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It has been a summer of heatwaves, and there’s only one type of dinner people want in hot weather: BBQ. The weather in the UK may flip-flop, but that’s no reason not to have a bunch of BBQ food in your cupboards, ready for those few hours when the clouds do part.
But if you’re shopping on a tight budget, can you still enjoy one of summer’s greatest pleasures? We take a look at the UK’s different supermarkets to see if you can barbecue for a family of four for less than £10.
Remember, when the weather’s hot, stay cool, stay hydrated, and wear sunscreen!
BBQ menu
- Burgers, baps, and salad
- Corn on the cob
- Chips
Quick look
| Best value | Most expensive |
| Aldi – £8.60 | Waitrose – £11.45 |
For this comparison, we’ll visit each major UK supermarket and put everything on our list in our basket. We’ll try and find the most similar items we can to make it as fair as we can. For example, we won’t go to one supermarket and pick up a pack of eight, fresh steak burgers and four thin frozen ones at another – that won’t be fair as the fresh ones would obviously jack up the cost.
But, this is an article of barbecuing for a family of four. If one supermarket does eight burgers for a similar price as the rest are selling four, we’d be going for the eight pack. A double cheeseburger all round will go down far better than a single.
Our BBQ menu contains sweetcorn (vitamins are important!), however for each supermarket below, we’ve included the price of a pack of sausages if you want to make a swap. They are, surprisingly, a similar price to each other.
Switching sweetcorn for sausages makes firing up the barbie more worthwhile; and we know our family would be far happier with a sausage or two on their plate instead. This BBQ guide is just that: a guide. You can adjust the menu to suit your personal tastes and budget, we’re just showing you it is possible to BBQ on a budget.
In the instance we can’t physically buy a product (you’d be surprised, especially as it’s summer), we’ll find the closest, best value alternative.
Here we go then!
Asda
The burger
- 4 Birds Eye frozen beef burgers – £1.98
- 4 Asda Bakery baps – £0.94
- 10 cheesy slices – £1.20
- Sweet and crisp iceberg lettuce – £0.64
- Beef tomato – £0.84
- White onions – £0.99
Sides
A burger each, with cheese and salad, with a side of corn on the cob and chips comes to £9.54 at Asda.
If you want to make the most of firing up your BBQ, or you’re not a fan of sweetcorn, you can always swap them for sausages, which as you’ll notice looking down this list, are a similar price to each other. You can get 12 Richmond sausages for £1.88, which will give you a total basket of £9.84 instead.
Iceland
The burger
Sides
After scouring Iceland’s website to check everything off our BBQ menu, one thing was immediately clear: it was gonna be expensive. To keep it under £10, our burger is missing cheese, tomato, and lettuce, but we’ve got all the major components.
Another observation: BBQ meat is a lot cheaper if you buy using Iceland’s multibuy Mix & Match offers. Here, for £10, you can get 8 beef burgers, 24 Richmond sausages, and 4 BBQ chicken skewers.
If you’re buying in advance so you’re prepared for any day the sun shines, you might be able to use your £10 budget to stock up on the meat, and nearer the time, buy the fresh stuff. You can use the supermarket prices here as a guide to determine which will be best for you to buy them.
Tesco
The burger
- 8 Tesco frozen beef burgers – £2.64
- 4 Tesco seeded burger baps – £0.95
- 10 mature cheese slices – £0.99
- Iceberg lettuce 200g – £0.64
- Nightingale Farms cherry tomatoes – £0.69
- 1 white onion – £0.12
Sides
- Tesco Crinkle Cut Oven Chips – £1.99
- 4 sweetcorn cobettes – £1.29 (£1.10 Clubcard price)
At Tesco, you can one-up your BBQ game compared to Asda and serve up double cheeseburgers. And your shopping basket will cost 20p less overall at £9.31, or £9.12 if you’re using a Clubcard.
