Cheaper if you grind up your nearest billionaire and share with your community
Ooooh, do you have a nice recipe that you could share?
They don’t actually do work so their meat is already tender like veal, just marinate well
The comments are teaching me I grew up poor and still eat poor.
I mean I knew the second part. But those damn canned mixed veggies were disgusting.
My youth prepared me for this and my post-schooling education helped me minmax for it.
I still have a sweet spot for canned corn, especially creamed, as well as canned green beans.
Canned green beans are great. I don’t care how many fancy meals I eat, there’s always gonna be a place for that nostalgic flavor.
And canned corn is basically my preferred method of adding corn to soups.
Canned green beans have such a nostalgic taste, love them
I literally just had a can of sweet corn mixed with a can of green beans, 10/10, didnt feel poor at all.
Wtf are you guys eating over there… Jesus christ, I wonder why Americans seem so crazy. Artificial food, artificial media, Artificial work culture…
And two weeks vacation, maybe, on a full year of work… What? And still no money in the wallet at the end of the day?
I watched a video last night about an American guy that was just losing it, and rightly so:
Watch five minutes of that and be happy if you are European, I guess.
I get 40 hours of sick time off per year that I can use for vacation. This is the New York State minimum that had to be fought for.
Two weeks? If you’re middle to upper middle class, sure. If you’re lower middle to lower class, you’ll get a week, if anything at all, unpaid. Sick? Unpaid. Spouse died? Unpaid. What, give people welfare? Not on my tax dollar, that’s communism!
The US stopped being the land of opportunity two generations ago, and only now people are starting to realize.
“You can have the funeral in the alley behind the restaurant during lunch. Throw your wife in the dumpster after you’re done.”
-Your manager
“The price of meat is skyrocketing, you sure your wife couldn’t… contribute?”
-Owner
I mean, yeah…a lot of people here have it very rough. I am lucky in that I work for the federal government and get 10 weeks plus holidays off. A lot of people here do not get that.
I had that once, turned out the head of my department was a sociopath though. Never been unhappier at work in my life. I had managers that handled themselves better at a car wash than this lady did at a public library.
I am definitely doing life wrong, mind if I ask the field?
Highschool needs to teach financial literacy. $200 a month for insurance is insane. I pay that for 3 vehicles on full coverage (older trucks and suv, but damn).
Not saying this guy is wrong to be pissed but I see a lot of people who just don’t understand how to shop around for shit and just eat the cost.
I agree with him though, we need single payer and mass transit.
Edit: also the further I get into this. The more I think we need to single payer so he can go to therapy, cause he’s depressed as hell.
Insurance rates change depending where you are and who you are. 250 a month per vehicle for full coverage where I am. We just dropped coverage to minimum on one of them and it went down barely 15%. Shopping around found only higher rates somehow. I think insurance agencies are colluding to fix prices.
O they absolutely collude on pricing, but $250 a month for full coverage means you’re probably driving a nearly brand new car…just why. Why does everyone buy the latest and greatest constantly and then cry about how much shit costs.
How tf do you shop around for insurance.
My employer: you have 3 options. The high deductible HSA plan, the medium deductible plan, or the low deductible plan.
Even if there are other options that aren’t subsidized by my employer, you can’t change your plan most of the year because of fucking open enrollment.
How is this user error and not America being America?
Car…car insurance, it’s why I called out we needing single payer healthcare. This video was a dude bitching about car insurance.
LOL guess I just proved Americans are illiterate cause I reread the comment and it clearly said car insurance
Lol you’re good, we do need to spend a lot more on our education system though.
people who just don’t understand how to shop around for shit and just eat the cost.
The problem is, you can shop around and find a good deal, but that good deal is “introductory”, only for new customers, so after a while the price goes back to “normal” and you have to do it all over again. Then you have to do that for every damn thing, it gets pretty tiring.
Yea usually you gotta do it every few years.
I tried reading the rest of the comments on this post but I think my soul broke, I wanted to reply to multiple of them but the words just didn’t come to me
I also feel deep sadness over it because its just so incredibly unfair and evil.
I have had 1 week off the whole year. I have some PTO coming up. I feel guilty using it (even though I shouldn’t).
What is the word for laughing and crying at the same time?
