What's your best supermarket emergency microwave dinner

[CadburyCrunchy]

If you only had 35 minutes to spare between work and kids hobbies every Tuesday evening what would you cook for dinner in that time? I'm not a fan of ready meals but Tesco do an nice carbonara and one evening a week is ok! What would you suggest?

Typical mumsnet replies...I reckon OP has actually already heard of beans on toast and pesto pasta.
Macoroni cheese ready meals always go down well with my kids, most of the pasta ones are nice enough I find

i wouldn't do a ready meal. When the kids were young I kept bucket loads of home made bolognese in the freezer, curry and soups too. The meat sauce could be turned into lasagne, or chilli con carne with the addition of cumin and mild chilli and kidney beans.
On busy nights it would be in the door, kettle on, a frozen bag of bolognese into the microwave, boil the spaghetti or rice- home cooked meal in 15 minutes.

Pasta and pesto (home made pesto if possible) with spinach stirred and wilted in at the end. I also sometimes do this with chicken - cut a chicken breast into chunks and fry while the pasta cooks, add it.
Another option is adding sweetcorn, I add it two minutes before the end of the pasta cooking as it only needs heating through.

The clue is in the title of the thread.
anyways……I’d go for a Spaghetti Carbonara.

Filled fresh pasta (tortellini or ravioli) and a tub of readymade sauce. Ok, it’s not quite microwave, but boiling pasta for three minutes then adding a tub of sauce is fairly similar time and effort wise. If I was feeling fancy I’d add a bag of ready made salad.

Cringe at the folk recommending thjngs other than microwave meals. 🙈

My favourite ready meal actually requires the oven, sweet potato katsu curry with rice. But microwave alone means macaroni cheese.

Tesco King prawn masala and rice... we get the three for 7 quid and share between two and a child with naan or poppadoms. Genuinely a really good curry!

McCains Jacket potatoes. Can easily be teamed with beans and cheese.

Why? The OP says she is not a fan of microwave meals- others are agreeing and making suggestions that will be easy and quick. Why cringe over that?
Microwave meals are not always the quickest option either- microwaves are small, and if you are cooking for more than two people then it may take a couple of sessions to heat everything up. May be quicker, easier and cheaper to go with many of the suggestions upthread.

To be fair the actual post says “what would you cook for dinner in that time” - is it really so very ridiculous to offer alternative quick, easy, readymade from a supermarket options just because they don’t cook in a microwave?

Fried egg n chips night here. Stick a few tomato halves and some mushrooms in with the oven chips. Introduce the dc to the delights of a splodge of brown sauce on the side.

Yawn.

The lobster macaroni and cheese from lidl deluxe range is the most gourmet I've ever had but its limited edition haven't seen it in over a year.

Tin of tomato soup and some sandwiches - My kids love it they'll ask for veggie sticks on the side (Carrots, cucumbers, celery) with dip

Oven chips, fish fingers, cauliflower cheese from a freezer bag (Tesco or Sainsbury's) in the oven for half an hour or less, with tinned sweetcorn and frozen peas microwaved for four minutes.

@Penguinfeather781 Yep that's one of mine too

I would make this. Takes minutes.

cooklybookly.com/recipes/4cc0047e-ea6f-11ec-9fe8-0f3c926f8bd6

Another one who wouldn't do microwave meals.

I'd probably do pasta with a premade Mutti sauce, pasta with shop bought pesto, smoked mackerel and salad, shop bought quiche and salad or egg, beans and oven chips, stirfry and noodles (pre bought chopped stirfry mix and sauce), pasta with a fresh (shop bought) cheese sauce, supermarket pizza and salad etc all of which would be tastier and quicker than a microwave meal.

So basically something that's shop bought and premade rather than cooking (so not snob value). I'd avoid micro meals because I don't like them, and because its time consuming microwaving 4 meals one after the other, and the options above would probably be quicker.

Do you have an air fryer? You can cook a load of delicious beige in about 10 minutes!

I like Mexican rice pouch with an avocado, some coriander and a bit of lime ( I tend to always have lime and coriander in but would be fine without), I tend to have it with spicy tinned mackeral but would work well with ready made chicken pieces, takes 2 mins

Favourite standby meals are Aldi's ready-made paella or macaroni cheese with pancetta (the mac'n'cheese is so good I daren't keep extra in the freezer which is the only downside!). Sainsburys Indian meal in a bag are good too, as is their ready made carbonara sauce in a pot and fresh pasta.

Not ideal, not something you'd plan to have often, but sometimes there's a cooking disaster or scheduling hiccup that means you need something to fall back on.

Jacket potato with tuna and spring onion or beans.

Q: “What’s your favourite supermarket microwave meal?”

A: “pasta with homemade pesto, wilted spinach and freshly cooked chicken”

Of course!

McDonald's