These are the best frozen dumplings in the supermarket

These are the best and worst frozen croquettes in the supermarket

It never hurts to have a product on hand in the freezer, already pre-cooked, ready to eat with just heating in a few minutes. Although it is not a highly recommended practice, in terms of health, one day a year does not hurt, as the saying goes. Of course, as long as it is for one force majeure like, for example, an impromptu dinner for which you don’t have time.

On the contrary, if we abuse this type of food, as explained by the Spanish Society of Endocrinology and Nutrition (@societySEEN), we expose ourselves to eating foods that have been subjected to a prosecution in which, in most cases, a «excess salt or sugar» to enhance the flavor or make up for the lack of an ingredient. Ultimately, its excessive consumption is not healthy in this sense.

With this clear, in this type of situation in which we need to eat something fast, the croquettes, the Nuggets chicken, escalopines, san jacobos, fish sticks or frozen dumplings are some of the options we have. We can easily buy them in the frozen section of some of the main supermarkets.

Today we make the purchase, at least virtually and in these lines, to know all the relevant information for the consumer in relation to this small snack that usually includes tuna, egg, as well as meat and even vegetables. That is, we will review to find out what price differences exist, which proposals have a greater number of calories or fat or those whose inner padding It leaves a lot to be desired and is not what is advertised out of the box in their advertising.

We review the main supermarkets to know their offer of dumplings

Carrefour

With a single glance at the purchase page on-line of the French distribution company (@CarrefourES) one can get an idea of ​​the wide variety they offer in this type of food products; both frozen and baked at the time. Thus, we can take home from small frozen dumplings, through others already made to eat the same day or wafers in case we dare one afternoon to make them ourselves. But, this time, we are going to look at the ones that are kept in the freezer of the fridge.

If the first thing we stop at is the price, something very common when we are going to fill the pantry, the cheapest are those of the Calvo brand (@Calvo_es) in a mini format. So this 400 gram pack is priced at just over one euro. A product that as explained in its nutritional values has, for every 100 grams of dumpling: 5.3 fat (of which slightly less than half are saturated) and almost a gram of salt. As for the filling, it hardly contains a 3% tuna in oil, in addition to other ingredients such as eggs and cereals with gluten in their dough. Hence, for the latter, they are not recommended in the event that we are allergic.

A price much lower than the more than 6 that a box of just 4 empanadillas, about 340 grams, of the Salteña brand is worth. In this case the peculiarity is that they are filled with meat and also as part of the ingredients raisins have been added. Regarding their healthy labeling, for the same proportion they have more salt than the previous ones and an also higher percentage of fat. Another notable difference in this case is that there is a greater amount of filling inside: 41% beef.

We review the main supermarkets to know their offer of frozen dumplings

Mercadona

In this other well-known supermarket (@Mercadona) we can buy two different types of deep-frozen dumplings with very similar prices. Both are from the Hacendado brand and its cost barely varies by 10 cents from 1.60 to 1.70 euros. It is what the 500 gram package is worth and in whose description the same mention is made of the wafer dough stuffed with ratatouille with tuna, tomato, onion, egg and pepper.

In what there are no differences is in relation to its filling (50% of the complete empanadilla). Around a 15% is tuna in sunflower oil. The largest percentage, in terms of fish, observed throughout the analysis. If we compare this product with those that we have already mentioned in other food chains, the nutritional values ​​observed for the same portion (about 100 grams) are more than significant: more than 13 grams of fat.

DAY

Finally, if we approach DIA (@DIA_Esp) we will find three different products: two white label and another from La Cocinera. Precisely, the latter is the one with the highest price in the supermarket: 3.49 euros the 312 gram box. Inside, some deep-frozen tuna dumplings whose nutritional information indicates that they have a 7.9% tuna per 100 grams. An amount less than that offered in the other two examples: between a 9% and 12% of a mixture of tuna and bonito. The price this time around is cheaper, around 1.50 euros for a 400 gram package.