2008
Take me to the Good Stuff: Best Buys in Lidl
Are you one of those people poking their heads tentatively around the doors of the local Lidl for the first time? This quick run down of what I consider to be the best buys there may be a useful introduction to the unfamiliar products on the shelves.
I haven’t mentioned veg here because, well, veg is veg. Nor have I mentioned fresh meat, because that’s a story for another day.
The list below is in no particular order.
1. Nuts
All the nuts are good, all the nuts are cheap. Half a kilo of peanuts for €1.39 is a winner, as is the same weight of Cashews for €4.19 - the latter are a bit overly salty so I throw them in a colander, give them a good shake and then store in an airtight jar. Not that they stay stored for very long.
But my pick here is the Walnuts, which are truly of exceptional quality, moist and fresh tasting, and only €1.99 for a 200g pack. You’d pay more than that for the standard dried up and bitter ones on many supermarket shelves.
Best Buy: Walnuts
2. Cheese
You won’t find much fancy stuff here, but what is there is mostly very good. The Vintage Mature Cheddar is a well known bargain, generally priced at 3.79 for a large 400g slab but currently at a euro less than that.
I love the Garlic Cream Cheese in the little 99c tub. This is a very handy pot to have around - a spoonful on top of a steak or floated on Leek & Potato soup or mixed though a sauce adds loads of garlicky goodness with minimal effort.
There is very keenly priced Feta available most of time, but I haven’t bought it in a while so can’t remember the exact price.
The Parmesan may not be the world’s greatest but it’s cheap at less than €20 per kilo, or around €4.00 per wedge, and tastes good to me. Ditto the mozzarella, which is 79c a pack. It comes in two varieties - standard and low fat. Personally I think the low fat one tastes a bit odd, so I stick to standard.
Best Buy: Vintage Mature Cheddar
3. Chocolate
I’ve gone on about this before, but there are some amazing chocoholic treats in Lidl. The Ecuador 70% and the Trinidad 75%, at 1.49 for 100g, are very good dark chocolates which are almost always in stock and they have recently been joined by a Fair Trade 70% chocolate, at the same price, which is also excellent.
I’m a high cocoa junkie, but there are also less dark bars in the same range - branded J.D. Gross - if you prefer a milder chocolate. These are all chocolates from a single region, sometimes a single estate, and are easily as good as expensive luxury brands.
Look out for occasional special edition J.D. Gross bars, which appear maybe once or twice a year. The three best of these are Kul Kul, a 78% cocoa chili chocolate from Papua New Guinea; 81% Arriba from Ecuador which has cocoa nibs in it and is a really intense chocolate hit; and the San Martin 77% from Peru which is an exceptionally smooth dark chocolate.
Best Buy: 70% Ecuador Chocolate
4. Ham, bacon & Sausages
The Prosciutto is, for me at least, the nicest of the ham buys and at €1.99 for 8 good slices it’s a snip. The Serrano at the same price is a wee bit too salty. Genuine Parma is excellent and very well priced at €3.99 a pack.
Probably the bargain of all bargains in Lidl is their bacon offcuts, which are sold as a large and very unappetizing looking lump for €1.99. However simply unwrap and dump the whole lot into a moderate oven for 30-40 mins or so, drain off the fat when it’s done and then chop the cooked bacon into small pieces.
It’s a kind of messy process, but you’ll end up with an absolutely vast volume of bacon bits for half nothing. I freeze these in plastic cups covered with cling film and they come out fine.
The salamis and other continental sausages are brilliant, particularly the Chorizo which tastes better to me that much more expensive deli ones. I’m also partial to the Pepper Salami, which costs 2.99 for 200g - great on pizza, in a salad or just as a snack.
Best Buy: Prosciutto
5. Cereals
Most of the Lidl cereals I avoid - I’ve found them either overly sugary or a bit bland for my taste. However I know people who think the cornflakes are great and who buy lots of the others. The ones aimed at kids look horrific though - what exactly is added to make bright blue cereal?
But don’t walk past, because there is one real star here: Special Muesli Luxury Fruit & Nut - the one in the blue pack. This is an excellent muesli that easily stands up to comparison with much more expensive brands. It has more nuts (and better nuts) and fruit than others that cost multiples of the price. It’s normally €2.49 for a decent sized 750g pack, but is reduced to €1.49 at the moment.
