The restaurant-quality hidden gems I always buy from Aldi Australia
Instead, fans are raving about the tasty treats tucked away in the freezer aisles of their local Aldi.
A recent foodie thread has unveiled what many budget-savvy Aussies are calling a 'secret menu' of restaurant-quality food - and they can all be found in the unassuming low-cost supermarket.
From flaky beef pies that rival gourmet bakery favourites, to Greek-style spanakopita praised by actual Greeks, and buttery roti that's been declared 'better than any restaurant,' shoppers have taken to the Reddit page to spill the beans on Aldi's best-kept food secrets.
The now-popular thread began with a simple question from a shopper praising the supermarket's frozen roti and once-stocked dumplings, asking others to share their own underrated finds.
What followed was a flood of fan-favourite recommendations, tips and hot takes on the best-value, most delicious eats - many of which cost less than $7.
'I go to Aldi just for spanakopita more times than I care to admit,' one user confessed.
While another said of the popular frozen pies, 'They're a dupe for the Herbert Adams pies - but half the price.'
With Australia's cost-of-living crisis forcing many households to tighten their belts, it's no wonder this thread struck a chord.
Shoppers are desperate for budget-friendly meals that don't taste like cardboard, and according to hundreds of Redditors, ALDI is quietly delivering restaurant-style flavour for a fraction of the cost.
So, if you're tired of overpriced takeout or just want to upgrade your weeknight dinners without blowing the budget, this list might just change your grocery game.
From spicy quesadillas to dangerously addictive Portuguese tarts, these are the cult ALDI products everyday Aussies can't stop raving about - and why you might want to stock up.
First up were Aldi's Elmsbury Beef Peppercorn Pies ($6.49 for two) which have won major praise for their gourmet flavour at a budget price.
'I think the fancy frozen beef pies that are like $6 for two are actually super good,' one shopper wrote.
'Came here to say this! They are a dupe for the Herbert Adams pies which retail for $10. The Aldi ones are $6.49.'
The only catch? Shoppers warn not to confuse them with ALDI's standard beef pies from the same brand, which didn't rate as highly.
Next, shoppers listed the Urban Eats Spanakopita ($5.99), with some customers admitting they visit Aldi just to stock up.
'I go to Aldi just for spanakopita more times than I care to admit.'
'I'm Greek and I find their spanakopita to be excellent.'
'I keep them stocked in the work freezer, and bust them out in the sandwich press when I haven't brought in a proper lunch.'
Other shoppers recommended pairing it with lemon juice, tzatziki or the chain's seasonal lamb koftas for a Mediterranean-inspired dinner.
Described as 'elite' and 'better than any restaurant,' were their Urban Eats Roti Paratha ($4.99 8pack) on the other hand, with this flaky flatbread moonlighting as an Aldi MVP.
'The roti is amazing and same if not better than any restaurant I've been to,' one Redditor claimed.
''The roti is elite. We've been getting the pre-made Massaman [curry] from the fridge section and it's delicious with some jasmine rice and roti as an easy week night 'fakeaway'.'
It's also vegan-friendly and cooks perfectly in a fry pan or sandwich press with no oil required.
If you're into Taco Tuesdays, they just got easier with their Urban Eats Chipotle Chicken Quesadillas ($4.99 2pack) making the list
These cheesy quesadillas are ready in minutes and pack a smoky chipotle punch.
'Pan fry those babies and you have a pretty decent meal for the price,' one person wrote.
'Definitely! I love them with salsa, jalapeños and sour cream. I'm going tomorrow, dinner is sorted.'
'Seconded! Just had one for lunch - absolutely top tier,' another wrote.
For the sweet toothers, shoppers shouldn't go past Aldi's Sweet Haven Portuguese Tarts ($5.49 4pack), apparently.
The golden, creamy custard tarts are a hit straight from the freezer and multiple shoppers say they should be illegal they're that good.
'Portuguese tarts are pretty good!'
'Those ought to be illegal! I love them.'
'Just tried these tonight. Pretty good is understating it.'
'I'll second that. They're a freezer staple for us.'
For a pro tip, bake them in the oven for 10 minutes to get that fresh-from-the-bakery crisp.
