Goddamn a decade ago we’d go out to a bar that had burger night and the deal was a draft pint, and a burger with fries for $8, and those were legit burgers.
Well obviously enough people are buying burgers at those prices, otherwise restsurants wouldn’t be able to charge those prices.
It’s kinda like with lootboxes, feels like everyone hates them, but they must get purchased a lot, otherwise they wouldn’t be so ubiquitous.
Kinda makes me wonder how many people are really affected by the cost of living crisis, or do people simply buy things no matter the pricetag and that NOT purchasing something is simply NOT something that crosses their minds?
I can make 4 fancy ass burgers at home for the same price. $12 for 4 premade patties from the butcher, $6 for 4 fancy ass buns, another $6 for some organic veggies and let’s say $1 worth of fancy ketchup. Wanna add fries? A russet potato is less than a dollar, slice it up and make oven fries.
I could obviously cut back on some of the ingredient’s quality and get the price way down, but I dont make burgers that often so I’m gonna make them good.
Most restaurant are packed. Not enough people care
It’s only normalized if you buy it.
Ground beef and a patty maker. … Lodge cast iron pan… TikTok shop net scrubber… Scrub mommy… Dawn soap…
Can add onions and chop bacon into it… Can add anything into them… Can freeze them … Cna have them layered with parchment that’s a dollar at the dollar tree…
Bread can last longer if you freeze it.
“4 for $100” is a wild sentence for anything not steak, much less smashburgers (fries are a separate order) made by hipster dickheads with tribal tats and 1800s mustaches
Ah, yes, I’ll have the quarter hundred biller.
I’m over here refusing to pay $7 for a Sonic burger, so I only order when I can get them half price in the app.
I thought I would be nice and went to grab some breakfast jacks and hash browns at Jack in the crack a couple weeks ago. $55 for six of each. I apologized and backed out of the drive through. Fuck that, it’s ham egg and cheese on a burger bun, and shredded potato.
These restaurants doing everything they can to chase away customers.
And I stupidly still love Dave’s single from Wendy’s.
Nothing quite like getting the “free thing w/ $5 purchase” and buying only a Dave’s single.
A burger and fries for $7 ain’t bad. But unfortunately the quality of Wendy’s has been plummeting.
Before the hyper inflation you could use your points on delivery, now you can’t. With most fast food places you can’t. It’s all a 90% markup now and it’s never ever in a hundred gazillion years be worth it to order out ever again. It’s just crazy how it was semi-worth it at one point for like 2years and then everything got fucking stupid expensive and people are paying twice as much for everything they order food-wise because it includes grocery delivery that’s now at a 90% markup on delivery services.
-_-
I remember when a pint (an actual imperial pint) of premium domestic was six bucks. It rolls for around ten now.
What does this person think cost of living is?
Secret to White Castle burgers is steaming the patty over onions on the pan/griddle and putting the bottom bun on while steaming.
Secret to McDonald’s burgers is salt pepper and a touch of msg.
Big Mac sauce is ketchup mayo touch of mustard and some relish
Popeyes chicken is just buttermilk marinated chicken coated with flour cornstarch and a touch of baking soda.
More wholesome fast food at home and it’s cheaper too
We are all fast food fry cooks on this blessed day
Fast food at home takes a higher level of time and skill commitment. For fried chicken i gotta source all ingredients for the batter, make more than i need for the chicken to have adequate coatings, use a shitload of oil for a deep fry or buy a deep fryer, cook the chicken, then clean up the dishes and kitchen afterwards.
It is still defintely possible but many people working long shifts or overtime find it hard to do. My method for nearly any meal with more than 5 minutes of prep+cook time is to make lots of it, as you get more food per time invested that way and just eat it for a few days or freeze extra servings.
I’ve solved this problem for myself. I stagger meal prep and cooking on alternate days. So I eat leftovers and meal prep one day, cook and eat fresh and get leftovers the next. That way I’m only spending 15 or so minutes in the kitchen on any given day.
Which is why I don’t have fried chicken anymore. It’s not the end of the world, turns out.
