Today we’re putting two grocery stores to the test. It’s Aldi versus Dollar Tree. Listen, I don’t know how money works, but I know that food costs too much of it. So, we’re going to see if the expensive stuff is actually worth it in the taste. We’ll be making two versions of burgers and fries, one cooked with ingredients from Aldi, one cooked with ingredients from Dollar Tree. Then a judge will come in and blind taste test them to see if they can figure out which is which. The Kitcheneers are off shopping at Aldi and Dollar Tree. Let’s see what they got. Look at this large bounty of ingredients. We have all of our stuff to make the patty melt and garlic fries over here from Dollar Tree. Nope. Yes. Dollar Tree has this bread? Yo, Dollar Tree’s got Nature’s Own Perfect Crafted thick sliced white? That is great bread. Wow. We’ve got all of our Dollar Tree ingredients here. We have all of our Aldi ingredients here. I had never stepped foot into an Aldi until like two years ago when they finally moved into LA. Aldi is a German grocery store. We recently found out there’s a portmanteau of Albrecht un Discount! But it’s a German grocery store that, they were kind of known for being like a smaller scale Costco. They cut out a lot of the frills, I remember walking in there for the first time, and there’s just like giant cereal bags laying on the ground, and I’m like, am I? Were they supposed to be there? Do I just grab them and their cashiers sit down, which cashiers should be allowed to sit down. That should be very normal. Cashiers should be sitting everywhere, and then they also don’t have bags, and you have to pay like a nickel for a shopping cart. I don’t know if I’m being honest, Aldi freaks me out. Looking at the prices here, we spent $42 total at Aldi, and we spent $27 total at Dollar Tree. However, when you look at the price of the dish, Aldi is $8 and 57 cents. Dollar Tree is $7 and 35 cents. Not that big of a difference here, but there are some key differences in the ingredients. Beef patties. Beef, beef hearts. Which I would say is just beef. Right? You know, you, this is all me, baby. This is like, I, the whole, anyways. We got beef, beef hearts, water, textured vegetable protein, we got some soy flour, soy protein concentrate, so there is going to be a lot of like fillers in this, but also it could taste good. You have disodium inosinate, and guanylate in here, which is also known as beef extract. So, it’s going to taste nice and beefy. And then you look over here from Aldi, and it’s just pure Black Angus Beef from Albrecht Discount. And there’s only one ingredient, and it’s just Black Angus Beef. I will stress, Black Angus has been used as a marketing term by a lot of people. Black Angus is just the most common breed of cow in America, so that’s super cool. The burger patties at Aldi are 56 percent more expensive than the burger patties at Dollar Tree. At Dollar Tree, they only cost 63 cents per patty. Over at Aldi, $1.42. And then we are going to be making a burger sauce to go along with that. All of the condiments from Dollar Tree tended to be more expensive, especially the mustard was over 200 percent more expensive. In price per ounce, cause they have name brand mustard over at Dollar Tree for some reason. But, to me French’s is like the absolute gold standard of yellow mustard. That’s what I grew up seeing at like my rich friend’s house when I was a kid. But, stuff like this is a lot more expensive, whereas you get just the big ol’ honking bottle. This is even a thinner plastic at Aldi. So, you’re gonna be saving money on stuff like that when you can buy bigger quantities in bulk. We got cheese. Somehow, Velveeta must have the hookup with Dollar Tree. I tend to love Velveeta. I also do tend to love Kraft when it comes to these single American cheese slices. Then we’re gonna be making some garlic fries. We’re gonna be using the pre-bagged fries here. I grew up on bagged fries. I absolutely love them. You can customize them any way you want. You can even throw them into a hash for breakfast if you want to. But looking at these, I mean, these are basically the same product, but we’re gonna be gussying them up. We’re gonna be making garlic fries, which is something in California I grew up eating all the time. You go to a fair, they got garlic fries, they’re delicious. We’re gonna be using jarlic, which I know a lot of chefs say don’t use jarlic. I say do use jarlic. It is heat treated, so it’s not gonna be as fresh. You can, oh, it’s leaking. You look at the Dollar Tree jarlic. And it is a little bit browner, which means it’s probably not going to be as fresh. It was probably treated with more heat and it’s packed in water, then this looks pretty fresh, but we’re going to put that with some herbs on the fries. It’s gonna be