While many of these cult buys are available year-round, some may only appear during limited promotions, so fans recommended stocking up when you see them.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
10 hours ago
- The Guardian
A personal platypus: the strange tale of Winston Churchill's ‘magnificently idiotic' wartime request
There is a photo – or at least a 'fabled' photo – that would tie up a lot of loose ends in the strange story of Winston Churchill's platypuses. Recent research has revived the tale of how the British prime minister asked Australia to send him a live monotreme at the height of the second world war. Sadly his namesake, Winston, died just two days before landing in England in 1943 in now disputed circumstances. But Associate Prof Nancy Cushing, an environmental history specialist at the University of Newcastle, says Winston's journey would never have happened without the knowledge gained from a second platypus, Splash, that was also sent to Churchill – albeit after it had died and been stuffed. Cushing describes the connection between Churchill and the platypuses as 'weirdly compelling'. Splash sat on Churchill's desk while Operation Platypus – a series of reconnaissance missions in Borneo – was under way, academic research has found. 'I think one thing we would have loved to have found, and is fabled to exist, is a photograph of Splash on Churchill's desk,' Cushing says. 'There hasn't been really any discussion of [Splash's journey to London]. And that was such a breakthrough. Before its death, Splash was the first of the sensitive, duck-billed, beaverish animals to be successfully kept in captivity by Healesville Sanctuary's Robert Eadie. 'Without Splash there wouldn't have been an attempt to send Winston. He defined how you look after a platypus in captivity.' Churchill famously kept a menagerie, which included kangaroos and black swans. In 1943, he asked Australia's external affairs minister, Herbert 'Doc' Evatt, if he could have not just one platypus, but half a dozen, a request described by the zoo owner and author Gerald Durrell as 'magnificently idiotic'. Monotremes, which include echidnas as well as platypuses, are distinct from other mammals because they lay eggs. With their duck-like bill, flat tail and partially webbed feet, they are so strange looking that many early European scientists studying specimens suspected they were a hoax. Cushing and Kevin Markwell, from Southern Cross University, wrote in 2009 in their paper Platypus diplomacy: animals gifts in international relations that efforts to fulfil Churchill's request were motivated by a desire to secure his 'personal affection' towards an Australia 'which felt abandoned by Britain during the war'. 'The feat of transferring the platypus would have brought acclaim to the Australians and viewing the platypus [at London zoo] would have reminded embattled Londoners of their Australian cousins who were also facing the grim realities of war while raising morale by providing an opportunity to see an exotic animal for the first time,' they wrote in the Journal of Australian Studies. Officials charged with satisfying the British PM's request approached Australia's 'father of conservation', David Fleay, for help. Fleay wrote of his surprise in his 1980 book Paradoxical Platypus: hobnobbing with duckbills. 'Winston Churchill had found time suddenly in the middle of the war to attempt to bring to fruition what was, apparently, a long-cherished ambition … he had actually approached our prime minister for no less than six platypuses!' he wrote. He described it as the 'shock of a lifetime' and a 'tremendous problem landed squarely in my lap'. Fleay pushed back against the idea of sending six platypuses on the dangerous mission, but caught several and picked one to go. He named him Winston, built a 'special travelling platypusary' for him (with burrows and a swimming tank) and trained a platypus keeper to look after him on the ship. 'I thought it was a really weird thing to do when you're running a country, running a war,' Fleay's son, Stephen, tells Guardian Australia from Portugal. The platypus mission was secret at the time, but Stephen gradually learned about it and says his father supervised the whole thing. 'They're very, very difficult to keep,' he says. 'But he was completely, completely devoted to the animal.' Fleay built his knowledge on the work of Eadie, his predecessor at Healesville Sanctuary. 'We occupied his original cottage when my father became director in '37, '38,' Stephen says. 'He did a lot of pioneering work with the platypus, then my father took up his work.' Sign up to Five Great Reads Each week our editors select five of the most interesting, entertaining and thoughtful reads published by Guardian Australia and our international colleagues. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Saturday morning after newsletter promotion It was Eadie who had successfully kept Splash in captivity until its death in 1937. Cushing and Markwell, referring to Eadie's own writings, wrote that the preserved remains of Splash were 'carefully packed and secretly despatched to London'. 'When delivered to 10 Downing Street on 19 June 1943, accompanied by a leather-bound scientific description of the platypus and Eadie's 1935 book The Life and Habits of the Platypus, with Sidelights on 'Splash' the Tame Platypus, Churchill was said to have been delighted and later to have displayed the platypus on his desk.' The University of Cambridge's Natalie Lawrence wrote in the BBC Wildlife Magazine that Splash, who had been a 'minor celebrity' in Australia, was sent as an 'interim gift' while plans were made to keep Winston alive on the long sea journey. '[Splash] became almost entirely tame from his training by Robert Eadie, who had, as it happened, once saved Churchill's life in the Boer war in South Africa,' Lawrence wrote. Brisbane's Courier Mail reported in 1949, in an article about Eadie's death, that he had indeed been part of a team that helped Churchill escape from captivity (though other accounts have him escaping on his own). Winston the platypus set sail on the MV Port Philip, but died just two days before he was due to reach land. The media at the time reported, presumably on advice of the authorities, that the Germans were to blame. On 1 November 1945, Adelaide's the News reported that Churchill, 'in the midst of his war-time worries, wanted an Australian platypus'. 'And he would have got a specimen, a husky young male, but for German submarines,' the paper reported. Depth charges dropped when the Port Philip encountered the submarines caused the platypus to die of shock, the paper said. Fleay wrote that a heavy concussion would have killed the sensitive creatures. 'After all, a small animal equipped with a nerve-packed, super-sensitive bill, able to detect even the delicate movements of a mosquito wriggler on stream bottoms in the dark of night, cannot hope to cope with man-made enormities such as violent explosions,' he wrote. But students from the University of Sydney studying Fleay's collections in the Australian Museum Archives said in June that a shortage of worms to feed Winston, alongside heat stress, could have been factors as well as potential distress from the detonations. The ship's logbook shows air temperatures soared above 30C and water temperatures rose above 27C for about a week as the ship crossed equatorial waters. Platypuses cannot regulate their body temperatures in environments warmer than 25C, the students wrote. 'Heat stress alone would have been enough to kill Winston,' they wrote. 'However, it is important to note that food restrictions and the shock of a depth charge, in combination with heat stress, likely had an additional impact on Winston'e wellbeing and together contributed to his demise.'