Almost every issue you’re describing can be addressed with proper mise en place. Unfortunately, it’s a skill that requires practice and can be improved by training. Teaching mise en place as a core skill in schools could help everyone with anything from cooking to home repair, but we apparently don’t want people to know diy skills…
Anyway, here’s a few tips:
- For burgers: Find some frozen patties that you like. I really like Birchwood Beef Burgers (not beef patties, different products). I go with frozen so that I didn’t feel pressured to eat more beef in a week than I want to, just because I bought it.
- Also for burgers, but great for home cooking: Buy frozen, diced onions. An entire bag usually costs less than two onions. When you’re about to flip your frozen burger patties, lay a small bed of frozen onions, sprinkle on salt and pepper, and flip the burger directly on them. This trick also works great with Morningstar veggie burgers.
- Fried chicken marinating: Use a bag and insert a straw to create a small opening before you close the bag. Then, slowly submerge the bag in water while you seal it. Once your marinade starts going above the top of your seal, pull the straw out and seal your bag. This will substantially save on the volume necessary to marinate the chicken.
- Fried chicken dredge 1: Add a little corn starch to your eggs. You can put the corn starch directly on your raw chicken, but that tends to lead to waste. The corn starch helps the eggs and batter stick. Don’t worry about lumps. Chopsticks are great for mixing.
- Fried chicken dredge 2: Use the chopsticks or a fork to dribble your dredge into your breading, then give it a slight mix. This will give your chicken a crispy texture.
- Fried chicken breading 1: Mix your spices first. Keep it relatively simple. My favorite mix is plenty of salt, a little msg, lots of garlic powder, little onion powder, white chili powder, black and white pepper, freeze dried chives. Add your flour to your spice blend, and taste it. Add flour until the spices give you just the right kick. The floury flavor will go away when it cooks, but it’ll still dilute the spices, so the flavor profile shouldn’t change much while the chicken cooks.
- Fried chicken breading 2: Use a container that is deeper than you think you’d need; it’s easier to conserve breading when you stack the chicken instead of spreading them out. Place all or as much of the chicken into the breading, coating and covering one piece at a time. Let them sit in there for a while before you start frying them. Fry in batches, you’ll have to re-coat the chicken in the breading before frying the later batches. These will be extra crispy.
- Fried chicken breading 2: Don’t make too much. Make more if you need more and then dump it on top of the chicken laying in the breading, but you’ll need far less than cooking videos will make you believe.
- Fried chicken frying 1: Use a high temp oil, and don’t let it get too hot. You can use a thermometer if you want, but sprinkling in some of your breading will let you know if you’re at the right temperature. Instant bubbles that swell then subside, and then slowly turning brown is exactly what you want. If it bubbles slowly start and you don’t notice a color change after 10-30 seconds, your oil isn’t hot enough. If it bubbles rapidly and changes colors immediately, your oil is too hot. Give your oil a few minutes to reach temp, 3-10 should be good.
- Fried chicken frying 2: I favor wider pans over deeper pans. You want the pan about 1 or 2 inches taller than the halfway point of your thickest piece of chicken. That extra 1-2 inches is to prevent your oil from spilling over. Even if your oil level doesn’t quite reach halfway up your thickest piece of chicken, the oil will bubble and climb its way up your fried chicken. So, you’ll likely be fine if you’re under by as much as a quarter of an inch. I’ve used cake or pie pans and tongs on a hot plate to fry chicken, and it comes out great. My preferred pan is a deep saute pan.
- Fried chicken frying 3: Keep a plate or something with a wire rack over it to drain your chicken after they’re done. Sprinkle salt over the pieces immediately once the next round of chicken comes out of the fryer, you can move the chicken from the rack to a plate. Add soon as the last batch of chicken goes into the fryer, dump what little breading you have left into the trash, and then at least rinse the container. When you’re done, allow the oil to cool completely, and then filter it through some coffee filters. If you kept the oil at a good temperature, you should get one or two more uses after it.