close, but man, I keep eyeing that, that Dollar Tree bread over there. That is maybe the gold standard white bread right here. I’m excited to see what shakes out. Let’s get cooking. It’s a great day. It’s a great day because we’re making orange mayonnaise. And that’s all I want to eat. That is my favorite food in the entire world. If I could drink it with a boba straw, I absolutely would. Over here we got all the stuff from Dollar Tree And over here we got all the stuff from Aldi. The funny thing about all these condiments is that Dollar Tree, this is all name brand stuff. So we’re rocking French’s mustard, we’re rocking Hunt’s ketchup. I actually really like Hunt’s, I think they do a good job. And then Kraft mayo. If you look at the differences in mayos, Kraft mayo, it’s always been suspiciously white to me. Right? Is that crazy? And it tastes white. It tastes whiter. And if you’re saying mayo tastes white, I mean that tastes real white. You know what I mean? But like, mayo has eggs in it. It shouldn’t be that white. And somehow this one is. We’ll see how that all shakes out. I want to taste these individually. I want to see what we’re rocking with. This is the, this is the non-name brand mustard. That was very, very cheap. That tastes like mustard, man. I don’t know. Can you taste the differences in mustard? This is French’s mustard. Again, the gold standard. Yeah, French’s mustard is better. Like, they do, they do good work. Okay, okay, okay. Okay. All right. Aldi ketchup over here. Generic brand. Very sweet. Very, very sweet. Hunt’s is also sweet, though. Winner, Hunt’s! Mayonnaise. This is the best day. It tastes so white. How do they get the white flavor in there? That’s a better, I, this is a much better mayonnaise. Okay, we should just start dumping stuff. We got pickles over here. Pickles over at Dollar Tree, it’s called Breckenridge Farms, and that is a great pickle brand name. Second only to Vlasic. If you’re buying pickles, there’s someone named Vlasic making them. Yeah, you’re gonna wanna buy from Vlasic. You’re like, they’re just from a country, they’re from a country that needed to pickle things. You know what I mean, if you’re called Vlasic? That’s where all this comes from, you know? You know, people are always like, why the, you know, okay, so like I grew up on like Ashkenazi Jewish food, which is very just Eastern European, and everyone’s like, why are there so many beets and pickles? It’s like, well, pickles would just last forever and beets are one of the only vegetables that physically grows in snow. All right, give me like 10 minutes to cut these pickles. The pickles do look very different. The Dollar Tree Breckenridge Farms pickles, they’ve been pickled longer because you can see it’s like penetrated through and it’s actually got like a greener inside, but this is a whiter inside. Try it. Pet pickle peeve. My pickle pet peeve. My pet pickle peeve is when they’re not crunchy enough. And I don’t know if that’s a heat issue or how long they’ve been sitting. Could be a cucumber issue. Not crunchy enough. They’re soft. Don’t like a soft pickle. This pickle, this pickle looks hard. You know when you look at a pickle and you just go, that pickle is hard. That was a hard pickle, that’s what I want. Fantastic, yeah, winner, pickles. Have we been keeping score? Aldi, significantly better pickles and mayonnaise. Dollar Tree, significantly better ketchup and mustard. I just love that we’ve given me a format to be just, yeah, utterly crazy. Alright, well we’re just gonna dump all the stuff in the stuff. Ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, put all the three condiments that you enjoy right in there. Gonna dump in that onion powder for that little bit of savoriness. Black pepper, we like black pepper. Paprika, because paprika. A little bit of sugar, just to round it out. Just to round it out. And vinegar. I always miss the clear ones. I miss the clear ones, because I think there’s nothing there. What if I had an incredibly convenient, aesthetically pleasing vessel to put my salt in? Oh, now you can with the Mythical Kitchen Salt Well. It says season your damn food on it, as a little reminder, you should always season your damn food. But honestly, like, if you wanna up your cooking game, just have this laying on the counter. That’s what I do at home, that’s what every chef does at home. You need salt, you just go grab a big ol’ handful and go pow! And throw it in your stuff. I love salt wells, you need to get yourself a salt well. If you don’t got one, go to mythical.com to get it. Alright, other stuff. White mayonnaise, God, did they put white food dye in it? That’s the thing, people don’t know this, there’s white food dye, it just makes things whiter. And it’s weird, I don’t understand how it works. Don’t