Christmas dinner: can you save by buying only frozen foods?

We're all looking for clever ways to save over the costly festive period – is cooking your Christmas feast entirely from frozen one of them? I tried it out.

I am walking out of the shop holding my food shopping in shock as I've just bought almost everything for Christmas dinner – besides mince pies and gravy – for less than £20.

There have been Christmases when we have spent £20 on the turkey alone.

In fact, I also stocked up on bagels, six pints of milk, a cake and some chocolate biscuits and only spent £18.82.

Surprisingly this bargain haul wasn't from Aldi or Lidl.

Instead, I've just been to Iceland for the first time in at least 10 years.

I wanted to know if I could get my Christmas dinner for less if I opted for all of my ingredients to be frozen.

I also wondered if it'd help us waste less food as a family, so I thought I’d visit the freezer filler specialists.

It’s 9.30 on a Monday morning and our local Iceland is dead as a doornail, unlike the fashionable Aldi that is just metres away and already bustling with customers.

Walking through Aldi's heaving car park I can see that every till is manned.

In Iceland, it's quite a different story and they're obviously so used to it being quiet at this time of day that there aren't even members of staff at the checkout yet.

Christmas dinner in a box

The amount of choice on offer for Christmas dinner is surprising – as long as you don’t mind it coming out of a box, that is.

The freezers are stocked with turkeys and stuffing, as well as duck, gammon, beef wellington, stuffed pork crackling joint and butter-basted chickens, all priced at £3 a piece or any four for £10.

There are also massive frozen Bernard Matthews turkeys and turkey crowns for anybody needing a bit more choice.

Iceland's seafood platters, including dishes of lobsters and giant prawns which look pretty tempting.

The frozen food retailer caters for every budget as it also has a luxury range – lamb with mint sauce is £12, the easy-carve gammon £12 and frozen turkeys range from £10 to £20 depending on size.

I opt for one of the £3 boxes, which seems to like a great deal (provided it tastes good).

Having only recently given up 13 years of keeping hens I can’t quite face buying poultry that most likely had little space to live in, even at that price, and so I go for the honey-glazed gammon.

All the (frozen) trimmings

To go with it, I find a 900g bag of frozen Brussels sprouts for £1 – although I am dubious as to whether my four-year-old will eat them – and 500g of Disney Frozen ‘Olaf’ branded Chanteney carrots for £1.

The more expensive trimmings are the 900g ‘luxury’ roast potatoes cooked in beef dripping for £1.50 and 12 pigs in blankets for £2 – the latter are the same price in our local Tesco.

A frozen Christmas dinner can’t be complete without something from Aunt Bessie's, so I stock up on 12 of her frozen Yorkshire puddings for £1.

Frozen desserts

A discussion at my friend’s house the previous day prompted the question of what we'd have for dessert. Surely you can’t get a frozen Christmas pudding?

In fact, Iceland was advertising its 12-month matured pud for £4.

Sadly it wasn’t in-store yet and I felt that £4 was a bit pricey – especially as I'd already bought an extra-matured pudding from Tesco for my mother-in-law’s pre-Christmas dinner for only £1 more.

Friends suggested a roulade or Artic roll. There were plenty of tasty-looking options to choose from, but £4 for the roulade and £6 for the pavlova seemed pretty steep when I’d only paid £3 for the gammon.

In the end, I went with an Aunt Bessie’s £1 sticky toffee pudding and spent another £1 on fresh Ambrosia custard.

The total bill for my frozen Christmas dinner was just £11.50.

Frozen food prep

I could either defrost the gammon for 24 hours or cook it from frozen, so I went for the quicker option and stuck it straight in the oven.

The instructions said it would take 1 hour 45 minutes and both the roasties and the pigs in blankets would only need half an hour before they'd be ready to go.

The veg took just five minutes on the hob and the Aunt Bessie's Yorkshire puds only needed four minutes in the oven.

Halfway through cooking the gammon, I faced the most ardurous task of the day, which was taking the meat out and covering it in the still-slightly-frozen honey glaze.

I was impressed by the speed and ease of cooking, as preparing Christmas dinner usually takes hours and you're always left with a kitchen that's piled high with pots and pans.

For anyone trying to keep trim, another plus was that no additional fat or butter was needed to cook the roast potatoes or meat.

I did make my own gravy as a frozen version wasn’t available and I am intolerant to onions.

The taste test

But what did it taste like?

While my four-year-old wasn’t keen initially – not an unusual occurrence with roast dinners – he tucked into the Aunt Bessie's Yorkshires, Olaf carrots and pigs in blankets but, surprise, surprise, refused to eat the gammon or the Brussels.

My husband also liked the Yorkshires and pigs in blankets as well as the veg, but he said the £3 gammon was ‘middling’.

I wouldn’t be averse to buying frozen again but I’d buy a better quality joint, especially for Christmas dinner.

Looking online, an equivalent-sized gammon costs £3.60 or £3.75 in Tesco and Asda respectively, while a Tesco Finest honey-glazed joint is £7.50.

Washing up was fairly minimal and most of the packaging was recyclable – we also saved money on energy as we cooked for about 30 minutes less than usual.

Normally, home-cooked roast potatoes take longer and you have to rack up the heat to cook them.

There was also very little food wastage because everything that wasn’t used went straight back into the freezer.

Enough gammon was left over for sandwiches and, typically, the dog stole the last remaining pig in blanket.

The £1 sticky toffee pudding needed two and a half minutes in the microwave and in my view, it was the best item of the bunch, making it a good option if you’re not a fan of Christmas pudding.

Final verdict

So did we save money? Depending on our usual choice of turkey, beef or chicken at Christmas, we saved between £5 and £15 on the meat alone and at least £4 on the dessert. 

The saving on vegetables is debatable – a 500g bag of fresh Co-op carrots is just 39p and they take five minutes to cook, while the fresh Brussels sprouts sell for £1.08 a kilo in Tesco and Maris Piper potatoes are £2 for 2.5kg.

While next time I’d buy a better quality cut of meat, I wouldn’t rule out eating a frozen Christmas dinner again.

It was good value, there was less washing up, the cooking was easier and we wasted a lot less.

It’s a viable choice if you are on a budget, live alone or you’re a small family like us and don’t want to eat turkey for days.

Admittedly a freshly-cooked Christmas dinner would probably be tastier, but there’s no reason why you couldn’t mix and match with some frozen items, such as the veg.

You can also freeze extras like roast potatoes or leftover Yorkshire puddings yourself to save money, wastage and the angst of sweating over a hot Christmas stove.

Have you tried making Christmas dinner purely from frozen items? Is it something you'd consider? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.