With Easter just a few days away, and Bank Holiday season not far behind it, even though the weather is set to be dreary, many people will already be planning their first BBQ of the year.
Once you’ve checked you don’t need to buy a new BBQ (winter survival rates depend on your storage method), it’s time to check your budget, draft a shopping list, and hit the shops.
But if you’re shopping on a tight budget, can you still enjoy one of a long weekend’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.
BBQ menu
- Burgers, baps, and salad
- Corn on the cob
- Chips
Quick look
| Best value | Runner up |
| Aldi – £8.83 | Morrisons – £9.46 |
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, and you’ll have to as well – as we found out, food prices have risen a lot since 2025 (we managed to get our menu at quite a few supermarkets for under a tenner… this year? Not so much).
In the instance we can’t physically buy a product (you’d be surprised, especially given stock issues), we’ll find the closest, best value alternative.
Here we go then!
Asda
The burger
- 4 Asda Beef Quarter Pounders – £3.80 (the cheapest option)
- 4 Asda Bakery baps – £0.94
- Just Essentials 15 cheesy slices – £0.83
- Sweet and crisp iceberg lettuce – £0.64
- Beef tomato – £0.87
- White onions – £0.99
Sides
A burger each, with cheese and salad, with a side of corn on the cob and chips comes to £11.64 at Asda. Since publishing this article last summer, the price of getting our BBQ menu has increased by over £2; the burgers have over doubled in price and the McCain chips (which were the cheapest option at the time) have had to be swapped out for own-brand.
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 eight Asda pork sausages for £1.79, which will give you a total basket of £12.06 instead.
To keep this menu under a tenner, you’ll need to make a few sacrifices. I say ditch the salad.
Iceland
The burger
- 8 beef burgers – £4.50 (or save 50p and get 4 Quarter Pounders)
- 6 soft sliced white rolls – £1.40
- 3 pack white onion – £1
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. Total? £10.90.
Last year, Iceland was the best option for bulk buying frozen meat, but this year, the Mix & Match for under £10 is noticably missing meat. Perhaps this will change later into the warmer season.
Tesco
The burger
- 8 Tesco frozen beef burgers – £4
- 4 Tesco seeded burger baps – £0.95
- 10 mature cheese slices – £1.45
- Iceberg lettuce 200g – £0.64
- Nightingale Farms cherry tomatoes – £0.62
- 1 white onion – £0.12
Sides
Tesco is a similar story to Asda when it comes to the price of beef (£2.64 in 2025 vs £4 in 2026). As a result, the price of our menu has risen above £10 to £10.72. To keep to budget, drop the salad items. The prices of sausages has risen so much I can’t even present them as a straight swap for the cobettes anymore.
Aldi
The burger
- 6 Oakhurst beef burgers – £2.19
- 4 white baps – £0.75
- 8 Emporium cheese slices – £0.99
- Whole iceberg lettuce – £0.89
- Baby plum tomatoes – £0.62
- 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. Impressively, the beef burgers have only increased 30p since last year, compared to the price doubling going on everywhere else. But has that meant I’ve been able to keep our menu under £10?
Miraculously, I have. My basket total at Aldi is £8.83.
With your leftover money, you could turn your cheeseburger into a bacon cheeseburger for an extra £1.25. It will take you 8p over budget, though.
Ocado
The burger
- Ocado Frozen 8 Beef Burgers – £2.94
- 6 Ocado soft white rolls – £0.80
- 8 Dairylea slices – £1.75
- 6 Ocado tomatoes – £1
- 2 Ocado little gem lettuce – £0.77
- 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 everything on the menu, I just couldn’t get it below £10. Our BBQ feast came to a total of £11.64. And my shopping basket includes Ocado’s clearance beef burgers; without those, the price of my burgers will rise to £4 putting me way over my £10 target.
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 – £4
- 6 Essential white giant baps – £1
- 10 Essential sliced cheese for burgers – £1.55
- Essential iceberg lettuce – £1
- 6 Essential tomatoes – £1
- Essential onion – £0.16
Sides
Shopping barbeque food for a family of four is definitely not an activity for the cash-strapped. Waitrose is only just the most expensive of the supermarkets we’ve looked at, with our shopping list exceeding our tenner target and reaching £12.01.
Morrisons
The burger
- 8 Morrisons Savers beef burgers – £2.60
- 6 Morrisons sliced white rolls – £0.85
- 10 Morrisons mature cheesy slices – £1.19
- Morrisons little gem lettuce – £0.77
- Morrisons baby plum tomatoes – £0.75
- Loose onion – £0.16
Sides
Our BBQ menu at Morrisons totals £9.46. Yes, you read that right – our BBQ menu cost less than a tenner. The beef only increased by 40p, and while the price of the chips rose by a few silver coins, the rest of the menu stayed the same price. It’s an impressive feat.
So, can you spend less than a tenner on a BBQ for four?
Yes, it is doable, however you really need to put thought into your menu. Our example BBQ menu only come to less than a tenner at two supermarkets this year, compared to six last year. The price of beef has skyrocketed, frozen chips have increased by an average of 50p, and processed cheese slices are no longer as cheap and cheerful as they once were.
To save money, split your shop between supermarkets to make the most of offers and deal bundles. If you’ve only got a tenner, spreading your BBQ shop across a few weeks can help to ease the expense. The meat and bread can be frozen and kept for when they’re needed, while the salad items would be better buying as close to BBQ day as you can.