understand how it works. Mustard. In French, how do you say mustard in German? “Moo-stard”! Something like that. I think so. Vinegar, it’s clear, so I don’t see it. All right. Let the record show I’m keeping these bowls on the same side. I like the way that one looks better. The Dollar Tree one, I, dude, you know what it is? It’s the French’s mustard. I swear to God, the French’s mustard has more turmeric in it. Turmeric’s typically what gives mustard its color. If you see like a very fancy mustard that’s kind of a pale color, it’s probably not putting turmeric in it. Yum! Oh, this one’s way better. Oh, that’s crazy, the Dollar Tree one, I think it is off the strength of that mustard, because that’s doing a lot of that flavor driving, even though you’ve got this incredibly white mayonnaise, if anything. It gave it a better color palette to it. Dollar Tree taking an early lead, but we’re gonna see how it actually plays in the burger itself. Julia’s been trying to make me learn the choreography to the Beyoncé country song for TikTok, and I refuse. That is my hard limit in the relationship. We’re frying fries here. We got frozen fries from Aldi. These look quite pallid. These, ooh, these look nice. They ain’t Ore-Ida, but they do look good. Crinkle cut, I’m ethically opposed to, but I’m doing this for you. Not for me. So, we’re doing that. The garlic here looks so fresh and good from Aldi. The jarlic over there, quite dark. But before we get into it, let’s just drop these in the fryer. What’s the safest way? I don’t know. Just do it. There you go. Drop those fries in fryer. Make sure none of them are overlapping. You can obviously bake these fries, but boy, does nothing make you feel alive like just dropping some already fried french fries right in the fryer. Any good fry is gonna be double fried. Ask the Belgians that. Am I right? So like this is honestly just a really good way to cook fries is fry them, freeze them, fry them again. That’s exactly what we’re doing. I think these are gonna take a little bit longer, but we’re gonna pull them out, when they’re golden brown, get them in there, toss them with all of our seasonings. Check back in a sec. Okay, the Aldi fries are done. These are looking nice. They’re getting crispy. You’re gonna take them. You don’t want to like, you want to drain them a little bit, but you do want some of the oil to sort of bloom that garlic. So we’re gonna take these out. Why does my offhand always just come here? I don’t know, I don’t know what to do. Cause in basketball, you’re guarding someone. You have the offhand guarding the crossover, but when you’re cooking, nobody tells you what the, anyways, we’re gonna take that. We’re gonna dust it with a little bit of garlic powder. Again, get the garlic powder on the hot oil. Yes, sir. We’re gonna take some of the green flecks. Here’s the thing, green flecks make your stuff taste good. We all know that. And then we’re gonna take this jarlic and just dump that jarlic right in there. We’re gonna take a little bit of salt. Where’s the salt? I need to season my damn food. I need to season my damn food! Dust some extra salt on there. Even though the fries are already salted. These look freaking incredible. This, I mean these look like the garlic fries that you would get at like the county fair. I don’t know if that’s an experience that other people have, county fair garlic fries. California, Gilroy, California, garlic capital of the world. They have a garlic festival every year, you can get garlic ice cream. You guys never been to the Gilroy Garlic Fest? You guys have never been to the Gilroy Garlic Fest? I have. You guys, yeah, I know Vee has, come on, I know Vee has. Of course Vee’s been to Gilroy Garlic, all right. Jarlic, ooh, that’s the brownest jarlic. That is not Gilroy approved garlic. I’m gonna take like, a little bit more oil. Spoop that around. Damn, I’m so excited for this meal. We got the fries, hot oil. Aldi looking way better. Those fries are already like pretty golden going into the fryer. They’re even more golden coming out. These, you see like, some of them stayed pallid, and then some of them like got a little bit of extra browning on it. Inconsistency in the factory. I don’t even care who wins, man. I just want to jam on some garlic fries. Let’s make some burgers. Hello heart and textured vegetable protein burger, my old friend. We meet again. I like it. I think it’s good. Listen, beef heart is good. You go to a Peruvian spot, you get anticuchos. Right? Where are my anticuchos fans? Rise up. Anticucho hive. There we go. I don’t know. I think it’s pretty good. These guys are big old hunkers. I will say this obviously made in a factory. You can tell because there’s weird little pockmarks in it and it’s perfectly cut into a circle. This also made in a