She's gonna smell my pee, she's like, "Are you cheating on me with asparagus?" I'm gonna be like, "Yes." Today we're answering the question, does it actually matter
where you get your groceries and does it actually matter
how much you spend on 'em? We'll be making two
identical steak dinners, one using groceries from Walmart, and the other using
groceries from Whole Foods. We will have them blind taste
tested by an expert judge, I was gonna say panel of one judges and they will decide whether or not it's actually worth it to get
the more expensive groceries and see if they can guess which
grocery store it came from. Right now the Kitcheneers are out shopping their little Kitcheneer booties off over at Walmart and Whole Foods. Let's see what they got. We are making the American institution of ass steak dinner today. Now I have come out before and said that I do not prefer ass steak dinner and I really don't, I
don't make it very often. I do it for special occasions sometimes. But the thing that's really
exciting to me about this is not the steak, it is
the twice-baked potato, because to me that was like one
of the fanciest things ever. So we're gonna see if the
non-fanciness from Walmart can compete with the
fanciness of Whole Foods here. If we look at all our ingredients, we are going with a boneless ribeye steak. A lot of people consider the ribeye to be the king of steaks. Right here at Walmart you
see the meat is like redder than the meat over at Whole Foods. That is sometimes a trick. They will use carbon
monoxide to make the meat look more red, to be more appetizing, but often meat should
be a little bit browner. This Walmart steak is $14 a pound. Over at Whole Foods it's $21 a pound. So you're getting like a
solid 50% upcharge on that. Now if we actually look at 'em, there is less intramuscular fat here. They call that the marbling in steaks. And typically that goes into
the actual USDA grading. So this is not a prime
steak, this might be choice. Whereas here Whole Foods
you see a lot of marbling, but also there's just a ton of fat that you're not gonna be able to eat in this Whole Foods steak. I'm normally a huge fan of
buying meats from Whole Foods, especially special occasion meats because they tend to do a better job. I don't know, I'm looking
at this Walmart steak and like, I don't mind a lean steak, especially if it's going
to be a little bit thinner. So that's gonna be really interesting. We're also doing a little bit
of a vegetable side with this, awesome fun asparagus. That's so fun to me. I really, I really do love asparagus and Julia hates asparagus,
so I never make it at home. So I'm glad I get to eat it
at work and then she's gonna smell my pee and she's like, "Are you cheating on me with asparagus?" I'm gonna be like, "Yes." So we got the asparagus from Whole Foods and
from Walmart, right here. If you look at the butts, the asparagus, Whole Foods asparagus got browner butts than Walmart asparagus. What does that mean? I have no idea if I'm being honest, but the interesting thing
is the Walmart asparagus is actually about 60 cents
more expensive per pound than the Whole Foods asparagus,
which I didn't expect. Maybe Walmart isn't operating at scale. Not a lot of fresh asparagus
fans at Walmart apparently, but it looks pretty dang good. And then milk, this is a staple that a lot of people buy. What a coastal elite thing to say. Milk is a staple that many
people buy at grocery stores. Point is Whole Foods milk
is about $7 per gallon. Walmart milk $3.69 per gallon. So there's a huge difference right there. We're not adding that much milk, we're just putting it in the potatoes, but we'll see how this all shakes out. Obviously the steak is
gonna be the star here. I'm really curious to see if like the actual lean
edibility of the meat can beat all of just this
fatty whole foods, right here. It's gonna be a dogfight baby and this junkyard dog is barking. Not all dogs are big dogs. These potatoes will not be baked once. These potatoes will not
be baked three times. No, no, they will be baked twice. Do people know what
twice-baked potatoes are? I feel like that was the
thing more from my childhood that I haven't seen in about 15 years. Tally, do you know it? Meggie? Dylan? Oh my god, Morgan? Mindy? Annaliese? No, you already told me you
don't know what they are. Lily?
Yeah. You do?
Yeah. That's awesome. Trevor?
Trevor never heard 'em. V?
