Make friends with your Fruit and Veg Wholesaler

Bramley apples

Yesterday I went to the fruit and vegetable wholesale warehouse and stocked up on onions and apples for Christmas cooking.

Most  people don’t realise that fruit wholesalers aren’t just for producers they will sell to anybody with cash.  If you intend to make a batch of anything to freeze or just use a lot of any particular fruit or veg  its well worth checking the price at the wholesaler. Fruit and veg in season can be extremely cheap and even out of season is often still a bargain. However more luxury produce may not be  cheaper than the multinationals price especially when they are having a special so do your research.

I bought 13kg of  Irish cooking apples for 9 euro . Thats a lot of apples  and a great deal cheaper than in the supermarkets.  Since they will keep for weeks its well worth it even if you arent making lots of chutneys and jellies like me. That’ll make a lot of apple pie. If you cant get through that amount share with somebody else. The bag of giant spanish onions I bought cost 8 euro and weighed  20 kg. Excellent. I also picked up a 5 pound punnet of flat mushrooms for stuffng for a fraction of the supermaket price.

They often have specials on fruit like bananas which are too ripe to sell to supermakets  but are perfect for smoothies and banana bread . Banana freeze well for either of these.

Speaking of smoothies. Frozen  fruit for smoothies is very expensive to buy in supermarkets so try and source it somewhere else. Fruit wholesalers may have it but not always . Try a local fruit farm or a frozen food supplier. Again they will sell to anyone not just producers. They also often have an extensive range of  fruit not normally available in supermarkets. Fruit such as Raspberries can be bought as whole fruit or broken fruit . Broken is obviously cheaper and fine for smoothies and most cooking so ask the supplier. Whether whole or broken though, its still a lot cheaper.The only issue is that they usually come in 10 kg boxes so you need to have space in the freezer.