Budget ideas for Christmas food and treats

[shreddednips]

This year I'm hosting Christmas for the first time. We will have 5 adults plus a baby for Christmas Eve dinner and then 8 adults plus baby for Christmas lunch.
We lost my lovely grandpa just after my baby son was born in January so it's our first Christmas without him and also my DS's first Christmas. I'm determined to make it special, especially as I know my mum is so sad her dad is no longer with us to celebrate.
We have a very limited budget. I've been busily squirrelling a little away here and there and have saved up a modest pot for buying Christmas food. I'm also planning on buying some stuff each week with the big shop to spread it out.
We shop at Aldi, Lidl and occasionally Tesco. Does anyone know any bargain Christmas products that are worth buying from these shops? I've found that Aldi bargains can be hit and miss so I'd be really grateful for recommendations, and any other budget Christmas catering ideas you have! Thanks 😊

As this is the first time - and probably the shape of things to come maybe now is the time to start new traditions for your family. Think about how you'd like to do things, the new things you'd like to do and the old ones you'd like to carry on with. With regards to food now is the time to rope your family in, can you ask someone to be responsible for deserts or starters. Ask someone to bring wine and drinks, nibbles - if I was ever asked to someones house on Christmas Day I would be offering to do or bring something. Start as you mean to go on - or you'll end up like me - catering for eight people every year, who contribute nothing but love turning up every year to eat their favourite treats that I've bought for them!

As above poster said I would ask guests to chip in. We always go to family for Christmas day and usually bring the puddings .

BBC Good Food have just released their Christmas taste test results which might give a useful steer - they include Aldi, Lidl, Coop www.bbcgoodfood.com/review/bbc-good-food-christmas-taste-awards-2019

Whoever is hosting, everyone contributes- so someone will buy the meat, someone else the desserts, another the cheese/ sides or whatever - wherever Christmas is spent, it's a family do - everyone brings something so no-one person is bearing the full cost.

Christmas Eve, depending on whether you have any traditions or anything, why not make a nice stew/curry/chilli/bolognaise with chunky bread or jacket potatoes - nice and warming & filling, can be prepared in advance & relatively cheap to prepare too.

Frozen turkeys are cheaper than fresh.
Consider buying a bigger turkey. This might seem counterintuitive, but if you're thrifty and disciplined when it comes to using up leftovers then you could make your turkey stretch to several other meals. It's often cheaper per kilo to buy a larger bird, especially when buying from the farm gate or online.
If you like to serve a cheese board at Christmas then keep an eye on the price of cheese per kilo. In some supermarkets it's cheaper to buy from the deli counter, so take a few minutes to compare the costs.
Smoked salmon is expensive but instead of forgoing it altogether, make your own smoked salmon pâté with smoked salmon trimmings. They cost less than half the price of even a basic smoked salmon.
Buy a cheap jar of mincemeat and spruce it up with some freshly grated orange zest, some chopped almonds and an optional glug of brandy. You can stir in a few extra spices such as ground cinnamon, nutmeg or ginger, or a handful of dried cranberries or prunes, or whatever else you might have. Use to fill your own mince pies, which will be much cheaper than shop-bought.
Plain Christmas cakes can be bought fairly cheaply, but the decorated versions can be very expensive. A block of marzipan, some ready-to-roll icing and a little bit of jam is all you need to cover your own.

If you are prepared to take the risk, do your shopping on Christmas eve; most items are heavily reduced. We tend to host Christmas lunch (usually 10 of us) and a picky Christmas tea (usually 20 people) and some years we have spent hundreds and hundreds of pounds on the food and drink (we are off work for two weeks each Christmas and I'd say we easily spend £800 on groveries, spirits and wine, the includes meat from our butchers, food orders from Marks and Spencer and a wine delivery from Laithwaites) . I popped into Aldi on Christmas eve last year and was surprised to see how heavily discounted everything was - bags of potatoes, parsnips, carrots etc were 5p and the turkey, lamb and beef all had 75% off. That was at a local store in the North East.

These are all brilliant ideas, thank you! Agree about getting family to chip in, I'll make a list of what needs to be done and do some delegating.
Agree about starting our own traditions, that's the bit I'm most excited about!

