Prices keep climbing, so I’m trying to pick my battles in the supermarket. Which items do you refuse to cheap out on, and why? Taste, health, longevity, peace of mind… I’d love to hear what’s worth the few extra dollars for you.
For me, it’s honey from local beekeepers—supermarket brands locally are known to sell fake or adulterated sugar syrup as honey.
Mozzarella (talking about the balls of fresh mozzarella you get sealed in with their brine).
Can’t do store brand anymore after having tried Galbani.
It’s pretty easy to make those with some high fat milk, rennet, and cheese salt
How long does it keep once you make it?
I’ve never managed to keep it for more than day. Presumably it’s pretty shelf stable in its brine for a while
I mean, yea. But it is also easy to buy them, they’re everywhere and fairly cheap. The Galbani one is also just 1€ or so more expensive.
To be clear, making your own is fantastic, it’s just not anything I’d want to do 2x/week
4-ply toilet paper.
If the IBD folks don’t unite under this answer they are probably living with bidets.
No, just perpetually constipated.
Butter, life is too damn short to cook with and eat shitty butter.
Also anything that goes between me and the ground, my bed, my shoes, and my tires.
I agree with every part of this.
A while back I was standing in the butter section, waiting for a couple to move so I could grab my pricey-but-worth-it butter, and overheard them talking about how butter is a scam and it all tastes the same no matter what. I had to hold back a chuckle. They of course grabbed the cheapest option and went about their lives in complete ignorance of the glory of high quality butter.
I still wonder if I should have said something to encourage them to try a better butter, but they talked about it with such blind confidence that I didn’t feel right about it at the time.
Ever double blinded yourself with Kerrygold (or w/e) vs. regular stuff? Always try to do this and surprise myself with some products
What grocery items are always worth the extra
butter … my bed, my shoes, and my tires
Hello, fellow Costco shopper.
Costco has sub par service at their tire center, but good prices. Recommend using their prices to price match at a regular store with better service to get the best of both worlds.
Maybe your warehouse has issues but Costco tire center is top tier
it’s just a bit slow. i’ve waited 20 minutes just to buy a battery before
Not grocery but my opinion is anything that interacts with the world around you. Glasses, shoes, gloves, headphones should all be top quality for comfort and their respective task
Kerrygold
I’m going to sound like a hater, but the food in season and local is what you should be eating, and that will always be the cheapest. If you’re talking processed food brands and shit in boxes in the middle of the store, I’d argue none of it is worth the extra money, its all bad for you, stop. That said, the frozen arby’s curley fries are bomb, and no one does cheesey things like cheetos or smartfood.
I’ve seen a few people saying that it’s cheaper to buy stuff that’s in season over the years but I’ve never seen prices drop on in season stuff before. Idk if it’s just a thing where I am but the supermarkets seem to just pocket the difference and leave the prices the same year round.
You’ll still probably get better flavors when things are in season locally. Also, you’ll need to check, but often the frozen version of produce is cheaper when the fresh version is in season, and frozen is easy to stock up on.
I’ve never seen prices drop on in season stuff
That means you forgot the ‘local’ part. Cheapest supermarket get their stuff from the cheapest sources worldwide.
You really have to look if you want to buy local, but then it’s worth it.
bummer…i see berry and asparagus prices down now…
Also melons, super on sale.
Have to disagree on the last point. I greatly prefer Aldi Cheese Curls and Market Basket Cheese Crunches. Except the jalapeño cheddar flavor. Those slap.
Trader Joes are so much better than the Aldi ones IMO
But the parent company owns both of those brands though?
Aldi is two different companies, North and South. One owns Aldi America, the other bought Trader Jones.
This sounds like the beginning of a math story problem.
Have you had the smartfood popcorn with Cheeto flavoring?
Just had some of the worst “store brand” honey mustard. How do you mess that up? Tasted like they watered it down by adding extra vinegar. Watery. Gross tasting. Lesson Learned.
Came here to say Dijon mustard. A jar of mustard lasts me 6 months, so a couple extra bucks for the good stuff doesn’t amount to much.
Canadian maple syrup.
While I agree, the price difference between “maple syrup” (maple flavoured corn syrup) and maple syrup is way more than $5. A bottle of genuine maple syrup is $20+.
Costco sells real Canadian maple syrup at a fair price (cost plus a few percent).
You can get real maple syrup in the states for around $15 (and that’s honestly NYC pricing). It’s not corn syrup, but it’s also not Canadian maple syrup.
But one of my favorite things about Canada absolutely is the abundance of maple syrup here. Maple syrup candies are my favs.
