the meat was.
As everything else, in our mass produced world, any beneficial content is replaced with what is the cheapest ingredients, but still charged at a higher price. Cunts.
4
I was going to do a YouTube video, last year, about the FB “Just Chicken” pie – open it up on camera and show just how little chicken it contained. Obviously didn’t.
The “signature” puff pastry is, nowadays, barely palatable and there’s such an insignificant amount of budgerigar in there, it’s laughable.
Oh and the special chicken curry one they did with a football on the lid gave me the fucking squirts summat chronic.
Pack of Twats
8
I’d shag it, the pie that is not the lady boy.
1
This should be a co cunting with Pukka Pies! Another national pie institution that, like a pie in the morning, has gone down the shitter and become a shadow of its former meaty glory.
I phoned their helpline last time I had one to complain about the small lump of odd textured white stuff I found in amongst the gravy and 3 slices of mushroom. They assured me that must have been a piece of chicken! Should be called a mushroom and gravy pie, profiteering cunts!
2
It would be interesting to read the list of ingredients on the side of the tin, because I’m pretty sure any reference to actual meat must be in single digits percentage-wise.
40% flaky or scabby skin
25% shit scraped off the floor or from last week’s reject processing
10% hard-to-flush leftovers from the toilets next door
10% vomit, snot, sputum, shit, piss and the odd used condom/ squeezed tampon for flavouring
10% you don’t wanna know!
5% meat – if you’re lucky. And we’re not telling you where from!
2
I was fed them by the old man because he felt i would end up some sort of fuckin’ fairy if my palate and digestive tract weren’t brutalised. He have seen Threads on TV.
Recently he and my mother dined with the wife of the heir to the Fray Bentos fortune at a pleasant sussex pub.
Not a tin of chum in sight.
Now that’s what you call social-climbing.
1
*may have.
0