Ah brilliant, just looked on the BBC Good Food link and there is a vegan pastry wreath from Aldi for £3.99. We have 2 vegans and 2 veggies, I had looked at making something but it was pricey with all the nuts and other ingredients. That's solved one of my problems! Think I might do a chicken for the others, think a turkey is too much for 5?? Only one is a big eater.

Lidl Christmas is excellent. I don't think I've had a duff product from them.

I've bought their frozen duck and it was great so would guess the turkey is good too.

Plus all the biscuits, cakes, everything else are super. If you are going to make your own cake/pudding they have a packet of dried fruit soaked in brandy which is amazing.

Personally I prefer shopping there at Christmas to Waitrose as the stuff is actually nice, rather than poncified and slapped with a bigger price tag but ultimately disappointing anything with a Heston Blumenthal label

Can’t go wrong with jumbo packs of cheese footballs and twiglets for nibbles. Iceland for large packs of frozen sausage rolls.

Ham may be cheaper than turkey so worth considering. Definitely check out frozen turkey though - you can buy it now to spread the cost.

Lidl florentines

Glad the link helped shredded. If I’m doing Christmas dinner for 5, I tend to use a turkey crown which is smaller, easier to cook but still festive and will stretch to sandwiches later in day (a DH family tradition!). Nigella’s ham in coca-cola also a good option.

Amazing ideas @Ricekrispie22

Maybe pork for Christmas Eve - pulled pork in the slow cooker if you're not confident with it. It's a cheap meat.

Keep an eye now for any yellow sticker stuff and freeze - particularly meat.

You sound lovely - hope it goes well for you. Not a budget tip but so you enjoy the day too prep in advance.

Mash can be made and will happily sit in the fridge for a few days - if you eat it that is! We have mash and roasties.

You can make your gravy in advance too - Jamie Oliver has a good recipe for this.

All veg chopped and in water ready to go.

You can make sausage meat stuffing in advance too. Sausage meat can often be a yellow sticker freezer jobby.

Ask at supermarkets what time they start yellow stickering - they're are a couple of points in the day.

Have a lovely Christmas and sorry about your grandpa ❤️

A turkey is definitely not too much for 5, if you are thinking chicken I think you would struggle to find a big enough one to serve 5 good portions. Also you need left over turkey for salads or sandwiches later. Get a large turkey it is by far the most economical.
Also go homemade, make all your biscuits, mincepies, trifles and sausage rolls, pate etc. For the sausage rolls buy some sausages, skin them and use ready made puff pastry which used to be 99p at Aldi. For pate I always buy frozenchicken liver from Morrisons, dead cheap and you can make a lot. Make your own dips as they can be expensive. I used to make 3 Christmas cakes for family, but the ingredients have gotten so expensive. However you can make a much bigger one to go around everyone if you make it yourself. I used to buy some ingredients every week to spread the cost. Shortbread is also very easy to make.

This is all so handy, thank you thank you! Like the idea of making a smoked salmon pate from trimmings...
I think I'll take PP's advice and do jacket potatoes on Christmas Eve, I rather like the idea of that becoming a tradition as it's nice and easy for me! I'll do a vegan chilli with beans, but offer some grated cheese etc for non vegans and a nice big salad.
Would a turkey crown stretch to 5? I'm a bit worried about whether I can fit a whole turkey in my tiny oven. It had crossed my mind to do a joint of meat instead to save space.
Thanks again, I was feeling a bit down about the thought of Christmas without my grandpa. He was physically unwell for a long time but a huge character and such a kind man, and he became the centre of my mum's world as she cared for him. It wasn't meant to be 'their year' this year, I was just meant to be cooking for the inlaws. She said she had been dreading Christmas without grandpa and she was all emotional to be invited, so I want to make it really nice. I think doing things a bit differently will help actually.

Awww @shreddednips that's made me fill up

I think a turkey crown would feed 5. You could get a gammon joint as well if you felt like you needed a buffer? Not expensive. Can be stuck in a slow cooker too.

