I Went Shopping for Thanksgiving at Aldi & This Is How Much It Cost

Aldi has a dedicated following of die-hard fans, and it’s easy to see why. Everybody likes saving money, and Aldi has a reputation for being one of the best places to find a good deal on groceries.

But is it really that much cheaper than other stores, and would it be possible for a home cook to buy everything they need for a Thanksgiving dinner at Aldi? To find out, I went to an Aldi in Chicago on a Saturday afternoon and priced out all the ingredients necessary to make a complete Thanksgiving dinner.

I went shopping for the ingredients to prepare a classic Thanksgiving dinner with turkey, stuffing, potatoes, green bean casserole, and cranberry sauce, using these five recipes. The menu does not include drinks, desserts, or rolls. This menu serves eight people, and you’ll need an eight- to 10-pound turkey.

• How To Cook a Frozen Turkey
• Recipe: Gluten-Free Cornbread and Mushroom Stuffing
• Recipe: Stovetop Rustic Garlic Mashed Potatoes
• Recipe: Green Bean Casserole with Mushroom Béchamel & Crispy Onions
• How To Make Cranberry Sauce: The Simplest, Easiest Method

• 1 10-pound frozen turkey, $12.50
• liveGfree gluten-free cornbread mix, $1.99 for a 15-ounce box
• Southern Grove chopped pecans, $5.29 for 8 ounces
• 1 large onion, $1.99 for a three-pound bag of approximately six onions
• 1 pack of celery, $1.29
• 2 packs of garlic, $2.18 for six heads
• 1 pound mixed mushrooms, $2.48
• Winking Owl Chardonnay, $2.89
• Bacher lager, $5.99 for six
• Grade A large white eggs, $0.89 for 12
• Fit and Active Reduced-Sodium Chicken Broth, $1.19 for 32 ounces
• Red potatoes, $2.99 for 5 pounds
• Whole milk, $1.59 for a half gallon
• Countryside Creamery unsalted sweet cream butter, $2.89 for 16 ounces
• Aldi canola oil, $1.85 for 48 ounces
• Baker’s Corner all-purpose flour, $1.09 for 5 pounds
• Small, sweet onions, $1.99 for two pounds, or approximately 5 onions
• 2 pounds green beans, $3.58
• 1 pound baby portobello mushrooms, $3.58
• Friendly Farms heavy whipping cream, $1.99 for 16 ounces
• Burman’s steak sauce, $1.19 for 10 ounces
• Happy Farms sharp cheddar, $1.79 for 8 ounces
• Large Navel oranges, $3.29 for 4 pounds, approximately 7 or 8 to a bag
• Baker’s Corner granulated sugar, $1.89 for 4 pounds
• 12 ounces fresh cranberries, $1.49

Total price: $69.88 + tax

• Butterball frozen turkeys were $1.25 per pound. Fresh organic turkeys were also available for $2.89 per pound.
• You’ll need eight cups of day-old, gluten-free cornbread cubes. If you buy everything on this list at Aldi, you’ll have everything you need to make the cornbread mix. Just make it in advance so it will be ready in day-old cornbread cube form on Thanksgiving.
• Whole white mushrooms were 69 cents for eight ounces, and whole crimini mushrooms were $1.79 for eight ounces.
• The beer is used to make the batter for the crispy onions that top the green bean casserole, so you could substitute seltzer if you don’t want to buy beer just for that. Or if you have something in your fridge already, you can use that!
• It’s also worth noting that Burman’s steak sauce is the closest thing I found to Worcestershire sauce at any store in this whole experiment. And I did this same story for four stores!

• Fresh rosemary
• Fresh thyme
• Ground mustard powder

Aldi has a well-earned reputation for being extremely inexpensive. I saw an 89-cent price tag on a dozen eggs and thought it was 1967 again! The store didn’t have fresh herbs or ground mustard powder, but otherwise it had everything on the eight-person dinner menu for less than $80. That’s less than $10 per person for Thanksgiving dinner, and all the fruit and vegetables were organic. Aldi really is hard to beat when it comes to value.