Pseudobulbar affect which could be caused by a psychotic break since they’re driving us fucking crazy.
Coming in 2029 - SkwrlHelper!®
Sorry, I’m European, could someone explain what Hamburger Helper actually is?? I’ve heard the brand name before and assumed it was just some kind of seasoning powder for making hamburgers, but this image looks more like it’s more like powdered sauce base for a whole range of random meals?
It’s cheap pasta with a sauce you add hamburger to.
Oh, you eat it without the bread?
Yeah; you don’t put a hamburger into it, just ground beef (or chicken, or tuna, or whatever other meat you’d like, really). lol
If you had money for a hamburger, you probably wouldn’t be eating Hamburger Helper.
Yeah, that makes sense. I can even imagine how it tastes now.
Around here, people use spaghetti (and probably an egg to make it larger), what is probably not too different.
Adding eggs to random shit really does help it feel more filling. Like if I eat a packet a ramen I would never feel full, throw in a couple eggs and it’s fine. And I can’t afford to go to the doctor so it’s not like they can tell me my shit diet is killing me. I didn’t know what a frittata actually was until recently. We have chickens and I was trying to get rid of some eggs and my fiance found a frittata recipe online. It’s basically, whatever you’ve got throw in a vessel with eggs and bake it. Cut up peppers, onions, can of green beans, or corn, maybe some sausage or whatever you had left, add that other can you had sitting in the cupboard throw it in the oven and go sit down. It may not be considered a frittata at that point. What spices were added. Whatever the fuck sounded good at that moment. Probably some Tajin, why not.
Why am I still typing, I don’t even know what I was talking about… Maybe I’m hungry
It tastes a bit like plastic and gel.
Take that imagined taste and make it about 30% worse then you’re in the ballpark.
30% worse, 150% saltier.
it’s the kit to make the meal in the front, just need to add the hamburger… or hot dogs…
but yea it has the seasonings, maybe emulsifiers, the macaroni, and instructions, and that’s it
Thickeners too. Modified corn starch. Less objectional ingredient really since starch as a sauce thickener instead of reduction is pre industrial and modified starch is frankly a good innovation. I don’t want to sit there and stir. People who make pudding from scratch with regular corn starch are insane.
ooh, hamburger as in, ground meat? For me a hamburger is always the round puck of meat between buns, makes more sense if it’s just the generic name for the meat itself!
Usually people say ground beef, but some call it hamburger meat, or just hamburger.
It’s because ground beef became synonymous with Hamburg steaks, which was basically a patty of ground beef. Some dude went to a Hamburg steak place and wanted to get it to go so they slapped it between two pieces of bread and thusly the hamburger was born.
Seemingly many great dishes were born from impatient diners.
Desperation is the mother of utility and hunger is the grandfather of all creations.
Lasagna, except way grosser.
You’re not quite there yet. It still says ‘real cheese’.
It’s not “real cheese” it’s “Real Cheese™”, it really tastes like cheese.
Ah, Real Cheese brand cheese flavored product.
It adds real shareholder value.
Minimum viable product kind of cheese
“Minimum viable product” describes a lot of the items that end up in my grocery cart these days – produce especially.
Protip: Hamburger Helper has always been the most expensive way to do this. Buy raw macaroni and one of those seasoning spice packs (e.g. taco mix) if you’re not good with measuring seasoning or have none at home. Take a photo of the Hamburger Helper directions (on the box) with your phone if you need something to go by.
There are probably tons of such recipes online too.
This might be the most stereotypically American thing I’ve ever seen
In Britain it would be “try with BANGERS instead of black pudding”
No one would call that donkeys anus in a temu bratwurst a banger.
I mean, you’re not wrong.
I grew up poor, in the US, mom had 0 cooking skill, mac and cheese and sliced hot dogs was pretty common.
I can try to spin that positively as ‘at leasr I have more experience being broke than most people who are new to being broke’, lol.
Thank you, I’d seen something like this before, did not manage to snag a copy that time =D
Man hotdogs in KD is still awesome. Hotdogs in beans is also great.
Not going to lie, I call this the “fuck we’re out of bread” when she says she wants a hot dog. I don’t care for hot dogs much, but I just leave them in the freezer door and they last.
