Christmas food shopping can be a stressful, and expensive experience however you approach it. Perhaps you have your free-range bronze turkey and your heritage cure ham ordered, your shellfish and smoked salmon will be arriving by courier and your organic vegetables are enjoying their final few days in the soil before being delivered to your doorstep? To hell with the cost.
Or maybe you are contemplating when might be the least awful time to join the frazzled throngs in the supermarket, doing The Big Shop. There is a sweet spot, somewhere before the start of the worst of the checkout queues, the ones that snake back down the aisles with trolleys in sideways formation, and the fridge shelf life of a big bird destined for the dinner table. Finding it can be tricky.
So, what if you could do a supermarket blitz in the next day or two, getting in everything you will need for Christmas lunch or dinner, and then relax and enjoy the season of goodwill without major food shopping? Freezer cabinets are packed with Christmas goodies, but is it possible to source all the main ingredients for the Christmas table from their icy depths, transport them to your own freezer, and sit back and relax?
To put the theory to the test we sourced and taste tested a range of festive snacks, starters, main course turkey, beef and vegetarian/vegan options, side dishes, and a couple of desserts, all from supermarket freezer cabinets. The results were ... interesting.
The 27 festive freezer foods we tried were purchased in branches of Dunnes Stores, Tesco, Lidl, Aldi, Marks & Spencer and SuperValu in south Co Dublin on Monday, December 4th. Not all of the Christmas frozen food was in stock in some of the shops on that date, and you’ll probably find a bigger selection now.
To complete the mission a crack tasting team was assembled in the Features department of The Irish Times, comprising journalists Rosita Boland, Patrick Freyne, Ciara Kenny, Deirdre Falvey, Jennifer Cosgrove and Jessica Doyle. Not all of the products purchased and tested made it through to the comments here, which means that they were neither loved nor detested by our tasters.
SNACKS
We Liked
Malaysian style curry puffs, M&S, €8.25 (15 pieces)
Pastry parcels filled with a spiced sweet potato mix. These were unanimously popular. “Great flavour in the filling, with a welcome bit of a chilli kick,” said Rosita Boland.
Asian vegetable straws, Dunnes Stores, €3.29 (12 pieces)
Filo pastry cigars filled with green Thai curry vegetables and coconut and ginger vegetables. “I liked the veggie sticks,” said Jennifer Cosgrove, who will be enjoying a vegetarian Christmas. “But overall, I would say the veggie stuff was quite stodgy and cheese-based.”
We Didn’t Like
Salt & Pepper breaded prawn, Aldi, €1.69 (12 pieces)
Described on the box as “King prawns in a crispy salt and black pepper coating”, these did not hit any high notes. “Small and mostly composed of deep-fried batter with barely discernible prawn within,” said Boland.
Prawn Bao Buns, Tesco Finest, €6 (eight pieces)
These go straight from freezer to microwave and are ready in three minutes. “Although they tasted good they didn’t have half enough filling to compete with the doughy bun. I will not be taking a bao this Christmas.” said Jessica Doyle.
STARTERS
We Liked
Shell On Wild Atlantic prawns, SuperValu, €6.29 (220g)
These could be very handy to have in the freezer in case of unexpected dinner guests. There are two separate pouches in each box, each serving one, and they go from freezer to microwave. The shell-on raw prawns come in a sauce of Irish butter and Spanish smoked paprika. There is a black tiger prawn in Sicilian lemon oil version in the same range, without shells. “Both were very good – I’d be very happy to have them again,” said Deirdre Falvey.
Cranberry and Camembert lattices, Aldi, €1.99 (two in box)
More cheese and pastry for the vegetarians. Our non-meat-eater approved, even if it was more of the same. The carnivores were less positive on this one.
We Didn’t Like
Deluxe King Prawn Ring with garlic dip, Lidl, €5.69 (270g)
King Prawn Ring with sweet chilli dipping sauce, Aldi, €4.99 (280g)
Neither of these retro-style prawn rings found any favour with our testers, and indeed were swerved completely by the post-tasting crew that descended on the communal kitchen table in the office. The prawns in both cases are farmed in Vietnam.
MAIN COURSE
We Liked
Stuffed Turkey Breast Joint with pork, sage and onion stuffing and smoked streaky bacon, Dunnes Stores, €12.99 (1.2kg)
This is ready to eat in two hours 20 minutes from frozen, and no oven tray to wash up. The meat is from “the UK and EU”, the box says. It cooked up quite nicely, with not too much shrinkage and the bacon lattice was an attractive feature. “Something I’d consider if cooking for two or a small family. With the bacon on top and stuffing in the centre, it would look well sliced at the centre of the dinner table,” said Doyle. There is also a version without stuffing for €8.99/800g.
