SAME Recipe: Are Expensive Ingredients Better?

recently i lost my job meaning it's time to cut back on some extra expenses and one of those could maybe be food cooking at home is going to be cheaper than going out to eat a lot but if you're trying to save money are you going to be losing quality really quick that's what i want to test today so i'm going to be making the exact same recipe using the cheapest ingredients i could find at the store and the most expensive ingredients i could find at the store i want to see if i end up with a noticeable difference or if it's going to be just the same either way today i'm going to be making chocolate chip cookies and i'm going to be using the recipe that is found on the back of a bag of nestle chocolate chips interestingly though i'm not actually going to use the nestle chocolate chips in either recipe because it's neither the cheapest or the more expensive but i figure that's a good standard recipe a lot of people have used it it's pretty familiar and it's easy to follow so i'm going to be using that same recipe and i gave myself some guidelines when i was shopping i tried to get the cheapest ingredients that i could find and this is by weight so it's not like if there was a really small version of something that i wasn't going to get that just because it was cheaper if it meant that by weight it was more expensive and i also didn't want to get anything that was cheaper more expensive because it was radically different as an ingredient there are some kinds of flour i could get that would have cost two or three times as much as this but it would no longer be all-purpose wheat flour or white white wheat flour either way that's what i tried to do and i got the cheapest which all ended up being one brand at the store that i was at and the most expensive which has a few different brands this side was 20.79 this side was 58.87 in fact this vanilla costs 50 cents less than all of the ingredients on this side combined so i'm going to make them i'm going to follow the same recipe and i'm even going to measure everything on the scale to make sure i'm getting just the same amount of everything [Music] ingredient is two and a quarter cups flour anyone who's not from america probably thinks it's very silly to use a volume measurement for flour instead of a weight measurement for flour and you're right it's absurd there's no reason to use volume instead of weight when you're baking that's just silly but that's the recipe i've got so what i'm going to do is measure out the two and a quarter cups i'm going to check what the weight is and i'm going to just use that same amount of weight for the other recipe [Music] i was almost surprised that there was a cheaper baking soda it's like baking sodas i mean arm and hammer where i live it's kind of the only brand really ever used [Music] salt so this one's fun yeah one dollar two dollars and 35 cents [Music] seems like a lot more in terms of volume all right six grams of expensive salt how's it smell so this salt it it just says that it's table salt it smells very floral [Music] doesn't taste floral it just tastes like a really good salt that is that is weird genuinely seems like someone lit a candle around me all right so ourselves yeah these just get combined [Music] i've got the dry ingredients mixed now i need to do the butter and eggs and sugars [Music] try softening both of these butters in the microwave just enough that i can actually mix them up well [Music] three quarters cup sugar now this is supposed to be just the plain white sugar it's not as white so i'm hoping it works the way it's supposed to [Music] it's a much larger grain and a much stronger molasses flavor in the expensive brown sugar [Music] i was kind of hoping the vanillas would smell more different they mostly smell the same okay mixing time it recommends using a mixer to do this step i don't have a mixer here so i get to wear myself out using a wooden spoon [Music] there's a reason you're supposed to use a mixer to do this [Music] okay time to start combining ingredients [Music] love love just the repetitive strenuous motions it's just my favorite part of all baking really [Music] all right i've got both batches mixed up i've got the low cost ingredients and the high cost ingredients there's a visual difference the high cost ingredients mixture is noticeably more yellow and that doesn't really surprise me because the butter was a darker yellow the eggs were a darker yellow the flower isn't as bleached the sugar is darker brown on both types of sugar i mean all of those things together are gonna add up to a darker mixture it's it's not extreme but they are different now i know you're not supposed to eat raw cookie dough but i'm gonna so i'm just gonna do first a taste test of the cookie doughs to see how different those are cheap one tastes like a pretty standard fair cookie dough it's a decent texture decent taste the chocolate comes through see if there's any difference that i can tell with the more expensive ingredients it is a little bit different it's hard to explain in what ways the biggest noticeable difference is the texture caused by the larger grains of sugar i think both kinds of sugar are larger grain with the expensive ingredients than with the cheap ones uh either way though what we're gonna do now is refrigerate these for about 30 minutes let the oven heat up then we're going to scoop some of these out we're going to cook both of them on the same pan at the same time to make sure that they're getting equal environments in the oven we've given both batches of cookie dough time to cool down the oven is heating up it's time to cook our first batch of these and see how they're going to turn out [Music] and now that they're not in uh different colored bowls you can sort of see the side by side of the difference in the color of the cookie dough it's not extreme but it is noticeable [Music] all right into the oven they go for 10 minutes [Music] i've got the two different cookie recipes and i'm honestly really interested in how different they already look the the cheaper ingredients cookies seem to have cooked a lot more they've collapsed a bit more and the edges are much more golden brown both of them look cooked there is just a little