A savvy mum has shared her unique ideas to keep Christmas dinner cheap including a five-course meal and drinks for 10 people - costing less than £50. Jenna Burr, 31, felt inspired to create an impressive feast that won’t break the bank after discussing the financial challenges facing the UK with her family and friends.
Stay-at-home mum Jenna bought all of her ingredients from her local Tesco - and cooked and photograph her ideas - to ensure that others could replicate the recipes easily. Her five-course meal for £50 includes a salmon lattice starter, a roast dinner - with all the trimmings - a cheese course and two different pudding options, an ice-cream ‘bomb’ and a Christmas pudding with custard.
She also managed to include 12 mince pies for £2.18, some chocolate-dipped clementines for £1.22 and a £3.50 mulled wine spritz on the side in her tight budget. Jenna kept the cost down by making a £6 turkey centerpiece using thigh joints, stuffed chicken, sausage and bacon parcels - at just 60p per portion - and sage and onion stuffing Christmas trees for 6p a piece.
She spent less than £6 on both desserts, £6.30 on her cheese course and just under £5 on veggies - including enough greens beans, broccoli, carrots, parsnips and brussels sprouts for 10 people. Jenna said that she wanted to create a really impressive festive feast that will put smiles on everyone’s faces, despite being on a very tight budget.
She said: “I wanted to show that you can have a really luxurious Christmas day feast for the whole family without needing to invest in any specialist equipment or ingredients. It’s not always helpful when recipes require expensive ingredients or items from multiple shops as that can be a real barrier to creating something everyone can make and enjoy.
“I appreciate how utterly exhausting it can be having to plan meals on a tight budget so hopefully I can take some of the stress away and leave people more time to do what matters most - enjoy themselves!"
Jenna's mum was always a great, savvy cook so she was able to learn from the best and create unique ideas. Her main challenge has been keeping her kids away from the food long enough to photograph it.
She added: “I wanted to video the ice cream bomb but - even though it only takes five minutes to assemble - I could only manage to take photos as I was stopping my four-year-old from face planting into it!”
Jenna posted her idea on Facebook, where it gained such an overwhelming response that she decided to create a dedicated budget-friendly meals page on TikTok. Her videos have amassed over 120,000 views and she has received ‘lovely’ comments from people who are excited to make her food for Christmas this year.
She said: “I started this to help out a friend but it’s spread so much farther - I’m so happy that it’s been useful to so many people. Knowing that this has been helpful has been so uplifting.”
