If you're looking for a protein staples shopping list under £25, here it is: two kinds of chicken for the freezer, eggs, tinned tuna, two kinds of tinned beans, dried red lentils, porridge oats, peanut butter, cottage cheese, Greek-style yogurt and milk — 12 items from Aldi, checked against real shelf prices, coming to £20.91. Below is the full list with what each item costs and what it's for.
The point of a list like this isn't one big shop that lasts forever. It's a base layer — the things worth always having in, so a high-protein meal is never further away than what's already in the freezer and the cupboard.
The list, priced
Every price here is from our own price tracker, checked at Aldi in September 2026. The exceptions are oats and peanut butter: the latest prices we hold for those are from March 2026, so check the shelf.
- Chicken thighs, bone-in, 1kg — £2.99. Far cheaper per kilo than breast or boneless thighs. Freezes well; defrost what you need in the fridge.
- Chicken breast fillets, 650g — £4.69. Quicker to cook than thighs, useful for stir-fries and salads.
- Free-range eggs, medium, 12-pack — £2.49. Two eggs give you about 12g of protein for roughly 40p.
- Tinned tuna chunks in brine, 4 × 145g tins — £2.36 (59p a tin). Store-cupboard protein that needs no cooking.
- Red lentils, 500g — £0.99. Bulks out a bolognese, curry or stew while adding protein and fibre.
- Chickpeas, 2 tins — £0.82. Roast them, blend them into hummus, or throw them into a curry.
- Red kidney beans, 2 tins — £0.70. The backbone of a chilli, and a useful change if lentils get repetitive.
- Porridge oats, 1kg — £0.85 (March 2026 price). Not high in protein on their own, but a more filling breakfast once you add milk, yogurt or a spoon of peanut butter.
- Peanut butter, 340g — £0.99 (March 2026 price). A tablespoon adds about 4g of protein to porridge or toast.
- Low-fat cottage cheese, 300g — £0.85. Aldi's tub has about 12g of protein per 100g — good on toast or stirred through pasta.
- Fat-free Greek-style yogurt, 1kg — £1.49. About 6g protein per 100g: less than strained Greek yogurt, but decent protein for the money.
- Filtered semi-skimmed milk, 2 litres — £1.69. For porridge, shakes, or just tea.
Total: £20.91 — under the £25 mark with about £4 to spare, and nothing on it needs using up that night: the chicken goes in the freezer, the fridge items keep for days, and the cupboard items keep for months.
What this list actually gives you
None of these items are a meal on their own. What they are is raw material: a freezer with two ready proteins in it, a cupboard with three ways to add protein and fibre to any dinner, and a fridge with three quick sources of protein that need no cooking. Between them, they cover breakfast (oats, yogurt, eggs), lunch (tuna, cottage cheese, eggs), and the backbone of plenty of dinners (chicken, lentils, beans).
What it doesn't cover is fresh veg, bread, rice, pasta, or anything you'd build a specific recipe around — this is deliberately a base layer, not a full week's shop. Add those separately depending on what you're actually cooking.
Making it last more than one week
The freezer is what makes this list stretch. Split the chicken thighs and breast into portions before freezing (any time up to the use-by date), rather than one solid block, so you can defrost exactly what a recipe needs — in the fridge overnight, then cook it within 24 hours. The tins, lentils, oats and peanut butter keep for months, so after the first shop you're mostly topping up the fridge items: the eggs, cottage cheese, yogurt and milk come to £6.52 of this list.
Used this way, the £20.91 stock-up is less a one-off shop than a rolling base you top up as things run out.
Where a meal plan does the rest
A stocked kitchen solves half the problem. The other half is knowing what to cook with it on a given night, in portions that suit your calorie and protein targets — the part that's easiest to wing.
Plan X Prep builds full weekly plans from a library of 1,500+ recipes, each costed from 2,000+ real product prices, checked monthly (Aldi first, with Tesco, Sainsbury's and Asda filling the gaps), with protein treated as a floor rather than a ceiling. Its Pantry tab keeps track of what's in your fridge, freezer and cupboard, and it checks your kitchen before it writes your list: anything in your pantry comes off it, and you can tap 'Already have' on any item — so a stocked-up kitchen like this one is taken into account before you shop.
For how to spread that protein across the day, see our guide to hitting your protein target on a budget, and for five desk lunches built from staples like these, our high-protein lunches for work. See how Plan X Prep works.
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