A food expert has suggested that Aldi's 5p festive vegetables could help shoppers stretch their budgets well beyond Christmas, potentially providing meals for most of January for less than £1. The supermarket's range, available until Christmas Eve, includes potatoes, carrots, cabbage, sprouts, parsnips and swede at bargain prices.
Andrea Macaulay, who leads the hospitality curriculum at Glasgow Kelvin College, said thinking like a professional chef is key. “When people look at vegetables at home, they often think in terms of one meal at a time. In professional kitchens, we think about yield. You’re cooking once, but eating many times,” she explained.
According to Aldi UK, a selection of the festive vegetables can be bought for as little as 95p in total, working out at less than 2p per meal. Macaulay noted that using the whole vegetable makes a significant difference, adding that “every stalk, stem and skin should be popped in” and peelings can be simmered into stock.
She calculated that buying around 2kg of each festive vegetable gives a 12kg “harvest haul”, which can be split into batch-cooked meals to produce roughly 40 hearty portions. “If you’re picking up around 2kg of each festive vegetable, that gives you roughly a 12kg harvest haul. Split across a couple of large batch-cooked meals, that can comfortably produce around 40 hearty portions,” she said.
Macaulay concluded that planning like this “takes the stress out of January and makes it much easier to eat well without overspending”. Shoppers are advised to ensure they have enough freezer space to store the portions.