When she says she wants a hot dog, she’s not talking about the kind you have to cook :-D
Bad Hanson go back to embarrassing yourself on YouTube.
What a privilege it is to live in walking distance to a supermarket - this problem doesn’t even exist for me, being out of something just means I walk 4 minutes and buy it.
When I lived in Florida it was like that. It would be about 3.5 hours walking for me to do it where I am now. (Including the way back)
According to Google maps, a one way walking trip to the nearest grocery store would take 4 hours and 36 minutes for me.
If times were better I’d say you live in a pretty decent place for you to open a small grocery store. But I guess you could just live in the middle of no where
I mean it’s just some pasta and seasoning that you add beef to, it’s not even that weird
claps
…y’all didn’t grow up eating kraft mac n hot dogs cut up in it?
o.o
Sorry, but this is like one of the many litmus tests for people who think they grew up in the middle class and then actually find out they grew up poorer than they initially thought.
Another good one was having canned mixed vegetables more than a couple times a week.
You’re overlooking an important detail - kids love that cheap, shitty food. It was also quick and easy to make, so their tired, overworked parents were easily persuaded to make it.
Naturally there’s a line where it becomes too much, but even rich kids love hot dogs and Mac & cheese.
I don’t think anyone loves eating canned mixed veggies… But I admit, every once in a while I’ll make a fancy version of Mac and cheese and hotdogs.
Again, kid logic. Plus, many young parents don’t know (or care) how to properly cook veggies anyway. It’s a choice between canned (and usually salted) veggies, or similarly mushy, over-microwaved fresh/frozen veggies with little seasoning or flavor. It’s not like the green beans are roasted with olive oil, garlic, and balsamic vinegar.
You could probably mix some frozen broccoli or a diced red onion in there. Its still pretty affordable. I know I do that some Kraft. I also sometimes mix in hotdogs or shredded chicken.
Cutting up pickles with boxed Mac. and Cheese was one of my favorite go-tos, in grad. school. If not pickles then I used to put canned tuna in; also quite good.
Grew up poor, didn’t know it. Lots of Mac 'n Cheese w/ hotdogs and canned vegetables. I remember the first time I had a fresh green bean, I was put off by the texture. Wasn’t used to vegetables with structure.
Edit: also a fair amount of Hamburger Helper in my childhood. It’s OK.
Haha, I had a similar experience because of canned mix veggies. For a long time I didn’t think I liked beans because I always hated the texture of the canned lima beans. I also thought all veggies would taste the same because canned mix veggies all adopt an odd homogeneous taste.
Wow, I had forgotten how much I used to detest lima beans. Don’t think I’ve had them since I was a kid. I wonder if I’ll like them now.
If you cook them until they’re mush with plenty of oil/butter, a bit more salt than I’d like to admit, pepper, dill, and a few drops of hickory smoke flavor, they’re amazing.
Wasn’t used to vegetables with structure.
Lol this just perfectly described my experience perfectly. I grew up eating mostly canned vegetables. When I started cooking as an adult, I didn’t think I liked vegetables. Until I followed recipes cooking with fresh veggies. The “structure” is totally different! And delicious.
oh god, i did most of the cooking at one point and hamburger helper was my entry to cooking. at like 12.
I really disagree with this. My parents grew up in the 50s and just thought this kind of highly processed food was normal and easy. There were also commercials that constantly reminded them to buy it. We could 100% afford better food, this is just what they wanted 🤢
Yeah same. They had to spend that money on more important things. Like church.
Gotta buy that ticket to heaven
It could still be very much middle class. Parents make it out of nostalgia from when they were kids, instead of making it out of necessity.
My grandma used to make depression era meals for my dad (they were also poor), my dad made them for me (not as poor then solidly middle income), and I would love to eat them for nostalgia reasons. Can’t because of gluten, but I’ve been trying out various gluten free bread recipes to see if I can get something that works.
A reeeeeaaallly long way of agreeing and saying yeah, nostalgia plays a role.
Mac and cheese and hot dogs are probably less reliable than the canned mixed veggies. I don’t think anyone gets nostalgia for soaked mushie veggies .
I figured it out we were poor once I hit middle school, and me asking about this and further realizing the truth of it… well of course that sent Republican dad further into an insecurity/rage/alcoholism loop.
Being honest would have been too difficult, I guess.