Yeah. Yeah, right? We got our big ole hunkin'
Walmart potato right here. You cut it in half. We're gonna scoop out the insides, we're gonna mix it with
all this flavorful stuff. We're gonna pack it back into the skins and then we are going to bake
that off for the second time because these potatoes
have already been baked. I used a very complicated baking technique where I poked holes in
them and I microwaved them. For how long? Like a while. So I'm going to scoop out all
the flesh from these potatoes and then I'm gonna stop talking
so they can cut around this. But then periodically I'm
gonna say a little catchphrase that they'll cut back into
and you'll see the progress that I've made with the potatoes. Man, these bananas are good. Hey, what's up? I'm back. If you break the skin, you're screwed. You gotta keep the skin
intact so you don't want to, so it takes a second. It's like scrimshaw. So do you know that
the legend for mermaids is because the manatee... Trevor said, "Do you think the
reason nobody's heard of this is because a once-baked potato is better?" No, I think it's because
Trevor's generation is lazy and they don't
want to take the time to bake their potatoes twice. How does that feel? Huh? You're right. So we are in fact done with scooping out all of our potatoes. If you see this one, I took this to the
penthouse and freaked it. Not like that. I mean, what I meant to
say is I fudged it up. I messed this one up a little bit. We're just gonna plate one.
We'll plate the beauty. So we're gonna start like
mashing all this stuff. I'm gonna start a little
bit light with the milk. Last time I made twice-baked potatoes, I really did mess it up
by adding too much milk. I'm gonna save some of
the bacon for garnish. We're gonna add some of the bits in there. Gonna add a little bit of the sour cream. Sour cream, Walmart, a lot cheaper. I drank a quart of both before this. They taste the same. We're gonna add some spices,
adding a little bit of paprika, salt and pepper, a little
bit of green onion. Again, I'm gonna just save some of the top of this for garnish. Add some cheese and then
a whole lot of butter. Now we go to the other side. That was all Whole Foods,
you have been tricked. Yeah, this is Whole Foods,
now I'm just super done. Like if you see the
bacon bits on each side, there are 90 Walmart bacon bits per one Whole Foods bacon
bit, but thick bacon, man. I'm controversial, I'm done
with the thick bacon era. So I think this is actually
gonna disperse more evenly in the Walmart one, which is this one. Smartest man alive. Okay. And we'll mash it. So sometimes if you wanna
get like really fancy, you can put all the potato
stuff into a piping bag and you make like little shapes in there. I'm not gonna do that. I'm just gonna scoop it
in, 'cause I'm not... Who's judging this one? Nicole? Yeah. Yeah, I don't need to impress her. If I haven't impressed Nicole already, you know I'm not gonna do it now. Why, I made her like a six course meal using like Reese's pieces or whatever. Can we start steering off our dates. Nicole, you like dates? I love dates.
No, don't eat. I was gonna use that. No you weren't. I got it out of my chest. Oh, you pulled that. I didn't see, is it sweaty? No, it's fine. You do wanna mash it pretty significantly. Is this way you get all that butter, all that cheese in there. All right, beautiful. Okay, I think I'm gonna scoop all
this into one half the potato and then save the other
potato for breakfast. I'll crack an egg in
there and then bake that and that'll be really nice. We've never made that. Sounds like a fun little time, though. Putting an egg in a potato? Yes, putting an egg in a potato. That doesn't sound like
a fun little time to you? It sounds like a fun little time to me. All right, I'm inexplicably
taking a soup ladle. I'm mashing up this
potato with all the stuff. We got that lovely paprika in there. We got the beautiful, elecant... Elecant? I couldn't decide between
eloquent and elegant, but I don't know why a
potato would be eloquent. All right, all right, well one thing maybe I can like, yeah, here we go. Now we're cooking with the gas. So we're gonna take the
other end of the ladle. I'm just gonna add that to the potato. If there's anything we've learned... No thank you. If there's anything we've learned, it's that Walmart has oranger
paprika than Whole Foods. All right guys, remember
the oranger one is Walmart. The orange potato, bro? Is there food dye in
the paprika, honestly? 'Cause there wasn't
even that much in there and that is orange. All right, we're gonna bake this off, then we're gonna garnish it