Best Buy: Luxury Fruit & Nut Muesli
6. Biscuits & Cake
They have some good fancy biscuits, but at 39c for a pack of Custard Cream or a large pack of Bourbon Creams, 45c for a pack of Chocolate Chip Cookies and 69c for very good shortbread, all of them perfectly tasty, it’s a great place to stock up on the more everyday kind.
If you’ve teenage boys in the house you’ll know they tend to look on biscuits not as individual items but as things that are eaten in units of a pack, so these sort of prices are particularly welcome.
I have never tried any of the cakes - bought cakes are not generally on my list of favourites - so I can’t really comment on them, except to say that they seem to be popular items in other people’s trolleys (you do look in other people’s trolleys don’t you?).
Best Buy: Bourbon Creams
7. Sauces, Dressings, Mayo etc
I’m not sold on most of the bottled or jarred sauces I’ve tried in Lidl, but then I’m not sold on pre-prepared sauces generally. Lidl often have some flavours of better known sauce brands in stock - recently I’ve seen Pataks and Lloyd Grossman - at prices much lower than are usual, so if you use these there can be bargains available.
The mayonnaise is not bad - it certainly isn’t a premium one but it isn’t offensive, takes flavouring well, and is very cheap. It’s available in standard and low-fat versions.
The exception to my lack of enthusiasm about this section is the Red and Green Pesto. These should quite simply be in every kitchen all the time. The red is (marginally) better than the green but both are wonderful kitchen standbys.
A bowl of pasta with a spoonful of either one stirred through and a grating of cheese makes a super fast, super cheap, super tasty lunch. They also make good dips.
And they are very cheap - just €1.39 each.
There are also tubes of tomato puree which are great value. If you prefer to make your own tomato sauce, as I do, the tins of plum tomatoes at 29c each or chopped tomatoes at a similar price are the business.
Best Buy: Red Pesto
8. Frozen Fish
The frozen breaded fish is as good as any you’ll get, but isn’t something I use a lot of. My favourite buy in this section is prawns. Aside from the ordinary bags of frozen prawns for €4.99 for 500g, a price which makes prawn salad a fairly routine weekday lunch around here, there are others not always in stock which are great buys, notably the €2.99 King Prawns used to make this curry.
There are often fish specials, and they are almost always worth a look. There were lovely fish Kebabs available earlier this year and I’ve just bought some vac packed Scottish Mussels in Garlic butter which look tasty - they’re in the fridge, when we get to them I’ll let you know!
Around Christmas they have lobster at pretty amazing prices, though they are very small ones. If you do decide to indulge you’ll really need one per person even for a starter.
A very handy freezer standby is the pack of two pieces of salmon with spinach in puff pastry. I don’t have the price here, but if you need a tasty dinner involving no effort beyond bunging something into the oven, then these are just the ticket.
Best Buy: King Prawns
9. Bread
Most of Lidl’s bread is fairly routine though good value, but there are two stand out products. One is the part baked bread buns with seeds on top, at €1.69. These bake up in about 10 mins to crusty and delicious little loaves that also look really appealing. The second is the 89c Sunflower Bread, a dense, moist, nutty flavoured brown bread that is not just tasty but healthy also.
The muffins, 9 for €1.69, are also tasty. These have become noticeably smaller over the last few month though - I hate when they do that, just be honest and put the price up!
Best Buy: Sunflower Bread
10. Boring but Necessary Stuff
Tinfoil, greaseproof paper, refuse sacks, freezer bags, kitchen paper, loo roll etc - none of this makes for exciting shopping, but we all need them. They are cheap here, sometime astoundingly cheap, and of good quality.
Cleaning products vary in quality. I’ve not been that happy with the washing machine tablets (though the fault may be at least in part with my ancient washing machine), but the 3 in 1 dishwasher tablets have been excellent, and I live in a hard water area so they are well tested.
However the stand out cleaning product for me is the W5 Power Cleaner, in the pink bottle, which costs €2.79 for 750mls.
This is hands down the best general kitchen and bathroom cleaner I have ever used and it goes a long, long way. It’s brilliant on ceramic hobs. I imagine it contains all manner of dreadful things, the contents list is very vague, but it sure does its job.
Best Buy: W5 Power Cleaner