'I went to Greater Manchester's meat outlet store where chicken and steaks are cheaper than Aldi and Lidl'

If there's one thing that's shot up in price since the cost of living crisis began it's meat. Whether it's mince for your bolognese, or a chicken for your Sunday roast, you're paying a lot more these days and often getting a lot less too.

In our own price comparison, which has tracked the cost of essentials over the last two years, the cheapest 300g pack of chicken breasts has gone from £1.79 to £2.35 over that time, while the cheapest pack of mince has risen from £1.69 to £2.29.

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While Aldi and Lidl are largely considered the cheapest of all the supermarkets, there's one store where the prices of some of the meat are even cheaper.

Meat Mart in Chaddock Lane, Astley, is a meat outlet that's open to the public. There are six stores across the north of England, including another local one in Wigan, but the one I went to is conveniently located just off the East Lancs Road, on the border of Salford and Wigan.

What they all have in common is that meat is cheap. In price that is, not quality. The reviews speak for themselves, with shoppers raving about the taste and saying it's much better than what they would previously have bought elsewhere.

"I’ll never buy chicken from a supermarket again," one shopper commented on the Meat Mart Facebook page, with another adding: "I've been once and omg the lean sausages are amazing and the lean mince, also the chicken fillets, I used to get chicken from the market, never again this is defo the place to go for good quality meat."

It was an advert on that page that enticed me to visit - highlighting that its huge 2kg packs of chicken breasts, at £10.97, are cheaper than Aldi's £11.99, the same price Lidl sells the pack for too.

And it turns out it's not the only thing that's cheaper there. They have a pack of two sirloin steaks for £6.99 (475g-525g), which come with peppercorn sauce too. At Aldi and Lidl, the cheapest sirloin is £3.69 for 195g.

While it's tricky to compare everything like-for-like, with varying fat contents, weights and origins - Meat Mart's chicken breasts are from the Netherlands for example - it's obvious that there's money to be saved here compared with the budget retailers and other supermarkets.

I got some other products on a four for £25 deal, including lean steak mince 1175g-1225g, extra lean quality pork loin joint 1275g-1325g, smoky BBQ chicken kebabs 575g-625g and Olde English pork sausages (around 26 sausages) 1425g-1475g.

Just one 750g pack of lean steak mince would set you back £4.99 at Aldi and Lidl, while a slightly bigger 1.5kg pork loin joint costs around £8.50.

And it's not just the meat that's cheaper either. I picked up a 5kg bag of potatoes for just £2.49. It's only recently increased them due to the cost price and says it's still selling spuds at a loss, telling customers: "We are passionate about caring for all of our customers and we always do our very best to keep all our prices low. As soon as the market recovers our price will revert back."

It must more than make up for it with meat sales and the fridges are packed with all kinds of mix and match deals. Another 'special' that caught my eye near the front of the store was the 'quality quad roast bundle joint pack' on offer for £21.97. It includes a whole chicken, a gammon joint, and pork and beef joints.

If I had more room in my freezer I'd have bought a whole lot more. Although, with the amount I got, I won't be running out of meat anytime soon. And my money went a lot further than it would at the supermarket.

Aldi says that our shop does not look at like-for-like products and says its core range of fresh meat 'is 100% British and meets Red Tractor standards for animal welfare and quality as a minimum'.

The retailer has been named the UK’s cheapest supermarket by consumer champion Which? for three years running.

In our aforementioned price comparison, which looks at the cost of the same eight essentials at the six main supermarkets, Lidl has consecutively been cheapest each week since January 2023.

A spokesperson for Lidl said: "At Lidl, we are relentlessly focused on offering shoppers the lowest prices. Being named the cheapest supermarket for over a year by the Manchester Evening News demonstrates that we're delivering on our price promise and that customers can always be confident that they are getting the best value possible when they walk through our doors."