with some more bacon bits, cheese and scallions. And we gotta get to cooking
our steak, I suppose. Oh, we're gonna bake this at
like 375 for about 25 minutes just until it's warm through
and all the cheese is melted. You know how it goes. We got our twice-baked
potatoes in the oven. That's right. They're not baking once. They're not baking three times, but they do have little eggs in them and I think it'd be a
delightful breakfast. Oh, almost launched
that knife into my face. Asparagus. What is it? How does it grow? Nobody knows. But we have it here
and we're gonna cook it and I enjoy eating it. How to prep asparagus? We're gonna just roast
this in an oven right now 'cause we already got
the potatoes in there. Might as well throw
the asparagus in there, save some time, don't dirty another pan. Because they're so big, you
can roast them in the oven at 500 degrees and they
won't just get mushy. If you have like the
really thin asparagus, I'd recommend pan searing them, but like big boys like this, we're gonna go ahead and roast them. Now, every single person
grew up with Rachel Ray telling you that the way to
tell where you're trim asparagus is you take it like this and you fold it and wherever it snaps is
where you cut the asparagus, but then you're just wasting 80% of perfectly edible, delicious asparagus. I think it's really weird that we were all brainwashed
into believing that. There's no science behind the snap method. You just shouldn't do it and also it takes a long time. What you do, you take a
whole bundle of asparagus. I hit 'em with one, kind of give them a little spanking and you just cut off like that much and like there's just so much
more asparagus per asparagus. It's really weird and everyone's like, "Oh,
Mythical Kitchen food waste." Blame Rachel Ray for the
asparagus stock thing. Well, we're gonna pop that there. This is a Whole Foods, huh? Sometimes I forget the
point of what we're doing. Grandpa's confused again. We're gonna drizzle, we're
gonna guesstimate the oil. Listen, come on between one
tablespoon and two tablespoons. Now we're gonna massage
some of that in there. There's that good old Whole Foods oil. Getting it from the same canola farm. What even is canola, huh? I really, I don't. What is canola? We're gonna add a little
bit of garlic to there. This is fresh chopped garlic. I've contaminated my fingers.
No one's gonna listen. We're just here for the steak. All right, great. So we're gonna, we're gonna, there's so many little
things to sprinkle on this. Onion powder, just a
little bit of onion powder. Just for fun, you know, it makes vegetables taste
some more vegetabley. And now we're gonna go ahead and we're just gonna lube all these up. This is the proper culinary technique. Just kinda get your
fingers in there and mash. Sometimes you just gotta get it all over and come on, you knew I was gonna do it. Come on, you knew I was gonna do it. You going to want to
try and spread these out as much as possible. The more you overcrowd the pan, the less char you're
gonna get, the more steam. We want a little bit of
char, not going crazy. Why is that onion powder so powdery? Check it for powders. All right, we're gonna put
the asparagus in the oven and then that's just gonna cook. We're gonna finish it
with some fresh lemon and then we're gonna cook a steak. Oh, 500 degrees, 20 minutes.
Shake it around occasionally. There's gonna be enough steam
so the garlic won't burn. It'll be nice. Hear me out. You carve
a hole in the steak, crack an egg in there. Got it, Emily. All right, cool. So we got our steaks. Here's the moment everybody
has been waiting for. I've heard the comments. He said, "Josh, Josh,
where are the steaks?" Well, they're right here. We're gonna do a pretty simple oven, what's it called, pan-seared? That's what it's called. We're gonna do a pretty simple pan-sear. We're just gonna season them with, we got the Whole Foods steak, right here. Yeah, double checked. Gonna season it with a
hefty amount of salt. We're not gonna measure the salt 'cause they're two different grains. So we're just gonna eyeball right here. We got kosher salt on
the Whole Foods front and the fine grain iodized
over on the Walmart. And then we're gonna hit it
with a little bit of pepper. Some people say don't sear
your steaks with pepper on 'em. I say piss off! Let me
do what I'm gonna do. And then we're gonna hit it with a little bit of garlic powder. I don't know man, salt,
pepper, garlic powder, that's actually a very
California Santa Maria style rub, which I really enjoy. So we're gonna get some
of that nice fine grain. Fine grain salt is going to
be a lot less voluminous. That means like one