factory, but that has premade settings to try and make it look hand formed. Look at this. The dimples in this, are that of a father, crafting it by hand at a barbecue, not washing his hands in between taking slugs of, sun warmed Coors Light. Whatever. So, we’re gonna start by toasting some bread. We’re making a patty melt. One of my favorite sandwiches. Yeah, it’s definitely a sandwich, it’s not a burger. But we’re gonna take some margarine. Pop that bread down, just get it nice and toasty. The toastiness of the bread, not only is that gonna add a little bit of flavor, but it’s actually going to prevent all of the burger juices and all of that. Let’s switch to margarine knives! They’re not butter knives, they’re margarine knives now. I just wanna eat that marge. Yeah, sizzle sizzle! I inhaled, I breathed in and I inhaled margarine fumes and it tasted like movie theater popcorn. That’s, oh, it’s still happening. Oh my. I’m drinking, I’m absorbing it like they absorb spice on Arrakis. I just watched Dune and I loved it! Oh man, but they really left meat on the bone by not showing Austin Butler and Léa Seydoux. Now we’re just gonna get a little bit of oil down, and we’re gonna start searing off these burgs. And that’s just raw meat, so I’ll touch the, we don’t know if this is raw. We’ve determined that we don’t know if that’s raw or cooked, but we know that there’s already a bunch of salt and textured soy protein in there. So, we’re just gonna get these searing down and then I’m gonna just place these bad boys down. These are not seasoned. We’re gonna hit them with a little bit of salt. We’re cooking them from frozen, just smash them on a burner. If you look at the bread though, we got the gold standard white bread over there. Not only is it a lot thicker, it seems a lot denser, but in a good way, in a way that would really hold up to a burger. This over here, they’re definitely using a lot of dough conditioners in it, which gives it this almost artificial lightness to it. It gives it a lot of rise because there’s supplemental proteins in there. And so this I think might collapse under the weight of these gigantic ham fisted hamburger patties. We’ll find out. This is it. If you look at the Dollar Tree burger patties again, this has all that textured vegetable protein and the heart in there. It actually crisps up really well because of those fillers. You get some of that fat leaching out, and then that sort of crisps up like the, the grain. That’s inside there. So that’s looking fun. Cooking these burger patties from frozen, it’s not the way that I would do it per se, but it looks like they’re getting done. You got some solid browning on them. So, I don’t know. These have plumped up a little bit. I tried to smash them out a little bit, and that, that, that just ain’t work at all. Don’t know the science behind why it’s so springy, but it is. So we’re just gonna add some cheese to it. We’re taking the nice Velveeta right here. Place that on. I don’t like to add the cheese too early because American cheese does not need any help melting. It’ll, it’ll melt just from the latent heat. You’re gonna pop that on there. Then we have the Kraft Singles. I love Kraft Singles for what they are. I don’t typically love them for burgers because they kind of do melt too fast and they do get a little wet. I would use something like a, like a Deli Deluxe on it. But for purposes of this, it’s gonna work. We’re gonna sandwich these on. Boom, pull that, drain a little bit of that grease like a good fry cook. And then, this had cheese on it so I can put it there. Yay. We’re actually gonna let it rest there because I don’t want all that grease to absorb into the bread. Then we’re gonna build that burger. There’s just, there’s so much grease. And then we’re gonna plate it up. Look at that. Can I drink that? Anybody gonna drink this grease? It’s good for you. It helps your BMs. Oh, that’s tasty. Check back in a sec. Hamburgers! They’re done. Okay, we got our burger sauce here. I’m gonna, it’s still popping, still popping, but it is not locking and dropping, which I do, I do find interesting. So we’re gonna put a little bit of that burger sauce, that’s gonna create a sort of membrane right there, like a prophylactic. And then we’re gonna put the burger patties around top, spread that sauce edge to edge. Here’s the thing with the patty melt, when the burgers do not perfectly conform to the size. of the bun, I’m gonna offset them slightly. And I’m just gonna place that right there. Beautiful. And take the, Mythical Kitchen apron, great for wiping your hands on when you can’t find a towel. Go to mythical.com to find it. All right. More burger sauce on there. And crown it as the prince that was promised. Hell yeah. I immediately know which burger that I would prefer and it