Slow Cooker Sunday Prep: Save $25 This Week

Winter is peak slow cooker season, and if you're loading one up every Sunday to feed the family through the week, the ingredients add up fast. A Canstar Blue survey from July 2025 found Australian households are now spending an average of $178 a week on groceries, up six per cent on the year before. That's a real number, and it makes Sunday prep shopping feel a lot more pointed.

So we priced the full slow cooker Sunday basket across Coles, Woolies, Aldi and IGA. Thirteen items: three proteins, five vegetables, and five pantry staples. Here's what the numbers look like.

What Does This Basket Cost at Each Store?

Shop the entire basket at one store and Aldi comes in cheapest at $76.80, though one item isn't available there, so you'll need a quick stop elsewhere. Coles lands at $84.44, IGA at $85.60 (also missing one item), and Woolies at $89.58.

The gap between Aldi and Woolies is $12.78. That's real money across a whole winter of Sunday cooking, but it's not the biggest number on the table.

Cherry-pick the cheapest price for each item across all four stores and you're looking at a total of $58.64, a saving of $25.80 compared to doing a single-store shop at the best full-basket option (Aldi). Against Woolies, you'd save $30.94 by splitting the shop.

Where the Biggest Savings Are

The meat section is where the action is, because it's also where the prices swing the most.

Chicken thigh is the standout. Woolies has it at $1.44 per kg, that's a seriously low price for bone-in chicken thigh, and it's worth picking up even if you're shopping mostly at Aldi or Coles. The difference between the cheapest and most expensive option across the four stores can easily be $3-5 per kg on chicken, so don't skip this one.

Lamb shanks hit $7.00 per kg at Woolies, making it the cheapest store for this cut too. Lamb is one of those proteins where price variation between supermarkets tends to be higher than beef or chicken, a single-store shop at the wrong store here can genuinely cost you an extra few dollars per kg.

On the pantry side, diced tomatoes ($0.95 for a 400g tin at Coles) and beef stock ($1.35 per litre at IGA) are both worth noting. Tomatoes and stock are the backbone of half the slow cooker recipes out there, so if you're buying three tins at a time the 20-30 cent differences between stores do stack up.

Olive oil tells its own story. Aldi's 500ml bottle at $7.99 is the cheapest in the basket for that item, and the price gap to Woolies and Coles can be several dollars. If you're not already buying your olive oil at Aldi, start.

Where Prices Are Basically the Same

Brown onions are pretty flat across the board. Coles has them cheapest at $2.00 per kg, but the gap to the other stores is small enough that it's not worth changing your route over.

Plain flour is similar. Aldi's $2.39 per kg is the cheapest, but flour pricing across all four stores tends to sit within 50 cents of each other. Pick it up wherever you're already shopping.

Worcestershire sauce, $1.89 at Aldi, is also pretty consistent. Unless you're specifically going to Aldi, don't go out of your way for it.

Is the Cherry-Pick Worth the Extra Trip?

Honest answer: for most households, no, not every week.

The $25.80 saving is real, and over a month of Sunday prep that compounds to over $100. But that saving assumes you're hitting at least three or four different stores: Woolies for the chicken thigh and lamb shanks, Coles for the diced tomatoes and onions, IGA for the beef and beef stock, and Aldi for the carrots, potatoes, olive oil, flour and worcestershire.

That's a lot of trolley-pushing for a Sunday morning.

A smarter version: anchor your shop at whichever store is most convenient, and selectively cross-shop the big-ticket items, proteins and olive oil specifically. If you can add Woolies to a regular routine, grab the chicken and lamb there. If you're already near an Aldi, pick up the oil and dry goods. You don't need to hit every store to capture most of the savings.

A two-store approach (say, Aldi for pantry + Woolies for meat) probably gets you $18-20 of that $25.80 without the extra effort.

Who Should Shop Where

Families doing batch cooking will get the most from a two-stop approach: Aldi for the pantry and produce, Woolies for the proteins. The savings on chicken thigh and lamb shanks alone make that second stop worth it.

Busy households with one shopping trip should head to Coles at $84.44, it edges Woolies by $5 on the full basket, and the diced tomatoes and onions are already cheapest there.

Retirees or anyone with time to shop around should consider the full cherry-pick, $58.64 for this basket is a strong result, and if you're not in a rush on a Sunday morning, the extra stops aren't a burden.

IGA shoppers get two genuine wins here: casserole beef and beef stock are both cheapest at IGA. That said, the full basket price of $85.60 (with one item missing) puts it above Coles for convenience shopping, so IGA makes more sense as a supplement than a primary store for this basket.

One thing all four stores agree on: this basket works. Slow-cooked beef casserole, lamb shanks with root vegetables, or a simple chicken thigh braise, you can batch three different meals from these thirteen items and have lunches and dinners sorted for most of the week.