[Lifestyle] From Lidl’s gold-dusted salmon to Iceland’s toffee crowns: we taste-test the best budget Christmas food

[BirSaNN]

Low-cost supermarkets have gone upmarket, selling fancy scallop gratins and passionfruit panna cottas at tempting prices. But are they any good?

Felicity Cloake
Felicity Cloake
Thu 15 Dec 2022 06.00 GMT
237
We live in a world where the main message of Christmas is “spend, spend, spend”, and where festivity has become synonymous with luxury – but you shouldn’t have to bankrupt yourself to have a good time. Helpfully, the more budget-conscious retailers have pushed the boat out this year, hoping to lure customers away from their upmarket competitors with golden fish and gargantuan toffee crowns. With food prices rising at record rates, they’re likely to be an attractive option for many of us. But what’s worth spending your hard-earned cash on … and what’s best left on the shelf?

Morrisons The Best Triple Smoked Scottish Salmon With Orange

£4.50 for 130g
Given the questionable desirability of smoking something as delicate as fish three times over, this is surprisingly mild – in fact, the fish could have done with a bit more flavour to stand up to the aggressively citrussy chunks of peel on top, which sadly look better than they taste. With the fish thin-cut and greasy, you’d be better off grating some orange zest over plain smoked salmon if this combination appeals (or pairing it with marmalade if you’re feeling particularly daring). 4/10

Asda Extra Special Blackthorn Dry-Cured Smoked Salmon

 

£6 for 120g
Cheap smoked salmon is often cut wafer-thin to help sustain the illusion of plenty, so it’s refreshing to see some more generous slicing on display here. The blackthorn refers not to any sloe berry flavouring, but to a brand of Scottish sea salt that seems to have been similarly generously deployed, and paired with a fairly strident smoke. This would be best served with plenty of brown bread and butter or cream cheese to balance the salt. 7/10

Lidl Deluxe Royal Smoked Scottish Salmon Fillet with Gold Dusting

£9.99 for 200g
If you want to really wow your guests – as in, stun them into goggling silence with the sheer strength of your canapé game – then this gold-dusted hunk of fishy bling is for you. The salmon itself has a good texture and a fairly mellow smoke, but let’s be honest, all anyone’s interested in is the gold. Cut into chunky gold-topped slices and party like King Croesus himself – definitely one to bear in mind for New Year’s Eve, too. 9/10

Morrisons The Best King Prawn Cocktail
£5 for 400g
My first reaction when I finally found some prawns at the bottom of the pot was to wonder what the legal definition of a king prawn is, because I’d expected something bigger than these little fellas – and given that, with seafood at least, smaller is usually better, less disappointingly bland as well. Fortunately the sauce packs enough of a boozy sweet and sour punch that if you stick them on top of some shredded iceberg, and top with cucumber cubes and cayenne pepper, no one is going to complain. That said, I suspect it would still be cheaper to make your own with frozen prawns, but for the time- or energy-pressed, these will be a godsend. 7/10

link: https://www.theguardian.com/food/2022/dec/15/gold-salmon-fillets-sticky-toffee-crowns-taste-test-best-budget-christmas-food