Dollar Tree vs. Dollar General Cooking Challenge

today we're putting two grocery stores to the test it's Dollar General vers Dollar [Music] Tree today we're attempting to answer the question does it actually is that thing new crazy that was freaking me out there feels like it's in the shot there's two of them now do you need me to raise it no it's fine but is there another is there another person are you replacing me where is he where is he today we're attempting to answer the question does it actually matter where you get your grocery cuz listen 's out here they are tight Taco Bell's cheesy five layer burrito cost $389 now and when it came out it was only 69 cents you ever seen that Meme on Twitter it's incredibly misleading but the point is do you actually have to pay more money for groceries and will it taste better in your food because today we are taking two different dishes one made with ingredients from Dollar Tree one made with ingredients from Dollar General that's right it's nature versus military power in the dollar store game we're going to have a judge taste test the two dishes blind and see what actually tastes better and which store you should actually be spending your money at the kitchen ears went to Dollar Tree and Dollar General let's see what those wacky kids got sorry I don't know where that came [Music] from this is a very different episode today because before we' done like Dollar Tree versus Whole Foods we had Dollar Tree versus aroan the one where Haley Bieber's wife or sister or both I can't remember has a $20 smoothie we had the two biggest dollar stores in America competing against each other we have Dollar Tree over here which we visited a lot we have Dollar General over here now there are hardly any Dollars General it's like Attorneys General in uh LA but we did find one but these are the two biggest in America there's like 16,000 locations with Dollar Tree combined with Family Dollar and then about 19,000 locations of Dollar General and because of economic recession and all that more people are cooking from Dollar Stores than ever before I'm really curious to see how this Stacks up now we spent $37 total at Dollar General but as you see some of the quantities are bigger we spent around $21 over at the Dollar Tree when you average it out on a per dish price we're getting about $8.20 from Dollar General $6.50 over here at the Dollar Tree we talked about this before Dollar Tree doesn't have the economies of scale to like really handle a lot of fresh produce or a lot of fridge space warm milk it sits on the Shelf how does it work uh unclear but that's totally fine we're making tuna noodle casserole do noodle casserole I grew up on it I still absolutely love it uh fish and cheese go really well you see that in many dishes the world over and then we're going to try and add some vegetables to it we got some peas we got some broccoli some differences in the peas you got the birds Eye Brand frozen vegetables over at Dollar General they don't have those over at Dollar Tree Birds Eye is actually like I think they basically invented the category of frozen food like well over a 100 years ago uh so this is a brand that I really trust I think those frozen peas are really going to work better than the canned peas over here but we got the name brand veler this is a brand I trust man I like it so we're going to have that cheese in there uh tuna our main protein coming here in the tunal noodle casserole tunal noodle as we all know is the Finn pop comedy duo from their famous song TRS you know TRS everybody come on Happ so we got uh tun over here from Dollar General cost $235 cents this is Dolores brand this is chunk light yellow fin where we got the pure solid albore over here a lot people prioritize the solid albore but this only cost $125 this costs $2.35 you may also see one other difference onions we was looking for crispy fried onions this is actually where the whole battle is going to come down to cuz Dollar Tree only got funions and funions are delicious Dollar General frenches Krispy fried onions which are very good problem with these they were expired for over a year sitting on the shelf just being sold which is totally fine these are fried dried onions that are vacu sealed they don't actually expire this is a Best Buy date this is something for frenches to try and move more product get people to buy more onions uh pasta for pasta these are going to be about the same we only got margarine over here at the Dollar Tree we got real butter over here at the Dollar General the shaky parmesan cheese oh my good old friend my good old friend the Dollar Tree powdered parmesan that tastes like buttermilk just farted in your mouth we'll see how that goes we got the cheaper minced garlic over Dollar Tree it's about to be a dog fight today but here's the thing we all win guys we're going to be eating tuna noodle casserole for a long time in this kitchen and you're welcome before we get to cooking these tunal noodle casser roodles uh I want to acknowledge the fact that we wrote a cookbook and that's really cool and y'all have cooked a bunch of things from it and it's been really awesome to see uh all the stuff you guys have cooked and all the feedback from it um orange chicken parmesan has been an early winner and honestly some of the versions you guys have made look even better than what we made in the book and