Middle class isnt a clear cut distinction anyway. It mostly serves to divide those of us who live off of labour rather than ownership so we go after one another instead of the capitalists.
I mean, maybe, but in my case I’m sure a good part of it was neither of my parents were good cooks lol
If I didn’t watch them make it, it was pretty hard to tell if the veggies were canned or not; they boiled fresh veggies to the same consistency as the canned ones.
Ours had a can of tuna and some frozen peas in it.
No way we did that too! I still do it every once in awhile, not because it’s that good but fit the nostalgia
That’s what we had tonight! Well, I had sliced turkey because it needed eating and my partner had canned chicken. I rather like Mac and cheese with peas.
Salty cheesy carbs - can’t go wrong!
Hyper processed shit. I feel sorry for children who are fed this.
Don’t use Hamburger Helper, switch to the store brand Lasgana Skillet Meal. It will taste much better. The people who make Hamburger Helper have seriously cheaped out on their ingredients in the last several years, speaking as a childhood fan.
Les pieds de raccoon, such a delicacy
Not to mention la queue du rat, la tête de pigeon, and la languette de la botte!
Laguette de la botte is definitely a dish I would try at a French restaurant
They must marinate it forever.
I mean I’ve have Lingua tacos, gotta be similar right? Right??
Hehe. I’m eating marbles!
Cronch cronch cronch
What in gods name even is this product?
Sodium’n Protein possibly slightly higher quality than Friskies cat food.
Pasta and seasoning. And cheese I guess. Intended to me mixed with ground beef in order to stretch it into more meals. It’s not awful, just poor people food.
Its food for the new poor. The generationally poor were eating chicken wings back in the 80s for $0.19 a pound and loving them. Now, after the dreadful gentrification of wings post-9/11 we’ve got ways to stretch a dollar you’ll never learn unless you marry in.
Kinda. I definitely had hamburger helper back in the 80s, but kit meals were a luxury we could only sometimes afford. Necessity is often the mother of culinary invention but even among “the poor” there’s some variability in cash and time (and information availability) constraints, and things like hamburger helper (cheap but not the cheapest, but also quick and easy to make) have been a fixture alongside the true broke-ass “we need food and have basically zero money” recipes.
You mean pasta surrogate and cheese surrogate.
The pasta is real, the seasoning is real, the cheese basically is not real.
For example, regular Cheeseburger Hamburger Helper contains trace amounts of blue cheese, which is absent from the Deluxe Cheeseburger Macaroni Hamburger Helper. The “Deluxe” product also contains parmesan cheese, palm oil, and lactic acid. These can all impact the texture and taste of the dish.
In an email to the Daily Dot, an Eagle Foods representative wrote the following: “The difference between the Double Cheeseburger Mac and the Cheeseburger Mac products are that, for the Double Cheeseburger, the ingredient ratios are slightly different and there is double the amount of cheese powder in the seasoning packet.”
https://www.dailydot.com/news/regular-deluxe-cheeseburger-hamburger-helper/
Its only ‘real cheese’ if you consider a dehydrated powder that you have to add butter or milk / water to, and then prepare with heat as a ‘cheese flavored sauce’ to be ‘real cheese’.
Yep, the tiny trace amounts of ‘100% Real Cheese!’ it contains are indeed tiny denydrated crumblets of real cheese… but I am fairly sure that by that metric, Cheetos are also ‘real cheese’.
For most Americans under the age of 40, the idea of making an actual cheese sauce out of… an actual block of actual dairy cheese from their refrigerator… that is literally a foreign concept, nobody has time to be that fancy, or even knows that is a thing you can do.
Because to make a proper cheese sauce you need to make a proper roux, and idk who you think is teaching the average person to do that.
That is certainly not common knowledge today, and I doubt it has ever been common knowledge your everyday person would know. Nor is it easy to do for the inexperienced cook.
Though I think most Americans would be happy with Sodium Citrate if they knew about it
Used to be that parents and grandparents would teach the kids how to cook something a bit fancier for a holiday.
But we’re all too atomized and busy and politically polarized these days for that.
Yeah and many have.
I can make Chicken Parmesan with our family recipe sauce, and a proper lasagna. With coffee cake for dessert.