It’s not called maple syrup if it’s not real maple syrup. They’ll call it maple flavored syrup, pancake syrup, but never maple syrup.
It’s all run by a cartel!
There’s nothing wrong with new england maple syrup, but yes, real maple syrup not “pancake syrup” with maple flavoring.
Huy Fong Sriracha. Just don’t even bother buying any other bottle of “sriracha” sauce. It’s not worth it. Your disappointment will be immeasurable and your day will be ruined.
I’ve had a Sriracha from Yellow Bird that was absolutely amazing, they added in a little bit of agave, probably my top pick now.
That used to be the case because the peppers were specifically grown just for Huy Fong. However, Huy Fong screwed over their exclusive pepper grower to increase profits. The peppers they get now don’t taste the same.
This is it. The old Huy Fong is completely gone now, unless you have a connection to someone who’s been hoarding.
There’s a different sauce brand now that is produced by Huy Fong’s old pepper farm using the same peppers. But I’ve been told that’s not exactly the same either.
While I also like Huy Fong Sriracha and was delighted when I first ran into it, I believe I remember reading about them changing the recipe at some point.
EDIT: Oh, sounds like they didn’t change the recipe intentionally, but at least the first batch they had after they had a fight with their pepper supplier tasted somewhat differently. I assume that they’re aiming to keep the flavor the same.
Instant noodles. I live in South Korea and there are gazillion options, from little more than a quarter(USD for your convenience) to almost $1.5 a pack.
Huge difference. I eat 2 packs per meal almost always and yes, it’s often 2x more expensive but I’d just not eat cheapest ones.
what are your favorites? would love to see if i can find them locally.
Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. As someone who’s lactose intolerant, their non-dairy stuff is amazing and so worth the extra money.
I will add that I’ve yet to find a decent tasting store brand soda or sparkling water. I have no idea why it’s so difficult for them to get the flavoring right.
Kroger diet cola. It’s better than diet coke. Always fucking out of stock though around me.
Kerrygold
Eggs. I bought the expensive ones once just for laughs and they taste great without the weird funk. Now I have my own chickens, and the eggs are better than anything in the store. It’s probably more expensive though!
Carrots and celery I always buy organic because they seem to take on the flavor of whatever they were watered with. It makes a difference there for me.
And tortillas, I get the local boutique ones instead of the national mass market ones. Big difference there.
+1 to eggs! I dream of having chickens but have heard it’s a game of pros and cons
We just got chickens, im not sure they’re cheaper then buying but certainly more available.
I do have a constant fight with hawks though trying to eat them
Hawks, snakes stealing eggs, and then a fox finally did mine in :(
We live somewhere with a ton of hawks and coyotes. Our coop was our quarantine project so we kind of overdid it. It’s 8-by-16-feet, surrounded on the sides and bottom with heavy gauge hardware cloth and a metal roof. Nothing can get into it.
The run, on the other hand, is about 30 feet along one side, chicken wire and covered with bird netting. We lost two of our girls when someone made a mistake and locked them outside in the run. A fox dug under and took them. I added a skirt along the ground to stop anything digging in but it’s not as good as the coop itself
I used to have chickens. Between the cost of the coop, the feed, medicine, etc. I’d say each egg cost us about $5. 🙂
A little exaggeration, but not much. The eggs were really good though, and they make for cute stupid pets.
The difference in eggs is a placebo at best.
I can tuck homemade tortillas though, definitely worth it.
That probably depends on how you’re cooking them. Runny yolk from good eggs is an order of magnitude better than the cheap eggs.
No. The only difference is freshness and how it retains its shape. It’s entirely a placebo if you can taste a difference.
Kenji did an experiment https://www.seriouseats.com/what-are-the-best-eggs and I’ve done similar with my friends that all loathed actually taking care of chickens.
Pasta. It takes pasta dishes from “eh, it’s food” to “this is really good”.
Whole Foods, oddly enough, is the place I find the cheapest good pasta. Their store brand is less than most places and really good.
Ever since I tried bronze pasta I cannot look at regular pasta the same way. I cannot buy that yellow stuff anymore.
Coffee. It’s something that I refuse to compromise on. It may be especially important to me because I like to drink it black. If it doesn’t taste great without adding anything to it, it’s not with drinking at all in my opinion.
I’m two ways about this.
In recent years I’ve become quite a coffee lover. I’ve experimented with a lot of brewing methods, and got into small batch beans from.independent roasters, with interesting qualities like being aged in whisky barrels (that one tastes and smells sooo good)
At the same time though I grew up in a family where the only coffee my parents ever drank was instant - a teaspoon of granules with some hot water and milk and maybe sugar. When I go over there to visit that’s what I’ll get, and I’m not going to turn my nose up at it. In some ways it’s got that taste of nostalgia lol.