If you follow the fried chicken tips correctly, you should have used:
- 1 ziplock bag
- 1 straw
- 1 pair of chopsticks
- 1 bowl
- 1 container
- 1 oil frying thing
- 1 funnel
- A few coffee filters
- 2 plates
- 1 wire rack
If you clean as you go, your kitchen should be clean (except for the still-hot oil in the pan or fryer or whatever) before you bring the chicken to the table. That’ll give it enough time to rest and be juicy as fuck instead of drying out the instant you bite into a steam bomb.
I couldn’t have said it better myself, unless I was a 1997 Church’s Chicken commercial.
More than one hour of hourly wage for a single meal. Or more than one hour of work for multiple homemade meals? I’m going with more than one hour of work for multiple meals. But you do you
This ignores the skill portion. I might ruin 3 meals before i make something edible that my body actually wants me to keep eating. I also keep coupons and know the local deals, my avergae fast food order ends up being about 30 minutes worth of wages. And tbh my work doesnt have a proper lunch break so I’m often still getting paid for 15-20 minutes i spend ordering and eating. It is still a loss compared to bringing food, which i usually do, but its not a massive loss.
Part of my problem as well is i dont work a defined shift and often end up spur of the moment working late. So if I pull something out to defrost or start soaking beans in the morning. Working ovetime can delay my cooking time from 5 pm to 8 pm, often cutting into the time i should be going to bed or getting other important shit done. I do meal prepping to help mitigate this but then im often eating the same lunch and dinner for 3-4 days straight, which can get difficult on the pallete.
Try prepping food that freezes better. I’ve got sandwich bags with servings of frozen rice or whole potatoes, quart bags with soups, red curry, lentils, etc. When I get home from work, I pick something and defrost it in the microwave. Ready in <10 minutes.
Youre fighting this “cook your own food” suggestion too hard.
Way way way too hard.
An air fryer goes a long way, I don’t see much difference in terms of crispyness compared to regular oil frying and it’s a lot less cleanup and work.
I use an air fryer to reheat fried chicken. Are you using it for the initial cook too?
For big batches to freeze I use oil. For a small meal without oil, I’ve found it works if you spray on the oil during the air frying a few times. I mostly do that for tofu. I toss mushrooms or other veggies in olive oil, herbs and garlic, and toss it in there too with a bit of cheese sometimes.
Chick Fil A chicken is marinated in pickle juice before deep frying.
What makes it soggy and disgusting?
https://youtu.be/AQNg1dPKUFU?is=6drDN5x2dy2iEWtg
Try this recipe some day. You won’t regret it and after doing it once or twice you’ll be able to whip these up without much prep at all.
Also check out Jordan the Stallion on YouTube for all the fast food secrets.
Thank you for this. Neeeeed more useful stuuufffffff
He’s gotten more into the “I found this thing people were raving about, let me show you with a glasses throw” and less into the “hey check out this dope recipe it’s so good I threw my glasses” and “hey this fast food company pissed me off so here’s their secret recipe”
Noted, go for the older content.
Thanks all the same :) my partner likes food like a lot, and we don’t like spending way too much money, so options are good :)
I would also encourage “the plant slant” as another great recipe content creator and he also does shout outs to other good channels so you can springboard off there.
Thanks! I very much appreciate this, I like word of mouth advertising because people work together rather than they get paid for it
I like the maker spaces similarly, so Allen Pan is a good creator if you like mythbusters-type “is it possible to do” sort of stuff. 😁 same shout outs and collabs. He literally worked with them.
Secret to McDonald’s is salt, pepper, and a touch of MSG
I work at MacDonald’s and the seasoning shakers ingredient list (because the spices come already mixed) contain a lot more than just those 3 things.
Because they add extra stabilizers and preservatives. Try it at home and the patties will taste the same.
It also has cumin, onion, and garlic powder in it.
Tried those mixed with the salt pepper and msg and it didn’t taste as similar
The leanness of the beef is a big factor in making burgers. I don’t know McDonald’s ratio; the boxes for the meat patties don’t have it listed. I have to imagine they use a pretty fatty blend tho. Their burgers are greasy as hell.