The Guardian
10 hours ago
- The Guardian
A personal platypus: the strange tale of Winston Churchill's ‘magnificently idiotic' wartime request
There is a photo – or at least a 'fabled' photo – that would tie up a lot of loose ends in the strange story of Winston Churchill's platypuses. Recent research has revived the tale of how the British prime minister asked Australia to send him a live monotreme at the height of the second world war. Sadly his namesake, Winston, died just two days before landing in England in 1943 in now disputed circumstances. But Associate Prof Nancy Cushing, an environmental history specialist at the University of Newcastle, says Winston's journey would never have happened without the knowledge gained from a second platypus, Splash, that was also sent to Churchill – albeit after it had died and been stuffed. Cushing describes the connection between Churchill and the platypuses as 'weirdly compelling'. Splash sat on Churchill's desk while Operation Platypus – a series of reconnaissance missions in Borneo – was under way, academic research has found. 'I think one thing we would have loved to have found, and is fabled to exist, is a photograph of Splash on Churchill's desk,' Cushing says. 'There hasn't been really any discussion of [Splash's journey to London]. And that was such a breakthrough. Before its death, Splash was the first of the sensitive, duck-billed, beaverish animals to be successfully kept in captivity by Healesville Sanctuary's Robert Eadie. 'Without Splash there wouldn't have been an attempt to send Winston. He defined how you look after a platypus in captivity.' Churchill famously kept a menagerie, which included kangaroos and black swans. In 1943, he asked Australia's external affairs minister, Herbert 'Doc' Evatt, if he could have not just one platypus, but half a dozen, a request described by the zoo owner and author Gerald Durrell as 'magnificently idiotic'. Monotremes, which include echidnas as well as platypuses, are distinct from other mammals because they lay eggs. With their duck-like bill, flat tail and partially webbed feet, they are so strange looking that many early European scientists studying specimens suspected they were a hoax. Cushing and Kevin Markwell, from Southern Cross University, wrote in 2009 in their paper Platypus diplomacy: animals gifts in international relations that efforts to fulfil Churchill's request were motivated by a desire to secure his 'personal affection' towards an Australia 'which felt abandoned by Britain during the war'. 'The feat of transferring the platypus would have brought acclaim to the Australians and viewing the platypus [at London zoo] would have reminded embattled Londoners of their Australian cousins who were also facing the grim realities of war while raising morale by providing an opportunity to see an exotic animal for the first time,' they wrote in the Journal of Australian Studies. Officials charged with satisfying the British PM's request approached Australia's 'father of conservation', David Fleay, for help. Fleay wrote of his surprise in his 1980 book Paradoxical Platypus: hobnobbing with duckbills. 'Winston Churchill had found time suddenly in the middle of the war to attempt to bring to fruition what was, apparently, a long-cherished ambition … he had actually approached our prime minister for no less than six platypuses!' he wrote. He described it as the 'shock of a lifetime' and a 'tremendous problem landed squarely in my lap'. Fleay pushed back against the idea of sending six platypuses on the dangerous mission, but caught several and picked one to go. He named him Winston, built a 'special travelling platypusary' for him (with burrows and a swimming tank) and trained a platypus keeper to look after him on the ship. 'I thought it was a really weird thing to do when you're running a country, running a war,' Fleay's son, Stephen, tells Guardian Australia from Portugal. The platypus mission was secret at the time, but Stephen gradually learned about it and says his father supervised the whole thing. 'They're very, very difficult to keep,' he says. 'But he was completely, completely devoted to the animal.' Fleay built his knowledge on the work of Eadie, his predecessor at Healesville Sanctuary. 'We occupied his original cottage when my father became director in '37, '38,' Stephen says. 'He did a lot of pioneering work with the platypus, then my father took up his work.' Sign up to Five Great Reads Each week our editors select five of the most interesting, entertaining and thoughtful reads published by Guardian Australia and our international colleagues. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Saturday morning after newsletter promotion It was Eadie who had successfully kept Splash in captivity until its death in 1937. Cushing and Markwell, referring to Eadie's own writings, wrote that the preserved remains of Splash were 'carefully packed and secretly despatched to London'. 