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Recession indicator, what do you call this dish?

⁨169⁩ ⁨likes⁩

Submitted ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨return2ozma@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/edf533af-1f93-4de6-8f76-9473c80523e1.webp

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Comments

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  • NoForwadSlashS@piefed.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

    Help Ham Dog Burger

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  • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

    I call this the dinner I most often had as a kid.

    Uh yeah we were poor.

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    • switcheroo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

      Look at Mr Money Bags over here actually getting dinner…

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    • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

      my dad LOVED this stuff… rest of the family would fend for themselves. I’d rather have SOS or cereal tbh

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  • Murse@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Happy to say I’m past the piss-broke stage of life, but I’ll never forget how much is sucks. One of the really shitty things about it is all the products marketed toward selling us a ‘cheap’ meal, and we buy it because you don’t question it: it’s poverty food, right? Must be among the cheapest options in the store, right?

    Then you start pricing stuff out by things like cost-per-gram and realize you’re getting ripped off. To answer OPs question, I’d call that dish: predatory, bc it’s an up-charged box of ingredients that you can buy separately in probably that same aisle for much cheaper.

    For anyone reading this who is stuck in that hell, first off: /hug. Second, the real poverty food MVP is rice. I don’t recall the price off the top of my head, and even if I did I’m sure it’s inflated since I was a frequent buyer, but look for “fortified short grain” which is usually the least expensive and is ‘fortified’ with some extra nutrients to get something other than carbs. Buy it in bulk - you can get it in 50lb bags at places like Costco (if you don’t have a membership, mooch a ride there off someone who does, they can get you through the door/checkout) or Asian/Middle Eastern grocery stores. Price it out to what you’re paying for the amount used in a single meal, and it’s like a literal nickel.

    Rice makes for a boring meal by itself, but it’ll fill you up. Your second best friend is the clearance shelf. Pretty much any meat or veggie can go with rice. You’d be surprised how well other shit work with rice too… I recall having a single slice of shitty supreme pizza in the fridge; not enough for a satisfying meal, but, fuck it, whipped up a serving of rice, chopped up the slice of pizza crust and all, and threw it in when the rice was just about soft enough to eat and kinda stir fried it in. The oils from the cheese and sausage all got soaked up by the rice… end result wasn’t amazing by any stretch, but it was away more satisfying than a single slice of pizza or bowl of plain rice, tasted decent, costed pennies.

    Pro tip: buy some snack-sized ziplock bags, measure out what you need for a serving, portion it into a ton of individual bags, and keep those in a sealed 5-gallon buckets. There’s a type of beetle that lays its eggs in rice, and it may not hatch until after you’ve bought it. Then they propagate, and there are tiny beetles all over the batch… and losing the better part of a 50lb bag to those fuckers is pretty heart breaking. If you portion it out first, and then it hatches, you lose a single-portion ziplock full. No biggie. Also keep the empty ziplocks and reuse them for the next big bag of rice.

    Also get a cheap rice cooker as soon as you can afford it - a pot works fine, but a rice cooker will get you much more consistent results for much less effort.

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    • Gammelfisch@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

      Note, the wild or brown rice has more nutrients, because the shell was not removed to make the less nutritious sticky rice.

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    • dylanmorgan@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

      Add some beans and spices to that rice for an almost nutrient complete meal that can taste pretty damned good.

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    • Nollij@sopuli.xyz ⁨54⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

      Not to derail your point, but rice can be especially bad for people (myself included) where carbs (esp. white rice) make you hungry. If you’re one of those people where Chinese food makes you hungry an hour later, it’s usually because your insulin spikes in response to the rice.

      For those people, obviously try to avoid white rice (and flour, sugar, and potatoes). Brown rice usually includes the fiber on the outside (which gets stripped away for processed white rice) which at least slows the carb rush.

      Fresh or even frozen, unprocessed veggies that you have to cook yourself are still remarkably cheap, even in this economy. A pan of random chopped veggies and some random seasonings from the spice aisle (no blends!) can easily get you a filling and nutritious meal, and still cheaper than a box of hamburger helper.

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  • yesman@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Hamburger helper is bullshit. They give you some dry noodles and a “spice” pack of dubious powder, you have to provide the beef and milk. That’s not helping very much.

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    • switcheroo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

      For me, it’s just too salty.

      Grab some mac n cheese and put some hotdogs in it. If you are wealthy*, you can add ground beef instead and toss in some green chilies and some Italian seasoning. (It’s really good. Go ham on the seasoning.)

      • ground beef is freaking expensive nowadays 😩
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    • SailorFuzz@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      for real, and it’s not even enough noodles. So you end up adding more noodles too… at that point you’re paying for a box with some “spice” in it.

