The own-brand taste-test: The best ways to save money on weekly shopping bills
Caitriona Redmond: takes the yellow-pack goods through their paces for your shopping basket
Own-brand products have come a long way since the yellow-pack days and Irish supermarkets offer a wide range of their own items at budget-friendly prices.
You might not realise that many Irish retailers have more than one product in their own brand ranges, and the quality of these products can vary across the spectrum from delectable to ‘good in a pinch’.
It was difficult to whittle down the products to be tested to a shortlist so I chose items that are commonly in peoples’ shopping trolleys. The hardest part was the testing; sampling food is my kids’ dream job and thankfully I had willing assistants.
I was looking for products that stood out in the crowd; that ideally are your go-to buys on a budget in a supermarket.
They should be on the shelves every day and taste exceptional.
Not everyone is a fan of porridge and Weetabix is a great food for weaning, although watch out for concrete-like hardness if you don’t clean out your bowl quick enough or miss a spill. Some call them wheat biscuits, some wheat bisks, some bixies, but they are all essentially a similar item to Weetabix.
So how do the own-brand versions compare to the original Weetabix? By the time you’ve loaded a wheat biscuit with your favourite toppings; be it banana, blueberries, or even a light sprinkle of sugar, you’re not going to notice the difference anywhere other than in your pocket.
For anybody wondering, the secret to loosening dried Weetabix is soaking in cold water before placing bowls into the dishwasher.
- Top for feeding your baby: Lidl Bixies. It became smooth quickly and was an easy texture.
- Top for texture and flavour: Tesco Wheat Biscuits. Even after soaking in milk for a minute, there were still some crisp surfaces and it was overall a lovely wheat biscuit to eat.
Thanks to excellent dairy produce in Ireland it’s no surprise that the quality and flavour of all of the Cheddar cheese submitted for sampling were outstanding. It was a tough job to separate them out into the top two and honestly, if you were to buy any of these own-brand cheeses, you are on to a winner.
- Best overall: SuperValu White Cheddar.
- Best for cheeseboards: Dunnes Stores Cloth-Bound Cheddar.
By far and away this was the most interesting category to sample. For some of the products, the label promised more than it delivered. Many of the tomato sauces included basil, which is a hard flavour to make out unless added at the very last minute of cooking and sometimes this gave a woody note and flavour to the end of the taste.
I loved the thick and unctuous sauce from Tesco and the pancetta gave it a distinctive smoky scent and taste. This sauce is ideal as a standalone without having to add meat to your meal but equally would be beautiful with chicken or beef.
The most-reliable sauce for matching with minced beef for lasagne or bolognese is the Lidl brand. While it wouldn’t be great as a standalone, it pairs perfectly with meat and cooked down very well.
- Best overall: Tesco Finest Tomato and Pancetta.
- Best for bolognese: Lidl Baresa Tomato Sauce.
Almost every household I know has a dishwasher and will be using a tablet of some form as their detergent. Even though you might be recommended to use a big brand by the label you see every time you open your dishwasher, you are fine to use another type of detergent so long as you follow the user instructions.
While, on this occasion, Tesco and SuperValu didn’t provide their tablets for testing, I can confirm that I have used both in the past with no issues.
I live in an extremely hard-water area and I have found that regardless of the detergent used, or where I buy it, I always have to keep my rinse aid and salt reservoirs topped up for the best results. Generic own-brand is fine and I have never had an issue.
During my testing period I put both Aldi and Lidl’s tabs through their paces by cleaning regular family dishes, and heavier cooking thanks to an extended jam-making stint. Each performed well and cleaned my dishes. The main difference was that Aldi’s tablets are coated in a dissolvable wrapper so can be placed directly into the dishwasher, while I had to unwrap the plastic cover on the Lidl tablets and discard it. For this reason, Aldi is the winner.
- Best all round: Aldi
Some supermarkets sent Angus mince and some plain, all sent varying types of minced beef with differing levels of fat content. As the Irish Examiner’s Darina Allen likes to remind us, fat is flavour, and it’s not always a bad thing to have mince with some fat content.
All of the mince was cooked dry with no additional oil or seasoning for tasting purposes. What I found interesting was that the Angus minced beef tasted the best, with a better caramelisation and overall flavour profile. That’s not to say that the other minced beef was awful, it’s just that the Angus performed much better in the taste tests. Any of the other minces are fine to use with sauces.