a lot of people are making fun little substitutions of things I've seen people make the PB&J chicken sandwich with every kind of jelly Under the Sun the chunky strawberry honestly a revelation look fantastic but we're really proud of this cookbook we got a bunch of incredible recipes in there 100 to be exact and so go check out the cookbook if you haven't read it yet do I throw it like how hard do I throw it but like hard under like what if I spin it no crispy wil chamber shooting a free throw great couch we are making some garlicky breadcrumbs we got some white bread over here from the Dollar Tree I can always tell it's Dollar Tree because they're Parmesan it's like beautiful white powdered sand from a w Kiki Beach so we're going to take the breadcrumbs we're going to dump it in there uh funions funions this is just going to add some of that lovely delicious fat from the oil that it's fried in uh with all that toasted corn flavor and that little bit of onion powder snap in there the garlic the garlic here is really interesting old garlic is heat treated which is why a lot of people say it doesn't taste as good as fresh this is more heat treated because it is Browner garlic you can literally smell the garlic from Dollar General has a lot more freshness to it than the dollar from Dollar Tree so you're going to get some more flavor there but again we're adding so many different ingredients in this and I can't stress this enough it really is going to be tuna slop like tuna slop is exciting for me I love me some tuna slop we're going to add all of this Maran cheese which that is a vastly different texture than this over here from the Dollar General this as we talked about before it's a lot of like buttermilk powder is a little bit of Parmesan cut in there but you're not getting all that flavor um speaking of brown what the hell happened here man like there's I I looked at the ingredients list on this the only ingredients are really parmesan Romano cheese there's no caramel coloring in there and I don't know why you would want caramel coloring in there but my theory is that they've taken the brown parmesan rindes and ground them up that's what I think's going on I want to taste this it's like graham cracker crumbs yeah no straight up I believe that's what it is who knows man let's see parsley green flakes green flakes uh dignify your that's where the money is made we're going to grind this up that's going to top our casserole let that run boom Dollar General the flavor on this is really incredible like you take a Parmesan rind and you add it to soup and you still get all of that Umami like there is an incredible lingering Umami flavor on my pallet right now that kind of rules take it around get that all dusted up add some nice texture got let's try the expired frenches fried onions I think you can move that that Best Buy Date friend this is the best french fried onion I ever had green flakes uh butter we got margarine going on in the Dollar Tree as well margarine sometimes tastes more like butter than butter because they'll actually add artificial butter extract to it and so it gives you that like popcorn butter flavor which is really good man you ever have the buttered popcorn Jelly Belly that's the best that is the best Jelly Bean in the entire Market other than the birdie Bots beans that's flavored like vomit I like that one what the one with the more Brown ingredients sure looks more brown little tasty taste dude that's really good it's there's it's the parmesan rhy man it's really nice different different a little sharp on here a little toas here we'll see how that holds up in the oven I'm so stoked to eat tuna slop tuna slop all the Italian pasta shapes right they got spefic specific names that sort of correlate to what they are faral I believe means butterfly in Italian and the pasta looks like a butterfly somehow we've decided that egg noodle is a shape and this is it it's a little cork screwy thing and that's what we're cooking with this is like the universal uh casserole noodle out there we got Dollar Tree they're much bigger much thicker they're also whiter which could mean like less semolina in there so I think these noodles might hold up better we don't know what's actually going to make a better dish but we got to get them boiling um speaking of the cookbook that we wrote they that you should totally buy we did use a measurement called a toddler's handful and many people reach out saying they don't know what that is so I'm just going to demonstrate it it's a toddler's handful of salt it's like one of them mediumsized but belligerent toddlers in the Target that are crying cuz their parents like won't buy them buy him the bluey interactive game um so that's what that looks like we're going to boil off this pasta get the old Dollar General pasta in there Dollar Tree pasta we're using the equivalent amount of pasta now the other things is we're going to start building the uh the slot base for our lovely tuna slot so cream mushroom soup we got Campbell over at the Dollar Tree Dollar General they have their own store brand and this looks a lot more sort of gelatinous than you see with the Campbell cream mushroom Campbell cream mushroom not a single person has eaten this as an actual soup since 1987 we actually interviewed Miriam who did that cue the clip fantastic the ingredients if you look at the background 98% the