I’ve always wondered what would happen if you took the same exact recipe but bought budget friendly vs more expensive options of the same ingredients and taste tested them side by side.
🍝 Spaghetti & Meatballs: https://www.cookwell.com/recipe/spaghetti-and-meatballs
🧾 Grocery List Breakdown: https://ethanchlebowski.notion.site/26141d72a0d380eaac58c1df20617804?v=26141d72a0d3815da7d0000cc55ea7de&source=copy_link
OTHER STUFF
🍔 The Mouthful Newsletter (free) ➡ https://www.cookwell.com/newsletter
📸 Instagram ➔ https://www.instagram.com/ethan.chleb…
📲 We are building an app for Home Cooks ➔ https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/…
Sources Mentioned:
⏱ TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 Intro
0:43 How this video will work
2:32 Grocery Shopping Breakdown
6:18 Making Spaghetti + Meatballs
9:51 Taste Test: High end vs Budget
12:11 What ingredients should you spend on and which should you save on?
MISC. DETAILS
Includes music by Tom Fox: https://www.tomfox.site/
Filmed on: Sony FX3 & Sony A7C
Voice recorded on Shure MV7
Edited in: Premiere Pro
46 Comments
Hey all! Hope you enjoyed this one, let me know if you have ideas how I can improve on this format. Here are a couple ideas I saw in the comments:
1 – Make a third version after I do the initial taste test.
2 – Do a price breakdown of the budget recipe with the premium ingredients (someone already did this in the comments)
I've also thought depending on the dish and ingredient, time might be more relevant metric compared cost. For example if I were to make a cheesesteak, my "premium" cheesesteak would probably involve me making my own sesame seed roll, which by roll cost might be cheaper, but would obviously take much more time.
Have a good rest of the week ✌
The way you make your videos, I can tell you used to work in consulting haha I love the video though!
This is a fun one. Goes right at the heart of a really common, potential cooking myth about ingredient quality.
Buy meat on sale! Let the price dictate dinner lol not a bad idea but I love your vid
I dont have food processor but what I found I really handy for making tender meatballs, especially since I can't eat pork, is letting the breadcrumbs soak in the milk for 10 or so min (usually I lost track of time) thenhand mix that with the ground beef and other ingredients. perfect meatballs 🙂
One should also consider that organic is often more expensive, but you don’t get a shit-ton of pesticides. Also, free-range meat is a must always. Animal welfare > all.
I'm a bit of a critique of keeping dried spices for too long, so buying bulk is definitely not my cup of tea.
Dry spices last longer for sure, but they also lose aroma/flavour over time as well.
From personal experience, spending at least in the mid-range for tomatoes (Mutti is the most common option here with around 2;50euro for a 800g can) is a must. The super cheap canned tomatoes are watery and flavorless in comparison, and also have an uncanny sourness due to the added citric acid most of them have.
Going for expensive parm doesn't really make much of a difference, as long as you buy actual parmesan/grana padano blocks and not the grated powder stuff.
As far as the pasta and meats go I'm 100% with you. Just get the cheap storebrand bronze pasta and ground beef/pork.
I respect that Ethan hasn’t gone the Joshua Weissman route and became a top 5 sloptuber I genuinely love all these videos and the effort that goes into them
good video concept
great video! i usually go for a cheaper block of parmesan cheese cuz just grating it fresh adds much better flavour than pre grated 😛
Such a great series idea!
There usually aren't different kinds of ground pork at the store – you're lucky to get only one – but I wonder if there would be a significant difference in flavor if the pork was sourced differently (e.g., heritage/free-range vs. the standard). I tend to notice a wider range of flavors in pork than I do in beef.
Some sort of soup like chicken noodle would be a fun one to try as a future recipe. Not many ingredients, so they would individually stand out on their own.
Hi Ethan, as a resident brokie I use “sweet” vinegars or even sometimes sweet soy sauces/bachans to bring up the sweetness in my sauces when I’m on a shoestring budget – whatever I’ve got on hand.
I’ve found that apple cider vinegar is KILLER both worked into the sauce while cooking it and fresh over the noodles before mixing with the sauce.
Really bright, “sweet” excellent.
Love this video and concept for a series
Am I the only one who thinks it's downright silly to blindfold yourself if you already know which one is the cheap versus expensive one?
Is it wrong that I immediately thought both sides were expensive ingredients.
