On one vegetable shelf the price gap is fourfold
Guess how many times more expensive a pepper is than a beetroot lying two metres away. Pick a number before you scroll.
More than four times. Beetroot costs 2.99 zł a kilo today, red pepper 12.99. Both are vegetables, both from the same aisle.
Prices checked today, all per kilo:
- beetroot: 2.99 zł
- white cabbage: 2.99 zł
- potatoes (2 kg bag): 4.00 zł
- carrots: 4.99 zł
- yellow onion: 4.99 zł
- courgette: 5.99 zł
- cauliflower: 7.99 zł
- field cucumber: 8.99 zł
- broccoli: 11.98 zł
- raspberry tomatoes: 11.98 zł
- red pepper: 12.99 zł
Garlic sits apart, because in this table it looks absurd: 31.96 zł a kilo. Except you use garlic by the gram, so a clove for dinner costs 19 groszy. For anything you add by the pinch, the price per kilo says very little and there's no point being scared by it.
What it means at the pan
Building dinner around the cheaper column isn't a punishment. From our database: millet risotto with courgette and cheese, 3.67 zł a portion, 578 calories and 23.5 grams of protein, 35 minutes.
- Soften a chopped onion in a tablespoon of olive oil, about 3 minutes, until it turns soft and glassy.
- Add diced courgette and fry about 4 minutes, until lightly browned.
- Stir in 80 g of millet, keep adding water and cook about 20 minutes, until the grain drinks the liquid and turns tender.
- Fold in 50 g of grated cheese and season with pepper.
As always: 3.67 zł is the cost of what you use, not the receipt. At the till you put down 400 g of millet at 2.99 zł, a courgette at about 1.80, 400 g of cheese at 12.59, a kilo of onions at 4.99 and 500 ml of olive oil at 24.99, roughly 47 zł. The last two are cupboard stock for weeks, not the cost of one dinner.
The rule for August is simple: write your list starting from the cheaper column, and treat peppers and tomatoes as a garnish rather than the base of a dish. In October the same table will look different, and we'll run it again.
Snugmeal plans a week of food exactly this way, on prices from your shop.
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Data: prices read live from product pages on zakupy.biedronka.pl on 13 August 2026. The portion cost comes from our recipe database, recalculated this week on current prices. Our own calculations.