same but the Dollar General one actually has more soybean oil in it which like the extra fat could add something let's try it God they put all the best flavors in it there's a ton of MSG ton of salt ton of fat a little bit of earthiness in the mushrooms want to try Campbell but Campbell is so silky smooth oh that's the ticket interesting though texture is so much better more mushroom flavor over here though you have more salt more fat which is going to be fun now tuna where's my tuna Fork I normally keep a tuna fork in all my pockets what happened what happened to my tuna Fork like you said this is yell fin this is actually packed in oil God that's good tuna yeah a really good tuna here we have solid albacore packed in water most people go for solid albore packed in water because it's like quot unquote healthier um but I don't know you need calories you need food you need fat that tastes way better but this is typically the God dang it sorry what we adding a little bit of milk to thin it out we got the fresh milk over at the Dollar General and the Shelf stable milk at the Dollar Tree um we're going to add some cheese in there too we got this is freshly shredded it's going to offer you a bit of a different texture this is incredibly orange I love that yum Orange it's a great mid-market sharp cheddar is what the American economy runs on Belita cheddar going in there more cellulose caking agent um broccoli over here this is B ey broccoli this is like industry standard frozen broccoli it's actually really good like it's it's not overcooked um a lot of fettes in there and then the Dollar Tree broccoli which we've used before uh makes me sad absolute indictment against America's unwillingness to offer fresh vegetables and produce and healthy options um to its most underserved uh this is all stem this sucks but it's vegetables lot of fiber that's be nice peas frozen peas better than fresh peas straight up we're going to have the frozen peas there I I had a friend grown up that ate frozen peas just like as a snack while they were frozen and I was like that's pretty cool but then I found out that friend also just peed his pants for fun sometimes and then like one day we're in his backyard he just pisses he pisses his jeans he's like 13 and then so it kind of reframed the Frozen pee thing for me the first I was like pretty good idea and I was like well maybe let's take everything this person says with the grain of salt do you think no no don't clap for that don't reward that kind of behavior this is like buying the toddler Skittles you ever watch two basketball teams come out on the floor and you look at one you go oh oh they're going to win I feel like that's what happened here that's also what happened in South Carolina versus Iowa everyone's like Caitlyn Clark Caitlyn Clark we're just fine greatest wom bask player all the points so then South Carolina very casually led by Don Staley undefeated four losses over three years cardoo the freaking Tower in the middle anyways still hyped up on women's basketball over here um yeah this looks way better this is all gray and I think the paprika has a really weird tin to it here which this gave this a nice red color um the breadcrumbs over here are definitely better uh they have that real parmesan albeit possibly just the Ryan over here they got that powder in them even the noodles here look better uh I think Dollar General really coming in hot right now we'll see though you know cuz Caitlin Clark goes on a heater from three um comment below if the basketball analogies are working for you and uh we're going to delete them all small if you say no cuz I am not stopping going to mix that together okay sh there's a boom up here do you guys know that shh tally tally Tally do your job put the headphones I'm so sorry all right noodles in these noodles definitely they broke apart a lot more and that wasn't even during the cooking process like you could see a lot of the noodles are shattered um I tried them they don't have quite as much bite as the Dollar General ones definitely higher quality over the Dollar General yeah so this one's going to mass into like an amorphous blob whereas this one's actually going to have some bite to the noodles but we don't know if that's actually going to make it better shove all Dollar Tree in there we got some grease up casserole dishes right here have you guys ever heard that opinions are like casseroles everyone's got one and they smell like onions um funions to be ex act in in Dollar Tree's case and then you're it's so it doesn't really it doesn't rhyme with can we say itle I don't know if I there's a phrase opinions are like um the term anus just means ring in Latin so like Uranus rings I think it's pretty funny ring doorbell should have just been called anus so we're going to go ahead that would have gotten him the Shark Tank freaking investment Mark you my product is called anus it's a precursor to a modern police state all right well that doesn't freak anybody out that everyone just sees everything you're doing all the time I don't know what people see and what I'm doing in park cars and residential neighborhoods in the ring camera this is what I like to do with casseres I like to do a bottom layer of cheese oh that's Supple a bottom layer of cheese and then the breadcrumbs on top of it that way the breadcrumbs are the first thing you get in your mouth