Food prices have soared in recent months as the cost of living crisis has worsened. Many products have become more expensive, with cooking oil and dairy products seeing particularly steep increases.
But now another product can be added to the list. The humble fish finger is apparently becoming just too costly, as shoppers in Sainsbury's noticed last week. Customers were said to be "falling to their knees" after spotting that a 30 pack of Birds Eye fish fingers was selling at £7. However, according to Dianne Bourne of the Manchester Evening News, this is a relative bargain compared to Asda, Tesco and Morrisons where the 30-finger value pack is now selling for around £7.50, with the price at Ocado being £7.90.
Dianne says she baulks at "paying more than £2 for any box of fish fingers", and would potentially "push it to £3" for a bigger pack if "feeling flush". So she decided to put supermarkets' budget non-branded options to the test, pitting them against prominent Birds Eye. She also canvassed the opinion of her six-year-old boy who's a fan of the kid-friendly meal. Here's what Dianne discovered.
The prices
"For a fair comparison, I purchased each supermarket's own brand packet of 10 cod fish fingers, to compare to the Birds Eye cod version," said Dianne.
"The Birds Eye 10-pack can be found for different prices at different supermarkets - I purchased mine from Morrisons for £3.60, and they were also £3.60 at Asda and Tesco, while at Sainsbury's they were priced at £4. The cheapest supermarket deal we found this week for the branded box was at Waitrose, where they are priced on special offer at £2.95, down from their usual price of £3.70."
The own brand version at most of the supermarkets was up to half the price of the Bird's Eye version, she said. Here are the prices in order from cheapest to most expensive:
Aldi - £1.55
Lidl - £1.65
Morrisons - £1.80
Tesco - £1.85
Asda -£1.85
Waitrose Essential - £2.20
Sainsbury's - £2.25
Birds Eye - £3.60 (purchased at Morrisons)
The cooking
"All of the fish fingers said on the boxes they could be grilled, oven cooked or fried - bar the ones from Lidl which suggested oven cooking. But for the ease of this experiment, they were all going to get a good grilling," said Dianne.
To differentiate the similar-looking fingers, she devised a system of annotating the tin foil under her grill pan to keep an eye on which was which: "All of the boxes gave a suggested grilling time of 12-15 minutes, except for the Tesco fingers which said 10 minutes so I thought I'd best keep a watchful eye on that one and bring it out sooner if it started to erupt," said Dianne.
"The Tesco one was indeed the first to be ready, its orange skin starting to crumple the quickest, so off it came. It was swiftly followed by the Sainsburys finger and the Waitrose one, both of which began to wrinkle up.
"The rest were all ready around the 15-minute mark and remained of firm and handsome figure, I thought. It was the Birds Eye one that looked liked it still needed cooking even after the suggested 15 minutes, perhaps because of a paler appearance that made it stand out from its bright orange fishy cousins.
"Most were fairly sturdy, but I found the Tesco finger the hardest to grapple and it looked like it was about to collapse in the middle when moved from grill to plate. The Birds Eye one was also also surprisingly floppy to the touch. The Lidl, Asda and Morrisons comrades were the sturdiest units after cooking, I'd say."
The taste test
Next Dianne filled a plate with fish fingers and began comparing their respective tastes. "Aldi was immediately a stand out for me, with a delicious fresh-tasting white fish interior," she said.
"But I'm afraid the Lidl one was a big no from me, the innards tasted slimy and looked a tad grey, while the exterior was the brightest of bright orange. In order to be fair, I gave the Lidl fish fingers a second shot in the oven (as per the recommendation on the packet).
"But this did not improve the flavour in any way for me. The Sainsbury's fish fingers I found rather pleasant, but it was the Tesco finger, which, while a little floppier than I'd have liked, delivered a really stand-out fishy punch with a tasty thinner membrane than some of the others - I found it to be quite unusual and delicious.
"The Asda and Morrisons fingers were fine, but much of a muchness, there was no particular standout flavour but both a fair example of the genre. Perhaps the biggest shocker for me was that the Birds Eye original also didn't really stand out for me - I was expecting it to blow away the opposition.
"The biggest win of all though, was that they all passed the kid taste test - he was happy with pretty much all of them. The only one, would you believe, he vaguely gave a thumbs down to was the Birds Eye finger.
"He said his 'favourite' was the fish finger from Aldi. I could have happily given him a fish finger high five at this point - given it's the cheapest one and that's what he's now going to be eating for the rest of his time under my roof.
"So, there you go - he could taste no difference between any of them really. So it's a no brainer for me to stick with supermarkets' own brand fish fingers in future - at such a drastically cheaper price than the branded version."
How Dianne rated the fish fingers
Dianne's little boy appointed Aldi fish fingers the winner - and they were also the cheapest - but her personal taste test winner was Tesco. "And hey, I'm the one with 40 years experience of eating fish fingers, so what I say goes," she said.
"I was really pleased that the better value fish fingers were actually among the tastiest on our test. Although, as mentioned previously, my young 'un would have been happy served pretty much any of these lot."
Dianne's full ratings:-
1) Tesco - £1.85 : 5/5
2) Aldi - £1.55 : 5/5
3) Sainsbury's - £2.25 : 4/5
4) Birds Eye - £3.60 : 4/5
5) Asda - £1.85: 3/5
6) Waitrose - £2.20 : 3/5
7) Morrisons - £1.80 : 3/5
8) Lidl - £1.65 : 2/5