I use 85/15 from my supermarket and they slap. I ball it up then season the top, place it seasoned side down and smash it then season the flat side. Flip when the meat juices on top start bubbling. The cooked side will have and shiny crust to it and you’ll know you’re on the right path
I kinda wanna try about 1/4 of a tablespoon of baking soda in there the next time I make a burger to see how much better maillard reaction it gives and also see if it messes with the flavor. It helps browning, and I have been hearing recently it also keeps more juices in the meat.
none of those have been any good in over a decade
True and the homemade versions taste better than they did a decade ago
They have $25.00 burgers?
No but a meal can be close to $25 and a $25 burger is just an overly thick patty stacked too high with too many ingredients. Anyone can make that at home
A large pizza now costs over $20.
$20 pizza is still one of the best deals around for feeding a lot of kids.
I’m ok with $20 for an 18 inch non chain pizza.
I buy 60 lbs of 00 pizza flour every 6 months.
I make pizzas starting on the range in a ripping hot cast iron pan, finish them under the broiler for in a couple minutes.
Pizza is INCREDIBLY cheap to make from raw ingredients, you can even use really good cheese and pep and come out less than $10 a pie.
pizza is one of the things that’s actually beat inflation. look up how much a pizza hut pizza cost in 1995 considering the prevailing wage at the time.
spoiler: a large cheese would cost $30 at menu prices adjusted for inflation.
you just get lower quality these days; it’s the same with so many other items. a pair of gap jeans was the same price in the late 90s as it is now even with a doubled minimum wage in NY.
but dipshits will gaslight you online being like, ‘actually, you’re just being nostalgic and nothing was ever better than it is now.’
My partner still has functional socks and underwear from the 90’s. Last pair of the sturdiest pants in the store ripped irreparably after three washes. To say things are ‘just’ a bit lower quality is quite the understatement.
We’re pivoting to buying fabric, and making our own fucking clothes. cheaper now, time included
not at Little Ceasar’s :3
I know it isn’t the best, but a certain D pizza chain is kind of king for a pizza quick fix without breaking the bank.
Place near me was charging $40 for a pizza and I just can’t.
Yeah i got a 7 topping large from them for 14 cad (10 usd) yesterday
There are pricier pizzas that are better, but its hard to compete with how decent they are for the money
I feel dirty glazing them, but mostly im frustrated that other places are so expensive now
For that quick fix or really any kind of fix, that pizza chain is all I’m trying to afford right now. Do miss the local spots but can’t stomach the tag. She prefers a simple cheese pizza and there’s no reason those should cost so much.
That’s a deal. Most pizzas in my area at 30-40 per large.
It astounds me how drastic prices vary in the US.
Like sure, we (Australia) also have higher and lower cost areas, but the difference is not this staggering.
$40 USD for a large pizza? You’ve got to be kidding me.
And I’m betting there will be places in the US where the same is like $12-15 for the same quality/quality, right?
That’s nuts.
Theres a massive difference between the boonies, a medium city, a large city, and an affluent city, and a huge difference between those places in california, texas, utah, colorado, ohio, georgia, etc.
Every state is basically a country of its own, and about the size of one
$40 and tip.
I cant get lunch in Dallas under $25, unless I hit chick-fil-a.
Incredible, I thought NYC was expensive back in 2016.
Oof
I feel like I saw this tweet but the number was like $12 burger. Which for me is now the standard.
Someone show “Pulp Fiction” to a Gen Z and ask them what they think about the $5.00 milkshake
$5 in 1994 = $11.27 in today’s money. I’m not from the US, is that egregious or standard today?
The official inflation counter is nonsense.
Do a quick search of actual 1994 prices if you don’t believe me.
And $12.00 is what you’d spend at a high end restaurant or hotel for a 2026 milk shake.
Even Shake Shack, which is a good shake but still corporate fast food is like $8.
More than I would pay for one
I don’t know if it’s worth $11.27 but it’s pretty fucking good.
Adjust it for M2 supply. That is true inflation.
Depends on the place I guess. The old I’ve cream place in town? That’s a little pricey, but not unheard of. One of those smoothie places? I don’t think they have anything that cheap.
How much is like a dairy Queen shake these days? I’m blessed with an abundance of quality local establishments so I haven’t been in a while.