when the cheese starts to seep oil out it's actually going to like kind of toast the breadcrumbs in that oil from the bottom that's valid culinary technique to me I'm going to try and load the corners of the cheese I want to get some of that little crusted or crage if you're French beautiful yeah this is a much more finely ground cheese this is a veler what happened what what machine do they run through to even get it like that is that how they got the discount at Dollar Tree it's like hey machine broke in the Vita Factory we just kept running it though do you guys want it cuz this is wildly inconsistent great ooh I do love Vita though oo I do love Vita top it some breadcrumbs we got the extra toasty boys over here yeah yeah it's nice yeah and then sometimes a basketball game starts and then like South Carolina's up like 15 nothing and you're like oh yeah this is God this looks so much better um we're going to go ahead and pop these in the oven about 400° for like 25 30 minutes you just want this to heat up melt all that cheese get it nice and bubbly and then we're going to eat it Jordan my C team judge of sport.com leing God emperor of mythical entertainment thank you we got two new to cast two two new to two two manoodle cast rolls right in front of you wow holy smokes one is cooked with ingredients from Dollar Tree the other cooked with ingredients from Dollar General so today we got Dollar on dollar violence going on I don't know anything about Dollar General that's not something we've really tapped into I don't think that's super popular in Los Angeles it's not it is across America though so they got like I think $19,000 I'm just scared I'm not going to be able to do as well it's okay we'd like you for your general personality and thank fun quirkiness not judging abilities the breadcrumbs tastes like cigarettes that was me that was me so we got cigarettes from Dollar I won't say which he's like mhm get a big bread crummy bite tastes a little like cigarettes cigarette yeah yeah tastes a little cigaret my this is depressing and I my mom wants to Ash a cigarette and or reron and we still ate it once sure so I've had it before mhm eating a cigarette am I relatable to you comment below if you say no we'll delete them this one doesn't taste like cigarettes so it's better God dang it she's good my thing that's hard is that I don't know Dollar General very well but I'm going to guess that it's worse than Dollar Tree which one do you think is South Carolina and which one do you think is Iowa cuz that's what it really came down to for me oh that's so hard because South Carolina is cigarettes but not in this way um being from the south I I will say that I think because this is better this is South Carolina is my guess but I don't know casseroles are very Midwestern you got to actually name the you actually name the grocery store no I'm not doing that anymore I'm not doing that anymore um no Al this wasn't only a women's basketball reference not like where they're headquartered oh okay it's a runner Jordan didn't see the rest of the episode yeah I didn't see the episode but I do love wom basketball okay I think this is from Dollar General and this is from Dollar Tree and which one did you like better the the cigarettes I stopped smoking a long time ago so this felt really nice to me um this is like nicotine in in a dinner yeah get yourself some patches or something it sounds bad uh Jordan you are wrong this is Dollar General and this is Dollar Tree now dish for Dish uh Dollar General is a little bit more expensive $820 versus $6.50 sure here and the main thing we found out they got like a fair amount more high quality frozen vegetables I love that more actual like uh Fresh Products like milk and butter stuff like that Dollar Tree we were working with a lot more of those prepackaged ingredient shelf stable milk um but even the pasta on this was a much higher quality you can see this is flaking and breaking apart they have their own store brand too this is real parmesan Romano cheese except we think it was just the rindes okay I'm not mad at that still good it tastes really good the Rind in soup it's delicious that's what I'm saying and then this the the cigarettes were a bulk of the cost for that no I I'm trying to figure out what happened and I don't know cuz the breads were toasted the same amount it might have been like lowquality spices like theic was super Dusty yeah maybe that's it it's really bad yeah I think I was at a disadvantage for this one because I don't know anything about Dollar General and now I'm jealous I wish there were more Dollar Generals in Los Angeles bring more Dollar Generals up CU that is fantastic Jordan thank you so much for providing your exper and your absolute quirkiness and unrelenting support for women's basketball and thank you so much for watching uh keep keep doing that thanks Candace Parker call me the mythical cookbook is finally here order your copy now at mythical cookbook. comom and make any kitchen a mythical kitchen

Channel: Mythical Kitchen

Views: 388,304

Keywords: mythical kitchen, mythical, chef, josh, scherer, nicole, food, taste test, snack, smash, fears, fancy, fast, recipe, culinary, cooking, cook, bake, baking, mythical chef josh, culinary bro-down, good mythical kitchen

Id: qkWEM9nnZsM

Length: 20min 11sec (1211 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 25 2024