For the animal products, most times the higher the prices generally it means that the animal was raised "better" that may or may not effect the taste (usually does but not drastically) also wagyu ground beef is a scam. Wagyu steak is good because there is high fat to meat ratio. When you grind it, its still 80/20 just like every other ground beef. No better flavor, just the fat
What was the point of the blindfold?
Man now I want to make some spaghetti.
Take the lid off the cheaper one to reduce further…
Extra love because of the mad amount of data 🥰
could you try some ideas like this with rice dishes?
Great idea for a series, love it!
All this work just for it to be invalidated by a weak taste test. You want to concentrate and thats why you put on a blindfold? Come on Ethan, knowing which plate has the expensive food pulls the lever of expectation in the brain. Great video until the taste test, no true lesson can be learned expect the one on how to do a real taste test, 15 minutes down the drain🤦♂️
why take the onion out instead of chopping it fine and blending into the sauce? lots of lost flavor there
This is great! Although I wouldn’t recommend raw onions in meatballs as the temp it takes to break their cell walls is much higher than over cooked meatballs. Unless you prefer the crunch of course. 😉
One thing to take into account for non Texans is that HEB has VERY high quality store brand products in addition to very low prices (compared to the rest of the US). Ethan you should replicate this on the West or East coast to get an idea of what it may look like there, I think your principals are solid and obviously still hold, but I think the decision making from an ingredient to ingredient level would certainly change.
Great video, actually blind taste tests would be a great addition.
Thank God I have some Italian heritage and I know far better choices than all of these lol and for far far less money thank God!
Fresh basil is a super easy upgrade to give you better flavor in your sauce. Sauté yellow onion in good olive oil until translucent, add peeled San Marzano or plum style tomatoes with fresh basil, simmer for a few hours and that is all you need. as the tomatos condense they will develop all the flavor you need. Stop adding tons of generic dry "Italian" seasoning to your sauce or meatballs.
Props for making new types of vids that are intelligent
TLDR: some ingredients make a vast difference and are well worth the expense, others not so much, and which are which are not very surprising 🙂
Jesus Christ I thought England was expensive America’s in trouble with these prices 😂
Are there really people out there spending $6 on a pack of spaghetti? Insane.
$ 55 to make Spaghetti and Meatballs is the lower-priced option. That's the problem right now.
looks directly down at the dish with fake powdered cheese all over it and then puts on a blindfold so he doesn't know which plate is which.
Ground beef, use extra olive oil or some tallow if you want to change the texture.
Chowder. I think chowder could be fun if you can get the fresh clams compared to canned.
Another great and useful video. I am curious about the difference in chicken breasts – which do vary a lot in price, and are used in many dishes, of course.
if you can switch out ONE ingredient for more expensive, get the san marz
Recipes insisting San Marzano DOP tomatoes always annoy the crap out of me, There's VERY few dishes that justify 5-10x the cost per can. San Marzano Style (Same Variety, just not grown in the region) work just as well, it's important to get the same VARIETY that the dish calls for though, cherry, beefsteak, san marzano, and plum are all distinctly different. I just did a bolognese as I do every few months to freeze, and San Marzano DOP cans add $45 to the recipe cost. They quite literally end up costing MORE than the meat.
Personally I usually go by the rule of nearly anything being reduced, browned, or slowly cooked can be cheap (and in the cases of meat the higher fat content is usually preferable anyway). Pastas should always be the best reasonably priced ones you can afford as there's a huge difference, and cheeses should never be the cheapest but unless you're using them for something like a pairing don't need to be anything special. PDO/DOP won't do you any good when its flavor is lost to a dish anyway
Using Graza for the high end lost me because they've sponsored you and shouldn't be included in a video such as this , if they've paid you for a promotion they should be discounted from a video like this.
Lovely format. Would be awesome to have a third version trying to be as cost efficient as possible.
Would love to not share spices sometime, to see if the more premium spice taste better too.
a youtuber forgoing sliced white truffle…see! things are even morr expensive for everyday food
USA prices always amaze me with how expensive they are. UK prices for the cheap list.
Pasta – 28p for 500g
Paste – 59p
Tomatoes – 47p x 2 (we don't do the big tins) = 94p (though after trying san mar toms from the garden, the wateriness of these tins mean you probably need 4 and reduce for two hours)
Eggs – £2.89 for 12 but you literally cannot buy lower than free range standard.
Actual Parmigiano Reggiano PDO – £3 for 170g, you cant buy the sawdust.
combined beef and pork mince – £4.79 for 750g (and this price had recently skyrocketed)