Marinate meat yourself and prepare salads at home
Although meat prices are rising comparatively slowly, the high inflation rate is also noticeable here. If you marinade your meat yourself, you can save real money: just search the internet for good marinade recipes and off you go. To compare prices, it is sufficient to look at the price tag in the supermarket, which in Germany must always show the price per kilo – but of course it is particularly true for meat that particularly low-priced products tend to do poorly in terms of animal welfare, environmental friendliness and quality. So if you have the opportunity, you should not go for the cheapest product.
Even those who prepare salads themselves at home save money: Ready-made potato salads and the like in the supermarket are often disproportionately more expensive than the ingredients that you need to make the same dish yourself – especially when it comes to large quantities.
Keep an eye out for special offers and promotional weeks
Of course, despite everything, the groceries that you buy are still more expensive than they were last barbecue season. So it can be worth keeping your eyes peeled for special offers and promotional weeks. If, for example, an action is announced for the coming weekend, it is worth planning the barbecue afternoon for the corresponding date.
Products like ketchup, mayonnaise, or barbecue sauce don’t necessarily have to be bought when the grilling is due: they usually keep long enough that you can buy them a few weeks (or even months) in advance when prices are down are just lower. The same goes for drinks too.
Forgo disposable tableware and make your own decorations
Disposable crockery is often used when grilling – but that’s expensive. A simple way to save money for the barbecue season is to do without disposable dishes and possibly even aluminum grill trays and instead use porcelain dishes. Because: rinsing or a wash cycle in the dishwasher are significantly cheaper.
You can also save on decoration. This does not necessarily have to be bought separately, but can also be made yourself. For example, if you collect empty preserving jars throughout the year, you can brighten them up with a little handicraft material and put a candle in them – the table decoration is done. Of course, there are many more DIY tricks to try out on the internet.
In the end, cheap charcoal is often the more expensive choice
The high food prices can also be offset by choosing the right charcoal. This is where some grill fans fall into the trap: As the Focus reports, particularly cheap charcoal with a slightly poorer quality usually burns faster than the charcoal in the middle to upper price segments – so you need more. So it can happen that you end up spending more money on the coal if you buy the cheapest fuel than if you choose coal in the middle price segments.
Editorial office finanzen.net
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