Hormel Slow Simmered Beef Tips and Gravy Review

Autumn leaves carpet the ground, there is a pleasant chill in the air and everyone is shopping for Halloween costumes and candy.  To a real gourmand, the advent of Fall means (among other things) that it is time to eat POT ROAST again.  If you live alone and usually cook for one (sometimes two), you may not always feel like making a big production out of dinner, however delicious the outcome might be.  For those of us whose Julia Child days may be slacking off, there are convenience products like Hormel Slow Simmered Beef Tips and Gravy. 

I had tried refrigerated convenience-packed meat dinners before with mixed reactions -- sometimes the meat seemed tough, there wasn't much of it and these dishes tend to be a tad high in sodium.  But this week, a sale at Dominick's coupled with a manufacturer's coupon (and that bracing autumn air) tempted me to try this product by Hormel.  In my opinion, it was delicious.  The meat was incredibly tender and I enjoyed the flavor.  Hormel delivered the goods too -- their claim that the package contained three and a half servings was just about right.  I got three meals out of this, which refrigerated and reheated beautifully.

STATS:

If you figure this to really be three and a half servings, then each serving contains 170 calories with 70 calories from fat.  There are 8 grams Total Fat, 3.5 grams Saturated Fat, half a gram Trans Fat, 60 mg. Cholesterol, 700 mg. Sodium, 5 grams Total Carbs, 1 gram Dietary Fiber, 3 grams Sugars, 21 grams Protein, 2% (D.V.) Calcium and 10% Iron.

MY VIEWPOINT:

I know what you are thinking now that you have eyed the stats ... that there is a LOT of fat in this product and about twice as much sodium as should have been necessary.  Even for someone like me, this was way saltier than it should have been.  That 700 mg. Sodium is 29% of a person's quota for the day!  All that is true but it is also true that sometimes it's not just what you eat but the way you eat it. 

If a serving of this was enjoyed as simply an extra between-meal snack, the fat and salt content could be downright dangerous but it works out okay if Hormel Slow Simmered Beef Tips and Gravy are served as a component of a substantial dinner along with other "sides" which may not have much fat or sodium at all, if any.  There was a recipe on the inside for adding potatoes, carrots and other veggies to this product to make beef stew which would amp up the value of the dinner and create more servings containing less meat, sodium and fat.  To consume 29% of one's sodium in the major meal of the day is not as bad as it sounds.

TASTE TIP:

Sadly, I realize that I will have to limit my consumption of things like this but I lived it up for a while and enjoyed myself.  My first two evening dinners were a serving of Hormel Slow Simmered Beef Tips and Gravy over Trader Joe's Organic Brown Rice and my final meal was a sandwich of whole grain toast filled with what was left of Hormel's masterpiece served along with a crisp autumn apple.  Memories are made of stuff like that!