- Best for burgers: Aldi & Dunnes, (no difference between the two)
- Best for sauces: Lidl
Just how different can a whole chicken be? The answer is that it can vary wildly. Each of the supermarkets that sent me chickens for sampling (SuperValu did not submit a chicken for testing) looked vastly different to one another which goes to show the difference in suppliers and how they are reared.
I did a weigh-test to check to see which chickens are exactly the weight they said on the label and which were a little more generous; Aldi came out on top here with a chicken that weighed nearly 120g more than the size on the packet. On cooking, it was interesting to see that this same chicken lost the most amount of juices into the tray.
From a flavour point of view, all chickens tasted well and I was struggling to find a winner. It came down to how well the chickens retained their moisture and which was slightly less greasy and the winner here was Lidl.
- Best all round: Lidl
- Biggest chicken for the price: Aldi
You would think that this would be a relatively simple category to review but sliced ham varies due to the methods of curing and how thinly sliced it is.
Both Dunnes Stores and SuperValu offer thick-cut sliced ham, with Dunnes Stores Simply Better slow-cooked honey and clove ham having a distinctive Christmassy smell and a beautiful sweetness from the honey. SuperValu’s signature taste ham was smaller and tasted less cured.
On the other hand, both Lidl and Tesco provided me with thinner sandwich-style sliced ham and surprisingly Tesco came out as the winner of this whole category with a meaty taste and texture which was surprising given the thin slicing.
- Top for thick-cut country ham: Dunnes
- Top for thinly sliced ham: Tesco
When you walk into a supermarket you often smell beautiful fresh bread designed to entice you to feel good and fill up your trolley. That bread is real and the vast majority of supermarkets have on-site bakeries so you can pick up a fresh crusty loaf on a budget.
Each of the shops sent their signature crusty loaf for testing and they varied from plain white crusty cobb to Vienna-style loaves. Some were pre-sliced and others were full loaves to cut at home. All of the crusty loaves were delicious.
I loved the heartiness of the Lidl loaf, which had a thick texture and it would go perfectly with soups and stews, but the winner was the Dunnes Stores loaf which tasted like it was homemade with a great flavour and crust.
- Best all round: Dunnes
- Best hearty loaf: Lidl
All of the sliced pans tested are the budget loaves of bread that I include in the Irish Examiner shopping basket that tracks the price of staples from week to week. This gave me a great opportunity to assess how they stand up compared to one another.
On appearance, Lidl, SuperValu, and Tesco loaves have a similar shape and crumb texture; Dunnes Stores and Aldi have a looser texture.
White sliced pan, by its nature, can be quite plain and the loaves that had a darker top crust scored higher than those which were paler in colour. The darker crust gave a more nutty flavour and was much more pleasant to eat. If you are someone who cuts off the crusts, there is very little difference in any of these sliced pans though.
- Best all round: Dunnes
- Best for toasting: Aldi
There is nothing that my kids don’t know about pizza. They are connoisseurs of the genre and if I let them, they would eat pizza once a week if not more. Fans of pizza know that cheese pull and how long you can get your cheese to pull for is a top consideration when eating pizza when eating pizza. If you’re looking for this mysterious attribute, I recommend you cut and eat your slices immediately on taking them out of the oven. For ease of slicing though, let your pizza rest for three minutes before taking a knife to it.
- Best thin crust: SuperValu. SuperValu sent me a pizza from its chiller cabinet to test and not a frozen pizza with a combination of cherry and sundried tomatoes on top. The crust had a proper wood-fired flavour and the cheese was creamy and stringy meeting all the criteria for a top-notch pizza (even without the pepperoni).
- Best crowd pleaser: Tesco. With a crispy base, fluffy dough on top, and tasty pepperoni this pizza was a crowd favourite. In fact, it disappeared extremely quickly from the table. I would say it is virtually identical to a big-name frozen pizza brand for a fraction of the price. Due to the lack of fruit or vegetables on top, this is the pizza that will make everyone at the table happy.
While there are definitely outstanding products that I recommend you put at the top of your shopping list, the vast majority of own-brand foods that I tested were of excellent quality. Good enough to dupe your family and friends if you removed the labels in fact.
Overall, if you’re not buying supermarket label products already, it’s definitely worth your while making the change and saving the money for something else instead.
I’d definitely be interested to hear what your favourites are and if there are any other own-brand products you’d like compared and tested.
It’s been an interesting exercise and I know that my shopping list has changed as a result.