'When delivered to 10 Downing Street on 19 June 1943, accompanied by a leather-bound scientific description of the platypus and Eadie's 1935 book The Life and Habits of the Platypus, with Sidelights on 'Splash' the Tame Platypus, Churchill was said to have been delighted and later to have displayed the platypus on his desk.' The University of Cambridge's Natalie Lawrence wrote in the BBC Wildlife Magazine that Splash, who had been a 'minor celebrity' in Australia, was sent as an 'interim gift' while plans were made to keep Winston alive on the long sea journey. '[Splash] became almost entirely tame from his training by Robert Eadie, who had, as it happened, once saved Churchill's life in the Boer war in South Africa,' Lawrence wrote. Brisbane's Courier Mail reported in 1949, in an article about Eadie's death, that he had indeed been part of a team that helped Churchill escape from captivity (though other accounts have him escaping on his own). Winston the platypus set sail on the MV Port Philip, but died just two days before he was due to reach land. The media at the time reported, presumably on advice of the authorities, that the Germans were to blame. On 1 November 1945, Adelaide's the News reported that Churchill, 'in the midst of his war-time worries, wanted an Australian platypus'. 'And he would have got a specimen, a husky young male, but for German submarines,' the paper reported. Depth charges dropped when the Port Philip encountered the submarines caused the platypus to die of shock, the paper said. Fleay wrote that a heavy concussion would have killed the sensitive creatures. 'After all, a small animal equipped with a nerve-packed, super-sensitive bill, able to detect even the delicate movements of a mosquito wriggler on stream bottoms in the dark of night, cannot hope to cope with man-made enormities such as violent explosions,' he wrote. But students from the University of Sydney studying Fleay's collections in the Australian Museum Archives said in June that a shortage of worms to feed Winston, alongside heat stress, could have been factors as well as potential distress from the detonations. The ship's logbook shows air temperatures soared above 30C and water temperatures rose above 27C for about a week as the ship crossed equatorial waters. Platypuses cannot regulate their body temperatures in environments warmer than 25C, the students wrote. 'Heat stress alone would have been enough to kill Winston,' they wrote. 'However, it is important to note that food restrictions and the shock of a depth charge, in combination with heat stress, likely had an additional impact on Winston'e wellbeing and together contributed to his demise.'
Daily Mirror
15 hours ago
- Daily Mirror
I tried jams from Aldi, M&S, Asda and more - the winner was cheaper than Hartley's
Jam can be found in almost every British household, so we tried and tested supermarket brands against big household name Hartley's - and the results were surprising. UK households are known for their love of jam, using it in sandwiches, on toast and in baking. The jam aisle in supermarkets can be quite overwhelming with own-branded jams and big household names taking up lots of shelf space. I recently put supermarket brands up against one another to perform a blind taste test. This included Lidl, Morrisons, Sainsbury's, Aldi, Tesco and Asda, and I compared them to Hartley's. The results were surprising, and I couldn't believe how different they tasted from one another. 1. Lidl - 89p Lidl's jam took the taste test off to a great start, with the budget supermarket's raspberry jam smooth in texture and tasting fresh, reports the Express. However, there wasn't that much flavour in this jam compared to the other ones we tried. Score: 6/10 2. Morrisons - 90p Unfortunately, Morrisons' jam ranked quite low in the taste test as it was too thick and had a jelly-like consistency, which we weren't a fan of. It also tasted quite strong and artificial compared to some others we tried. Score: 2/10 3. Sainsbury's - 89p Although this jam had a great consistency, it was a lot more sour compared to some of the others in the taste test. It had a decent flavour but tasted slightly artificial, but overall, I would eat this again on toast. Score: 5/10 4. Aldi - 89p Aldi's jam was absolutely delicious with a great flavour which wasn't artificial at all. The texture was spot on, and it wasn't overly sweet or too tangy; it was just right and topped our taste test. Score: 10/10 5. Tesco - 89p Tesco's seedless raspberry jam tasted incredibly sweet compared to some others we sampled, but it wasn't off-putting. It had a very distinctive raspberry flavour and overall was delicious on toast. Score: 7/10 6. Asda - 89p Asda's seedless raspberry jam also boasted a fantastic raspberry flavour that didn't taste artificial. We favoured other ones in the taste test, but would happily have this again. Score: 7/10 7. Hartley's - £1.70 Hartley's jam had a grainy texture, and the consistency was far too thick, almost jelly-like. It was quite sweet, but we did enjoy the flavour; however, it didn't beat Aldi. Score: 5/10