Beef Wellington with pork and mushroom stuffing in puff pastry, Dunnes Stores, €17.99 (824g)
The beef is Irish and the pastry is properly flaky, with no soggy bottom. Excellent value and cooks from frozen in a recommended 90 minutes (but I would reduce the cooking time if you want the meat rare). If it fits in your air fryer this would be a good way to cook it. “The beef seemed great quality, the filling was good, the pastry was nicely flaky,” said Boland. “Seemed like a good quality piece of meat, pastry was light and flaky,” said Ciara Kenny.
We Didn’t Like
Braemoor Three Bird Roast with pork, sage and roast garlic stuffing, Lidl, €14.99 (1.4kg)
This was where Patrick Freyne, who had been munching determinedly and stoically through the tasting session, found his voice. “This three-bird turducken thingy is ungodly and I might have nightmares about it. WHERE WAS THE THIRD BIRD? WAS THAT REALLY DUCK?” Boland agreed: “Frankly, for the birds. A horror of a concoction that tasted as bad as it looked.”
VEGETARIAN MAIN COURSE
We Liked
Deluxe sage, onion and hazelnut vegan nut roasts, Lidl, €2.99 (two small ones in box)
You pop these into the oven in their containers then invert on to a plate when cooked and pour the sachet of vegan gravy, which you have heated in a microwave, over the top. This passed muster with Cosgrove, and meat-eater Falvey thought it was “way better” than the other veggie option, being “tastier, more moist, with distinguishable nuttiness.” Ciara Kenny also liked this one, describing it as “substantial and flavoursome.”
We Didn’t Like
Root vegetable and Camembert nut roasts, Aldi, €3.29 (two medium sized in box)
”I would not serve the Aldi Camembert nut roast to any vegetarians in my life over Christmas. Its texture was extremely mushy and reminded me of baby food,” said Doyle. “These looked and sounded appealing with the carrot through them, but were quite mushy and bland. Might be nice as a side dish, but not as the main element of a vegetarian dinner,” said Kenny.
SIDE DISHES
We Liked
Beef dripping roast potatoes, Tesco Finest, €3 (800g)
No peeling required, and a tasty potato that doesn’t look or taste like it has been frozen. “These taste great, much handier than going through the rigmarole of parboiling, roasting and sourcing beef dripping,” said Doyle.
Outdoor bred pork, sage and onion stuffing, M&S, €5.20 (340g)
“Much more pleasant texture than the other stuffings, which were mushy and too moist. This was nicely caramelised on the outside, and actually tasted like pork and herbs, as it should,” said Kenny. “This was just delicious, one of the tastiest I’ve ever tried. I would buy that rather than try to concoct something similar myself,” said Doyle. Boland thought it was very good and came up with this tasty suggestion: “I’d eat a little bit as maybe a lazy seasonal breakfast rather than having it with turkey.”
We Didn’t Like
Brussels sprouts with bacon, maple flavour glaze and butter, Aldi, €1.79 (400g)
These cooked up squidgy and unpleasant looking. Only Falvey could be persuaded to try them. “I tried a single sprout with bacon and not much to recommend it – but sprouts can be a hard one to get right.”
DESSERT
We Liked
All Butter Sicilian lemon tart, Dunnes Stores Simply Better, €8.99 (Serves six)
“It was lovely and tart and the pastry was fresh and crumbly,” said Doyle. Falvey also liked it, describing it as “tasty and good quality” but thought the filling was too runny. “Deliciously zingy and tart, with a buttery, crumbly pastry. The texture was quite runny, but perhaps serving straight from the fridge would solve that. It’s the only item I went back looking for more of, and probably the only one I would buy again,” said Kenny.
Marbled white forest roulade, Aldi, €4.99 (Serves six)
“I liked it, but then I have the tastes of a child when it comes to dessert,” said Freyne. and Falvey also thought it was “very good.”
So, armed with that feedback, what would I serve to my Christmas dinner guests from this shopping haul if I was taking a year off cooking? I would stock up on those Malaysian curry puffs for pre-dinner drinks, cheat a little and shove a good quality smoked salmon in the freezer for starters, and roast the Dunnes turkey breast joint (without stuffing) to serve with the Tesco beef dripping roasties and the M&S sausage stuffing. There are always petits pois in my freezer so those would stand in for the sprouts. The Dunnes Beef Wellington was the product that surprised and impressed me most in this experiment, so I’d have one of those in the freezer for a quick and easy Christmas Eve dinner from my air fryer.