I didn’t drink coffee for half my life because I was usually always around burnt, bottom tier coffee.
After moving largely away from whiskies and runs due to medicine I was on, I wanted a complex beverage to fill that void and gave some decent coffee a shot. It was of course worlds beyond most of what I’ve had anywhere else, and now I try different single origins every month.
But the real wild thing, is now I apply that tasting ability I’ve developed to diner coffee, and now the particular funk of a Waffle House cup gives me the memories of old road trips. The coffee from the local diner reminds me I’m home. Now that I can pick out one cup of low grade from another, it lets me appreciate the times I do go low on coffee.
Your comment made me think of the semi-famous Tom Petty coffee story from Rolling Stone. In searching for the article, I saw something claiming his daughters refuted the claims of his brand of choice, though still others claimed Mr Petty had personally verified it with them, so who’s to say for sure at this point. But anyone who likes coffee, Tom Petty, or some food storytelling should like this tale of a man and his quest for the perfect cup. For anyone that hasn’t read the story, I really enjoy it and think it’s a fun read and a reminder of simple joys in life.
The coffee story is quite a long way in, but it was an interesting read, thanks.
I guess the message is, things aren’t always good because they are objectively good. Sometimes things are good because of when we had them, and who we enjoyed them with. And that’s definitely true.
It does meander a bit, as it’s more a reflection of the author’s history with Petty on the one year anniversary of his passing that just happens to eventually settle on a tale about coffee perfection.
I like it overall as a tale about simple pleasures and what will people remember most about us after we’re gone rather than a guide on how to achieve the perfect cup. I have reservations about if I’d agree that was the best cup ever if I had been there with them, but that was what reminded me of the story while I was reading about you having a mug of instant coffee with your family. 😊
As a fellow up the arse coffee lover - I moved away from drinking fancy coffee every day. Not just because 250 grams are, at best, at 16€ and I drink about 35 grams a day on an average day, but also because it takes away the “specialty” if you drink it daily, regularly, ordinarily. I now have a go to coffee (pre ground even) that I enjoy drinking as my “normal” coffee and treat myself to a cup of specialty every now and then, and a bag now lasts me a month. I enjoy it much more and I save a lot of money - although my go to coffee is also not the cheapest crap.
I also started out with instant coffee btw - took some with me with milk and sugar to school in a small water bottle when I was a young teenager (and girlmore girls was on so I had to get into coffee). Just reading your comment gave me a flashback to being 14 and my mom giving me the “good instant coffee”. Memories and vibes.
Coffee seems to be one of those things supermarkets regularly price cycle.
If i buy 4x 1kg bags when it’s 30% off, i rarely have to buy any at full price.
This doesn’t work for artisan’s coffee you buy direct from the roaster obviously.
They said $1-5 not $10-20, half decent coffee is “fuck you” expensive.
Farmer’s market tomatoes. I went through my whole life thinking I hated tomatoes. Turns out, I hate grainy tomatoes that taste like nothing, and real tomatoes grown nearby and picked ripe are wonderful.
Yeah, this, but all the things, especially veggies.
The same plant can basically feel like an entirely different species.
Most of the time it just grew up properly (not maximising growth rate to lower the costs).
I grew up eating garden tomatoes. Went to college, for the first time bought a grocery store tomato. Cut into it, tasted it… turned to my friend, what the fuck is this shit?
Absolutely. I was the same way then my mom make a margherita pizza mostly from scratch with tomatoes she grew herself and it was life changing
Tomatoes are also quite easy to grow in the summer and are very prolific.
Also in season are strawberries. The ones I’ve got are small and don’t look good, but the taste is superb.
Both can be grown potted, and the strawberries are quite hardy.
strawberries are quite hardy.
They’re insane. We didn’t weatherize our beds for winter but the strawbees didn’t care. They took over nearly the entirety of both beds. They also try to escape the beds occasionally.
Yeah, even just growing them are better. I thought I hated Cherry Tomatoes, but then I had some off my own plant and they taste so good.
Home grown cherry tomatoes were my favorite summer snack as a kid. Pop pop pop they go! Amazing!
Oh, home grown fruits will always taste better because you can let them ripen on the plant, allowing for full flavor development. There are cultivar variations too.
Seasonings are another crop that you can pot and even have on a windowsill in a tiny apartment. Parsley, basil, and oregano grow well in the same pot. Scallions / chives and Rosemary also pot well together.