teaspoon of fine grain salt is gonna equal about two to
two and a half teaspoons, depending on how coarse
it is of your kosher salt. Walmart got the coarse
pepper and the fine salt. What the hell is going on? Why does the pepper at
Walmart look so much better than the pepper at Whole Foods? Well, we'll see how it shakes out. And then just a little
sprinkle, sprinkle of garlic. Fantastic, I'll season the other side when it gets in the pan. The pans are nice and hot. Got about two tablespoons
of oil in there, one, two. Look at her go and that's probably not gonna explode. And a one two look at her go, fantastic. Okay. Okay. Okay. We gotta work fast, gotta work
fast or it's gonna explode. Whoop. Yeah, that's how you know. If you ever wanna know
if your pan's hot enough, like you can really hear it on the sizzle, take a little bit of the fat
cap of your steak and do that and if you can hear that
sizzle, it is ready. Fantastic, okay, okay. Press down with the back of your hand. The back of your... If you press down, ow, I
was literally gonna say, if you press down with the
back of the back of your hand, it doesn't like hurt your
wrist, but that really hurt me. So we'll figure that out. Cooking, it's a mystery,
who knows how to do it? Nobody! I'm gonna go ahead and wash my hands and season the other side. Season more than you think
you need to, actually. I think a lot of people, especially when working with spices, they just like go really light with it. Just go to town with that. The more flavor the better,
sometimes, you know. Push it to the edge. That's actually a thing
that I see chefs say a lot is season to the edge, which
literally just means like, go to the brink man. Ride the lightning! Season your damn food! You know what I mean? Did
I put pepper on this yet? Hey, even if I didn't,
you can just add more. Fantastic. Ow. Oh wait, okay. Let's give it a little peek. Oh, that's like a nice and crusty. Ah, no, a little bit more. Sometimes you just say
things like Gordon Ramsey in every cooking show
just goes, "Beautiful," and it's like the ugliest
thing you've ever seen. He's like holding the baby,
he's like, "Beautiful." Like, that's an ugly baby, Gordon. What? Oh, not every baby can be cute. If every baby is cute,
then no baby is cute. It's a bell curve. That's how society works. That steak's looking better. So it's funny, because you're actually
getting a quicker, harder sear on the Whole Foods steak. These are same pans,
same burner, same heat, hotter sear on this because
there's more intramuscular fats that actually bleeds out of the steak sooner than the Walmart one. But not bad, you know,
looking pretty good. Thank you for being communicative. You gotta, you gotta, a
lot of pepper in the air. What I like to do when these
are searing in the pan, I'll let it sear for about half the time that it's seared on the first side because we're gonna
transfer it to the oven. So you're still gonna get
a lot of heat on that. I'm just going to pop it in. What's this? 450, whatever dude. I don't know. It's probably like 380 degrees. Our oven lies to us all
the time, which is fine. So we're gonna pop in the
oven for about five minutes until the internal
temperature reads 120 degrees. You want to get it up to 125, which is a perfect medium rare. Nicole, before you, you have two identically
beautiful steak dinners. One of the steaks dinners has been cooked from
Walmart's ingredients. The others of the steaks dinners has been cooked from
Whole Foods ingredients. That way you have to
decide which one was which. You know the deal, you're
a producer on the show, but she has been kept
completely in the dark. She has no idea... Completely
...which is which. In the dark. Like literally she was in a
broom closet just blindfolded. Should I start with this? I don't care. Oh, okay, well. Do whatever, man, you know, it's a guess. Okay. Do you want to guess blind? Are you seeing anything off the bat? Yeah, I do want a guess blind. Which one looks like which one? Okay, I don't want to guess blind. I wanna, I wanna. Okay. Oh, you know what I should
do? Steak for steak. Yeah, that's fine. Am I supposed to be speaking during this? Do you wanna bite yourself? Yeah, give like the analysis. Tell me what it looks like. Tell me what it tastes like. Okay, I'm really mashing at it. Sorry. Okay, I will say the salt
levels on this one are better. I can taste a crunch of salt,
which is quite satisfying. I feel like this steak, because it has a little bit
of this part coming off, makes me feel like it's less uniform and it wasn't done in a factory and there's someone probably cutting it. It makes me feel like