bit of browning happening on the more expensive cookie edges i would say that the basic cookies should actually be cooked for one minute less than they have been whereas the brand cookies could maybe be this length or maybe even a minute longer depending on how you like your cookies all right moment of truth brand versus basic recipe it's the exact same ingredients measured to the gram on both of them all right this is the basic ingredients the cheaper see how this cookie is chocolate chip cookie nice crispiness around the edge nice and soft on the inside i haven't let these cookies cool down all the way they're still very warm the chocolate is super gooey and melty which is great um and overall i would say that's just it tastes like a cookie okay chocolate cookie what would you expect maybe a little chewy all right now we try one of the brand cookies every ingredient in here is the most expensive version i could find at the store the texture is definitely different yeah i would definitely say the texture is the biggest difference um but i'm bad at describing these things it's kind of like fuller of a texture like there's more to it um and some of that richness that i was talking about in the cookie dough still comes through it's really hard to qualify exactly what's different about them again i think my result is that if you didn't tell me that i had two different batches of cookies i might just switch between the two never noticing a difference but because i am told there's a difference i i think i think i can tell now maybe if i do a blind taste test uh i won't be able to tell and i might try that but in my head it feels like i can we've done our first taste test but i can't rely just on my own judgment so we're going to do several more batches of each of these cookies and then we're going to get some friends to help get their judgments in including some blind tests they're not going to know exactly what's different between the batches of cookies and i want to see what they think of them [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right i got some friends here to help me taste test the cookies so guys here's the thing we've got two different recipes i'm not telling you what's different about them it's just try cookies and see like what you think is different if you like one better than the other if there's things about them you like better i promise both of them are good very edible and i've had some of each like you don't have to be worried about it this isn't one of those weird things where there's something scary in it it's just good cookies and other good cookies let me know if you like one more that's all there is okay and for camera these ones were just cooked so they're warm and these are the ones we cooked earlier so they're not warm i'm gonna warm up you choose we're doing it eating the same one [Music] it doesn't matter okay i just you guys just eat cookies and let me know after you've eaten if you've formed a strong opinion [Music] i like that one better um this i think it's like the texture is better i don't know i don't like to touch this this one's like extra chewy like too cheesy this one has banana in it yeah this is the same cookie yeah eating them back and forth makes them the same cookies no no these ones are different i i can't i don't know these ones i mean these are good if i didn't have those no banana in any of the cookies one was melted butter and one was softened butter or whatever was it like the creaming method versus not i'm going to try again before i explain granule sugar powdered sugar all right explain the difference so generally just people's thoughts on the tube stronger white don't like i look perfect i mean i like you like these ones i do oh what i'm freaking the softer the crappy the better the green and soft i still say that in the same boot oh my gosh look at this look at this it's like it's like it's gooey and delicious gooey it's delicious but it's like an oily give me this i agree give me this it's oily cookie dough that's this cookie dough for the record no look at this one yeah it's like too dry it's like no it's airy yeah one just like a different stuff in the process so here's what it is these cookies are made with exclusively the lowest cost ingredients at the store these cookies are made exclusively with the highest costs the biggest price differences i think are the butter whereas this was like four dollars for a pound of butter this was seven dollars for half a pound of butter uh so this butter is way more expensive and by the way it's half a pound of butter in the recipe so this has seven dollars worth of butter in these cookies as you're talking this is starting to taste worse to me power of suggestion right there there's some crap cookies don't enjoy them but i do i i still i stand by these cookies if i receive these from a friend i'd be like oh you tried to make cookies [Laughter] all right thanks guys thanks for giving your opinions on my cookies welcome so i need to save money is ingredients for cookies one of the places i should do that you know i do feel that there's a noticeable difference between the two recipes but i don't think it quite justifies the 2.8 times higher cost of making the batch i might just go for some sort of mid-range ingredients or see if i can toy with the levels of the cheap recipe and get it to be closer to the good recipe i was quite surprised in how big of a difference we had between the different prices of cookies from 6.36 to 17.83 is quite a jump i do think this result might vary quite a bit depending on what you're making so if there are other things you'd like to see me try this same experiment with brand versus basic ingredients let me know and maybe i'll give it a shot guys thank you for all of your support if you can like and subscribe and hit that bell it'll really mean a lot to me and i want to give a special thank you to all of my patreon supporters if you want to join as one of my patreon supporters the link for that is in the description we'll see you next time good cookie sure

Channel: Nate From the Internet

Views: 592,238

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Id: Nz5eBh7xukQ

Length: 16min 49sec (1009 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 11 2022