As we said above, you can swap your sweetcorn for sausages, and at Tesco, you can get 8 British pork sausages for £1.79 and spend a total of £9.81 instead.
Aldi
The burger
- 6 Oakhurst beef burgers – £1.99
- 4 white rolls – £0.75
- 8 Emporium cheese slices – £0.99
- Whole iceberg lettuce – £0.89
- Baby plum tomatoes – £0.59
- Diced onion – £0.45
Sides
- Straight cut chips – £1.65
- 2 sweetcorn – £1.29 (can cut each in half to serve four people)
Now it’s time for Aldi’s total. How has the 2nd* cheapest supermarket performed when it comes to BBQ?Aldi’s BBQ will cost you £8.60 – which is the lowest cost so far. (* The latest survey from Which? found Aldi has lost its ‘Cheapest’ crown to Lidl.)
With your leftover money, you could even get yourself some Irish-style pork sausages for £1.35 to bulk up your serving sizes.
Or you could even round it off with a dessert, you can get four ice cream cones for £1.25 in a selection of flavours: strawberry & vanilla, mint & chocolate, chocolate & hazelnut, or toffee & vanilla. There are plenty of other options, such as cakes, biscuits, bars, and fresh fruit if you’re planning a barbeque despite the weather.
Ocado
The burger
- 4 Birds Eye beef burgers with onions – £2.75
- 6 Ocado soft white rolls – £0.80
- 8 Dairylea slices – £1.50
- 6 Ocado tomatoes – £1
- 2 Ocado little gem lettuce – £0.79
- Ocado Brown Onions – £0.99
Sides
Now, Ocado is expensive. If you spend some time on their website, it won’t take you long to agree with us. To get the menu to match all of the other supermarkets we’re looking at, we just couldn’t get it below £10. Our BBQ feast came to a total of £10.57.
There’s a but, however. You can get it below £10 if you take advantage of deals – for this list we’ve stuck to RRP, but at the time of writing, the burgers were on offer for £2.50 which takes the basket total below a tenner.
Again, if you want more meat for your dinner, you can get 8 Ocado British pork sausages for £1.80 which will still take you over our £10 target, but at least you’ll get two sausages on your plate instead of half a cob.
Waitrose
The burger
- 8 Waitrose frozen beef burgers – £3.85
- 6 Essential white floured baps – £0.95
- 10 Essential sliced cheese for burgers – £1.50
- Essential iceberg lettuce – £0.85
- 6 Essential tomatoes – £1.00
- Essential onion – £0.15
Sides
Shopping barbeque food for a family of four is definitely not an activity for the cash-strapped. Waitrose is by far the most expensive of the supermarkets we’ve looked at, with our shopping list exceeding our tenner target and reaching £11.45.
Morrisons
The burger
- 8 Morrisons Savers beef burgers – £2.25
- 6 Morrisons sliced white rolls – £0.85
- 10 Morrisons mature cheesy slices – £1.19
- Morrisons little gem lettuce – £0.77
- Morrisons baby plum tomatoes – £0.89
- Loose onion – £0.16
Sides
Our BBQ menu at Morrisons totals £9, giving you just over a pound leftover to buy a packet of doughnuts or some bubblegum ice lollies.
Lidl
The burger
- 6 beef burgers – £1.99
- 6 white rolls – £0.49
- 8 mature cheese slices – £1.89
- Iceberg lettuce – £0.89
- Cherry tomatoes – £0.89
- 1kg brown onions – £0.99
Sides
- Homestyle chips – £1.59
- Corn cobbettes – £1.29
As Lidl isn’t online, we went old-school and took a trip to our local to price up our BBQ menu.
We searched the shelves for the cheapest prices, but despite our best efforts, Lidl missed out on hitting our target by a massive two pence, coming in at £10.02. As such, Lidl joins Ocado and Waitrose at the back of the pack. But of course, your local Lidl might have different stock, prices, or deals on which may bring the price down under a tenner.