is this one right here. I do not think you need good quality beef to make a good hamburger, that’s my hot take. I think you need whatever the hell this is and I’m absolutely in. But it doesn’t matter what I think, it matters what our judge thinks. Hey, speaking of which. Let’s get to judging. Jordan Myrick from Sporked.com. Welcome back to Mythical Kitchen. Thanks for having me. Your professionalism and astuteness always astound me. Thank you. Of course. Before you, we have two plates of garlic fries with a patty melt. No onions, cause, couldn’t find onions. One is from Dollar Tree and one is from Aldi. Okay. It’ll be your job to suss out which is which and also tell us which one you just like better. Wow, okay, I’m very excited. I’m not an Aldi expert, so let’s see if I can get this one. Would you like me to do the ceremonial cutting in half the patty melts. Please! Okay, somebody play the music. Yeah, it’s actually the same as the, here comes the bride. This bread is very wet. Thank you. I tried my best. Two patties, cheese, the cheese is pretty melted, which is nice. Tells you it’s fake, and I love that. Very saucy. Why two patties instead of just one? Yes. It’s delicious. It doesn’t taste cheap. The one thing that’s giving me an initial hint, this looks like actual garlic on these fries. This does not. Yeah, the garlic on this is worse. Than the garlic on this. That’s my initial hint. Okay, I’m gonna do burger to burger and then, fry to fry. Okay. Okay, I’m feeling good at this point. Let’s do both pickles. You’re double fisting pickles, how could you not feel good? This pickle looks more pickled than this pickle. Very salty. Less salty, and also, not as good. Interesting. You and I maybe have different pickle ethics here. Tell me about yours. Well, I just, all I want from a pickle, I just want it to be hard. Right, I just want a hard pickle. I want a nice crunch, I want a nice refreshing bite. To me, some pickles are either over pickled or overly heat treated. I agree. They get a little soft, so I enjoy the hardness of that pickle. You think this is too soft? It’s too soft of a pickle for me. Interesting. I think that a lot of pickles can be too soft, I don’t think that’s too soft. Fair. Okay, I think this one is Dollar Tree because it’s cheaper. And this one is Aldi, I think. It’s throwing me off that this patty is rare. And this one is not. But the meat quality on this does taste better. It’s a medium. Okay. The meat quality on this does taste better. And the garlic seems like real garlic. And this pickle is worse. I don’t feel as confident about this one as I do about a lot of the other ones. Both taste delicious. I would happily eat either again. Which one do you prefer? I think maybe this one because the meat quality is a little nicer and the cheese is meltier, but I would also eat this. Jordan, on the left side, we have the burger from Dollar Tree, and on the right, Aldi, the first time you’re wrong. That does not make you. We literally were just like, I’ve never been wrong at one of these. You psyched, you psyched yourself out. No, but that’s actually really incredible. You have eaten these same burger patties before in the nachos, these are the ones that are mixed with heart and textured vegetable protein, disodium inosinate, disodium guanylate. It’s delicious. I know I agree heart is good. Anticuchos. You love anticuchos? Of course. The best. And then over here we have it from Aldi, now this is pure beef. That’s why we chose to cook it a little bit more rare and we did cook it from frozen, so if I’m being honest, you know, frozen, what are you going to do? Sure. And then over here, it’s interesting because the fries, you can see they’re a little bit more pallid over here. They’re a little more golden here. They came out of the bag that way and we fried them at the same temp. The garlic over here, I thought was going to be better, but I agree with you, it tastes worse. This one looked browner. Yeah. Wow. I’m really thrown for a loop on this one. I’m hungry, so I’m gonna keep eating both. I am so jealous of watching you eat. And over here, from Aldi, it costs $8.57 Over here, $7.35 So, the price difference is a little bit negligible. Kind of negligible, yeah. Yeah, also better bread over here. This is much better bread. This bread is, look at it. Yeah, this, this held up. And this one’s like more, okay. More stiff. Isn’t it good? This is so good. But also the Aldi total receipt is $42. Dollar Tree is $27. You’re buying a lot more in bulk at Aldi. Okay, that is a big difference. That’s a big difference. Alright, I guess it depends on if you have family or not. Comment below. Do you have family? Wage war against bland cooking and start seasoning your damn food with the Mythical Kitchen Salt Well, available now at mythical.com