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      • gastroglizzy@piefed.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        But by the time you add enough beef and noodles to it, there’s not enough spice and it’s all bland. So you gotta add extra spice. May as well just cook.

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      • the_riviera_kid@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Thats why I make 2 of them.

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    • wizzor@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      How… Does this help in making a hamburger? I have never had a noodleburger, are they good?

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      • kate@lemmy.uhhoh.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        i think the intent is if you have meat for hamburger it helps stretch it into more meals

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      • someguy3@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        It’s not for a hamburger. It’s basically to make a noodle and burger meal.

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      • A_Very_Big_Fan@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        I think the “helper” might have more of a “helping” meaning, as in a helping of hamburger.

        Although idk if a noodle burger would be all that bad with the right kind of bread

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  • dylanmorgan@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

    The blood pressure roller coaster. It climbs and climbs and then plummets when you die.

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  • Xahvoc@lemmy.world ⁨47⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

    Good 'ol Mac n Weenies. Wouldn’t buy it prepackaged like this though, use a big bag of noodles and make a cheese or white sauce.

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  • SolacefromSilence@fedia.io ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    This is cooking with training wheels and I'm not gonna shit on it.

    I hear the comments that you need to add noodles, add more spice... you know that because you started here too. I'm glad this exists to open the door to cooking for yourself, but if you know better, do better.

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    • ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      If you need to add meat, noodles and spice than… what is it? Just bunch of preservatives and artificial food dyes so that American bodies can absorb it without going into shock?

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      • SolacefromSilence@fedia.io ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        I don't see any lie. It's a salty, bland, and expensive version of this... https://www.allrecipes.com/homemade-hamburger-helper-recipe-8550449

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  • the_riviera_kid@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    We did this all the time when I was a kid, my dad would make macaroni and cheese and toss in some hot dogs. It was delicious then and its delicious now.

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    • shartgargle@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Hell I still do it, ESPECIALLY when the kid isn’t around. Finally, I get the whole pot!

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      • adarza@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        who knew those boxes were actually a single serving?

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  • Malica@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I think this was designed with poverty in mind in the first place

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    • urushitan@kakera.kintsugi.moe ⁨12⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

      Yes, when it launched in 1970beef prices were skyrocketing and the economy was weaker. It was intended to “help” stretch a pound of ground beef to feed a family of five , and only take a single pan to cook

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    • protist@retrofed.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

      I genuinely think these were designed and marketed as time savers. My family never had any issues affording food, and my mother wouldn’t hesitate to make something like this for us. She’s pretty susceptible to commercials, also…

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      • General_Shenanigans@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

        I agree. These are just SO EASY to make a decent amount of food with minimum effort in very little time. Poverty? Maybe. Absolutely exhausted parents with no time nor energy to cook a more traditional wholesome meal? Absolutely. BOOM, family fed. Time to go to bed.

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      • Malica@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

        Could be

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  • adarza@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    these were great, when the pound of ground beef or chuck was less than a buck. but at 6+ bucks? i’d be making burgers, or at least a meatloaf, not this. we don’t waste our venison on this stuff, either.

    but this box in particular is called ‘desperation’, on the part of general mills to try halt what must be a massive sales slump due to the fucked-up beef markets.

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  • T00l_shed@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Give yourself so much hypertension that the inevitable heart attack is so quick you won’t need to worry about paying medical bills

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    • shartgargle@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Now you’re speaking my language!

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  • overkrill@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    hotburger doggler

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    • shartgargle@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Damn, that’s a good porn name.

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  • Hossenfeffer@feddit.uk ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    We don’t have this product in my country so I call this cheap looking food for people who can’t cook.

    But money is tight all around, so if this is all you can afford, I hope things get better for you soon…

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    • feral_sh@lemmy.today ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      lol you hit the nail on the head

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  • answersplease77@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    This shit taste good. I once microwaved and ate this on a plate. My ex looked at me and said that I eat puke like dog. I didn’t flinch I was happy and kept eating it like a dog eating puke indeed

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  • thagoat@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Cheesey weiner helper

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    • Fluffy_Ruffs@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Weiner cheese

      Now there’s a visual…

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    • recursivethinking@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Weiner Mac.

      Because HH is really just Mac n Cheese and you add beef to make Beef Mac or go a step further and make Chili Mac.

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  • Sibshops@feddit.cl ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    How do you say your old without saying you are old. Complaining about hamburger helper.

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  • AtomicHotSauce@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Goulash w/weenies.

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  • mrbeano@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Hamburger Usurper

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  • ivanafterall@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I call it good eatin’. Splurge on the all-beef weenies and you’re practically down at the Ruth’s Chris.

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  • trainsrkool@lemmy.ml ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    poverty

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  • Jiral@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Caution! Yellow fat emulsion was prepared on machines that can contain traces of actual cheese!

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  • Grostleton@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Tasty

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