I sill was never taught how to make a roux. And I come from a family that home cooked meals every night.
I learned how via YouTube, and I still can’t do it without fucking up 50% of the time.
the cheese sauce i make is great and its roux is very improper.
I’m aware you can, but also cheese is expensive.
And making cheese sauce is like, the easiest thing to fuck up. I’m having trouble with an analogy, but it’s not easy. If we’re talking about a roux based sauce at least. If there’s an easier way I would love to know.
- Heat a spoonful of butter in a pan.
- Once it’s melted and just sizzling, add about a spoonful of white flour, and stir until you have a smooth paste.
- Cook the roux until it’s slightly darker to give the sauce a richer flavour.
- Add a spoonful of milk and stir until smooth. This is the critical step, but it works out fine unless you let it burn.
- Keep adding milk, a spoonful or two at a time, and mixing, until the sauce is quite liquid and you’re not having to stir much.
- Add the rest of the milk a little faster, still stiring.
- Cook until the sauce is heated through, and bubbling.
- Add unhealthy amounts of your prefered cheese, grated, and keep stiring.
- Cook until the sauce starts to thicken and remove from the heat. It’ll thicken more as it cools.
It seems like a lot of steps, but once you get the hang of it, it’s quick and reliable. The recipies that add flour to a lot if liquid have a tendency to get lumpy, this one cooks the flour in fat first and adds liquid slowly, which pretty much eliminates the issue.
Throw a couple cups of milk in a pot, start to heat on medium/medium high (don’t let it boil.)
While that’s heating, take about half a cup of milk, and a couple fat tablespoons of flour and whisk it together in a separate bowl. It should be thick, but not real lumpy. If it comes out like mashed potatoes, add more milk.
Once the hot milk starts to bubble on the stove, slowly whisk in about half of your flour mixture. Let it come back to a slight bubble and see how thick it is. If you want it thicker, add more of the flour mixture. Once it bubbles for a minute or two, that’s almost the final consistency as it’s going to thicken a little as it stands. Add salt, pepper, garlic powder, etc. to taste. Turn the heat off. Add a bunch of shredded cheese. If you heat it with the shredded cheese in it, you run the risk of the sauce breaking. Check it again for flavor, and if it thickens up too much as it cools, you can always add a little more milk.
One of the biggest mistakes that people make is heating up a sauce too much after it has the cheese in it. This can make the cheese break and get gross. I also have zero issue with using pre-shredded cheese this way either. And bonus tip, if you throw a slice of American cheese in there, it’ll have enough sodium citrate to help make it a very smooth cheese sauce.
Yeah you can do what that other guy said or just buy Sodium Citrate. It’s $13 for a bag but it is enough to make 53 lbs of cheese sauce…
- Add 1 tsp to 1 cup of water.
- Boil.
- Add 1 lb of cheese, any kind.
- Heat for an additional 5-10 minutes - you’ll know when it’s done.
That’s it. Your done.
It’s way outside of my skill set. Lol. But I just need people to know that I’ll be impressed with gifts of cheese. You know, if anybody wants to impress me. 🤣
Oh I’m not saying its all 100% bad.
Having a reasonably healthy, similar tasting alternative is good when it is a good deal cheaper.
I’m just saying it doesn’t cross my bar of ‘real cheese’.
Used to be a bit of a brie and wine snob, and I still have the strong opinion that basically all pizzas should be 3 cheese blends, not just one.
Usually not. I have not had the pleasure of this particular variety but in my experience it’s just plain old pasta and cheese and herbs.
What sort of cheese is that supposed to be?
It tastes similar to Kraft macaroni and cheese (known in Canada and potentially other countries as “Kraft Dinner”). So I would guess young, unaged cheddar or Colby cheese. There is also probably a good amount of whey powder, which is a by-product of cheese production.
It’s not fake, just highly processed.
A quick search says cheddar and blue cheeses for this type.
Different cheeses depending on the end goal. If you dehydrate cheese it can be ground into a powder. I’ve seen cooks on various shows do this to recreate powders for popcorn seasoning, home made Doritos, Cheetos, or even for long term prepping/storage. Makes it easy to create sauces in a pinch as well.
Where’s the cheeseburger part?
That’s the ground beef, it’s basically Mac and cheese with hamburger meat IE ground beef.