A frozen goose is perfectly lovely and not too expensive (£20ish for a moderately sized bird, IIRC). We buy ours from Aldi. We’ve paid loads more for fancy fresh birds in the past and we’re perfectly happy with the quality of a frozen one.

A couple of ducks would make an amazing Christmas dinner. If you buy them when you see a good deal and freeze them (if you’ve got the room) they don’t have to be expensive.

For turkey or goose we stick to bog standard dried sage and onion stuffing as we’ve decided we like that the best (again, have spent lots of money, time and effort on fancy ingredients for fancy stuffings in the past), we just upgrade and buy a ‘best of’ for Christmas.

M&S premade red cabbage is our quick and easy side, we just microwave it on the day. We make 2 other sides ourselves from scratch.

A really good point is that it’s the sides that really make a Christmas dinner. Spend a little bit more money, time and effort on those and your meal will instantly become more special. As you said, if you decide a chicken is your best bet for the roast, the sides will make it feel just as Christmassy. However goose is delicious.

For treats, buy less but better quality. It will cost you the same, or maybe slightly more, but is well worth it.

Instead of 5 boxes of nasty Quality Street/Roses/whatever, buy 1 or 2 big boxes of nicer chocolates. Same for biscuits.

Oh sorry, that was supposed to say two other veg sides, and that’s if we do goose. If we do a turkey then we make three sides, as of course there’s the obligatory pigs in blankets as well. We buy chipolata sausages and streaky bacon from Aldi and make them ourselves.

I have bought fresh gravy from M&S before, if I can’t be bothered to make it myself. However it can easily be made beforehand and frozen, and a lot of people recommend Jamie oliver’s Make-ahead gravy. That’s one less job to do on the day.

If you’re a very keen cook then yes, I can also highly recommend the shopping on Christmas Eve strategy. But given that you’re a first time host, I wouldn’t take on extra stress or hassle unless you’re really confident that you’ll be happy going with the flow.

My biggest tip is don’t get too invested in making everything perfect, and don’t go overboard in trying to do everything from scratch or putting yourself under enormous pressure to lay on a hugely impressive feast. You need to be able to enjoy your Christmas too, with your little one.

We buy a few things every shopping trip (weekly) in Oct/Nov/Dec. That helps with cost and also means you can plan better and buy what you actually want and need, not just go crazy throwing lots of random bits into the trolley the week before Christmas.

We like a pandoro (Aldi or Lidl) on Christmas morning, along with scrambled eggs and smoked salmon on German grain bread (again, Aldi or Lidl for both of those), washed down with Buck’s Fizz or bubbly.

We get the Turkish delight from Aldi (lemon, rose, and pomegranate).

Aldi’s Specially Selected chocolate and nut florentines are divine.

I get Niederegger marzipan chocolates if my budget allows (they are fairly expensive) otherwise I get Aldi’s version.

Godiva chocolates (whichever one I fancy).

Lindor orange truffles and Ferrero Rocher by special request of my daughters.

I buy a couple of boxes of fancy biscuits from M&S when they’re on sale (equivalent to Fox’s et al). There’ll be something similar at Aldi or Lidl. We don’t buy their German style biscuits or cakes but that’s just because we’re not that all that keen on the specific spice blend they use.

btw, it’s so hard losing a much loved member of the family.

Sorry for multiple posts but I’m just writing things out as I remember them.

What’s your general plan for the day? How does your family do timings etc? We eat late, at about 4 or 5, which affects how we do our other meals on the day.

Oh you called it Christmas lunch, tbf, so I guess 1 or 2pm?

As some up thread buy bigger pieces of meat then you would normally buy.

Last year I got a massive gammon from Iceland Warehouse for £20 it was about 5 kilo's. We used for sandwich meat through out January and February. So didn't need to buy lunch meats to saved some money.

Also look for larger joints of meat in supermarkets they tend to sell leading up Christmas. I've picked up large pork and beef joints that I've been able to cut each in to 3 or 4 roasting joints.

do you do online shopping OP? it might be worth looking at a few cashback sites to see if they offer the supermarkets you shop at, so you can get some money back off your purchase x