this one cut by hand. I'm not gonna tell you nothing. I know, I know, I know, I know. This one, it's a little
bit lacking in flavor, but the actual texture of
the meat is really good. It's a little bit sad that it's gray here, but I won't use that against the steak. That was the chef's fault. He tried to press down with
his wrist, but it hurt him. Right now onto the asparagus. Mm, delicious. You can have one. I have some of your food. Of course, you can have
as much as you want. Delicious asparagus
cooked phenomenally well. The guy. Absolutely beautiful, nice and verdant. I'll say that much. Good word. Salsa verdant. Pound for pound, very similar. Bigger asparagus here, more
delicate asparagus here. I like my asparagus a little bit, with a little bit of girth. This one's a little bit. Rachel Ray told me to cut off the girth, but I told her no. Yeah, I'm sorry. You wanna talk to her about it later? Mm-hm. Okay, well now the potatoes, I can see that the cheese on here
isn't like as melted. This one's pretty melted. I think the coagulants,
that cake the cheese over it inhibited it from truly melting properly. While this one here very
nicely melted, very attractive. The bacon bits as well on this side, the bacon bits are nice and pronounced. Makes me feel like they
were, I don't know, maybe organic or something like that. This one right here, not so much. Seems kind of basic,
like your average baco. Can I ask you a question? Whatever, yeah. Would you feel differently
about the potatoes if say, instead of all that stuff, it was an egg cracked into it. An egg cracked into it? Imagine that the potato, but you crack an egg into it and then bake maybe even two eggs, bake it,
we're calling it egg potato. I feel like this is a joke
and I wasn't here for it. This potato, albeit a beautiful potato, doesn't taste as good as this one. Mm. What are the differences in the taste? I will say that this one
seems a little bit chalkier, not as soft and as a supple. This is a more supple potato. It is a smaller potato
though. Small potatoes. That's something American
people say, small potatoes. I find myself reaching
more into this potato. I think the bacon on it is really, the bacon's really delicious. The cheese is really
nice and sharp, I feel. I feel like this one's a little
bit basic run of the mill. That potato's so good. Nicole, which overall meal is better? I like the steak on this one. I like the asparagus on this one, but I like baked potato
kind of with this one, so I think this is a better meal. All right, Nicole. What's up? Which one was Whole Foods? This one, very clearly. Yeah, very clearly, right? Wait, well follow-up question. Which one was Walmart? This one. Okay, I thought she
might have gotten tricked and went back to that one. Yeah, so the total price
difference here at Whole Foods, we spent $31.43. At the Walmart, $22.52. A vast majority of that
was coming from the steak. The steak at Whole Foods, I mean it's literally much better quality. You can see a lot fattier. But I mean, you all saw me, I was snacking that
steak is so much better. It's a better steak, better,
better quality steak. If you are just eating
like a straight up steak, I mean quality really does go a long way. Of course. If you're slicing it up for sandwiches, making a cheese steak, whatever... That'd be fine for a sandwich. That's even fine for just
like a simple dinner, yeah. It's still a good dinner. It is a good dinner. Why was this potato so much better? I don't know, but it was so much better. I think it was the quality of the cheese. I think it was the quality of
the spices that went in there. But I will say this
asparagus was incredible. I think the quality of
asparagus at Walmart was miles ahead of Whole Foods. And it's more expensive than Whole Foods. Was it? That's the only thing that was more expensive inexplicably, the asparagus is like 30 cents
more expensive per pound. That's wild. That might, that tracks. Well it's not bad, but I mean ultimately this
is really fascinating to me. It's fascinating. And we get to take leftover steaks home. Yay, thanks for having me on. Of course, Nicole. Thank you so much. And thank you y'all so much for stopping by Mythical Kitchen. Drop a note in the comments, ask us what dish you wanna see cooked from which grocery store next 'cause I really enjoy doing this. We just get to like cook nice, simple food and actually see where your money's going at the grocery store. And as it turns out, it's
going right to steaks. We'll see you next time. Potato Egg. I don't care for Potato Egg. What do you, why is
everybody against me today? Check out the latest
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