This New $7 Aldi Grocery Is Keeping Me Running Through the Holidays

My family thinks a dinner fairy lives in our house. Out of seemingly disparate ingredients, this fairy manages to make delicious meals, and do it so quickly that members are able to get to gymnastics or play practice on time. Spoiler: I am that fairy.

I’m not magical in the traditional fairy-tale sense, but I do have a stash of secret ingredients that help get these meals on the table in under 30 minutes. As a longtime Aldi shopper, I’ve accumulated these staples from nearly every area in the store, including the freezer cases, of course, as well as the bakery, deli, and produce sections.

Just before Thanksgiving, I discovered a new little helper while strolling through the refrigerator section: rotisserie-style pulled pork and pulled chicken.

Although Aldi doesn’t carry rotisserie chickens (a wish I’ve had for years!), it now sells pulled pork and pulled chicken. I’ve never seen either in the stores before, and I’ve been a regular Aldi shopper for years.

At $7.19 per pound, the meat is roughly the same price as the ones you’ll find at several other stores. Plus, it’s all meat — no skin or bones, so you don’t have to do the work of dismantling the chicken or roasting a pork shoulder.

The meat is, well, shredded meat. It’s no-frills, but it’s cooked well. The shredded pork is similar to what you would have if you roasted a pork shoulder and then shredded it, and the shredded chicken is comparable to what you’d find if you picked all the meat off of a rotisserie chicken or home-roasted chicken.

While I can’t sprinkle any fairy dust to make my holiday entertaining easier, I’m definitely going to be using both the chicken and pork to lighten my cooking load this season.

Both the pulled pork and chicken make slider assembly easy (just add a quick stir of barbecue sauce), and they’re great if you’re throwing a make-your-own tacos party or, say, having your son’s entire gymnastics team over for dinner. Although I haven’t tried it, I think you could use each of them in a specialty eggs Benedict or omelet, too.

The pulled chicken makes a quick barbecue chicken pizza — especially when paired with ready-made pizza dough. I think it’s great for chicken salad or, really, any salad when you want additional protein. It would be a welcome shortcut in pot pie, one-pot meals, and chicken soup recipes, too.

Most recently, I used the pulled pork to make one of my favorite Japanese dishes, okonomiyaki. I’m still thinking about these beauties a week later.

What grocery shortcuts do you like to get at Aldi? Tell us about it in the comments.