Can Dollar Tree measure up to Target? Today, we’re answering the question, does it actually matter where you buy your groceries? We’re going to be making one lasagna with ingredients from the Dollar Tree. We are going to be making another lasagna with ingredients from the Target. God, what happened to that dog? I hope he’s okay. We are going to have a judge come in and taste test these blind to see which lasagna is better. Buckle up! We’re about to go down a rabbit hole of, what was that one cashier? Sean from Target? Alex from Target? We got Alex from Target coming in to guest judge today. Stick around. We booked him, right? To any Italians that are watching our show, one, thank you for sticking around after we made Cajun chicken fettuccine Alfredo. Two, you must suspend what you believe lasagna to be because we’re making like a good ol’ down home classic home EC and middle school ass lasagna right now. We got our oven ready lasagna sheets. That means that the lasagna sheets have already been boiled and then dried, so all you’ve got to do is stack everything with the sauce and the cheese and all that stuff. And throw it in the oven. This was significantly more expensive at Target, obviously, than Dollar Tree. We have used Columbia brand pasta at Dollar Tree, and I think it’s perfectly fine. A great thing about lasagna, it’s a casserole, right? Or casserole in Italian. Which means that you’re not looking for the perfect al dente pasta, right? You can hide a lot of flaws in that. A tough thing to hide here, our good old friend Risparmio grated topping. We’ve used this product before. It’s tough. There is real Parmesan in it, but it’s all the things that are not Parmesan in here that give it a little extra funk. It’s basically a bunch of dairy whey powder. Speaking of dairy whey powder. You might notice that there ain’t no ricotta cheese, or “ri-co-tta” as Giada De Laurentiis would say. There’s none of that here, because we’re gonna be making our own ricotta. It’s actually a really fun, easy technique to do at home, and we also couldn’t find it at the Dollar Tree, and Americans love to put ricotta cheese into lasagna. So, we’re gonna be making that with some milk and lemon juice. Overall! The groceries at Target cost us $92 and like 86 cents or something. And then it costs about $43 over here at the Dollar Tree. However, in the words of Joe Pesci from My Cousin Vinny, if you look at the actual per dish price, over at Target, it’s only about $31 versus just under $28 over at the Dollar Tree. So, you’re working with a lot bigger quantities here at the Target than you are at the Dollar Tree. Certain key differences that we’re going to find though, sausage at Dollar Tree was more expensive because they got Farmer John. I grew up eating Farmer John sausage. This is a great Southern California product. Big Farmer John guy. That was actually about 300 percent more expensive than original pork sausage. You might be used to this modern pork sausage. No, no, no. Not at Target. They’re going back to the original recipe. We’ll see. God, I love the way sausage bounces. But overall, I think when you shove all of this stuff into lasagna, it’s going to bake up and be pretty even. It’s going to take somebody with a very discerning palate. to tell the difference, but I’m excited to get down to cooking. My favorite thing about the Italian language is the different dialects. In the Giada De Laurentiis dialect, what we’re making right now is called “ri-co-tta”. In the James Gandolfini dialect, it is called “rigat”. And I think that’s beautiful. We’re making ricotta cheese from scratch, and we have oven ready noodles that are pre-boiled to make everything as easy as possible, and we are making the cheese as difficult as possible. But hey, listen, every Mythical Kitchen video, it’s like a smorgasbord. It’s like a Hometown Buffet. You go, you choose what you want to learn from it, and what you don’t. We’re gonna teach you how to make ricotta today, because, you know, that’s what we’re doing, and also, again, they did not have it at the Dollar Tree. We’re gonna add a hefty pinch of salt, to the milks. I am going to probe them like what the aliens are going to do to me when they land. We got 180 degrees here. We’re looking for 195, 195, big number. Who’s got 195 out here? 185 over there! We’re going to add acids. The most basic cheese in the world, which is ricotta, also known as farmer’s cheese or cottage cheese, because farmers kind of live in cottages sometimes, you know what I mean? It’s just made simply with an acid and dairy. You can add something like rennet, which is an enzyme that is found in a calf’s stomach, to make more complex cheeses like mozzarella. In the Giada de Laurentiisian Italian, mozzarella. James Gandolfini would say, “mozzadel”. But you can do that if you add rennet, otherwise we’re just making the most simple version. 183, 183, what do we got here, what do I got here? 189! We’re cranking on it! Who has a question? Meggie. You were talking about Italians being angry with food. We have a podcast episode about that! We have a podcast about why Italians get so mad about food featuring a real life Italian. He’s a really nice man. QCP, you’re a good bloke. As they say in Italy. 193! We’re shutting it down, we’re shutting it down, we’re shutting it down. We’re going to go ahead and we are going to add our lemon juice and our vinegar. We’re going to let that set. We’re going to take that off the heat. Well, that’s pretty much off the heat. This, what do we got? So, right now the acids are curdling the milk into the curds and whey. And then you can strain off the curds and then you’re going to save that whey to drink for protein! Oh, yeah! Yo, if I come in here and start drinking cheese discard, you guys gonna be weirded out? I’m gonna do it. Nicole’s not. Nicole’s a trooper. Lemon and vinegar. The lemon juice from Target was a lot more expensive than the lemon juice from the Dollar Tree. I don’t think that’s gonna affect anything in terms of ricotta if you were, say, making, like, a lemon curd. There are differences in quality of lemon juice, but, like, bog your curdle in milk already. You guys ever have a, cement mixer shot? Yes, I have. Just, like, lime juice, vodka, and milk? Baileys? Yeah, it’s Baileys. It’s lime juice, vodka. It’s just lime juice and Baileys. I think it’s just lime juice and Baileys. Anyways, you’re getting drunk off cheese. We’re gonna let this set and strain it. There you have it. Our soup is done. Now, we just got to plate it up. And look at that. You can see the curds forming in there. We’re gonna ladle it through some cheesecloth. If you ever wondered why cheesecloth is called cheesecloth, it’s because they actually make it from cheese. The only thing that will strain cheese is other cheese itself. So, that’s where the name comes from. Couple ladles. I want to see this drain real quick. So, I want to see how the curds are set up, and then I want to give it a little taste. See if we can suss out any of the quality there. Oh, that’s fun. You can hear it. Sound, can you hear it? Here, I’m gonna lean my mic to it. It sounds like someone peeing who has prostatitis. Weak stream. Yep. Yeah, okay, you got it. Everyone get your prostates checked. That’s how you know we’re the YouTube channel of old people. Scoop up a little bit of that fresh hot ricotta. It’s honestly better than store bought. It’s really nice. Store bought is fine. I don’t know, man, both just taste like milk and lemon juice. No, you actually don’t taste lemon juice at all, because the lemon juice is what separates everything. This is just pure milk protein. Well, we’re gonna take our sack of wet curds, and we’re just gonna let it sit there. Now, we’re gonna start making some lasagna. I only have one spoon here. Funny joke. Guys, where’s the other spoon? Guys, come on. Bring out the other spoon! No, it’s fine. No, guys, I know. Somebody has the other spoon. Where is it? Where is the spoon? Where is the other spoon? Oh, hey, Nicole. You have the other spoon. And you’re also wearing the incredible new Mythical T-shirt and Mythical scrunchies. This T-shirt is available to buy on the website where we sell it. And the scrunchie, I don’t know what it does per se. It holds your hair up. You can also wear it on your wrist. As you see, Nicole has hair, and she is currently putting it into the scrunchie. And these things exist, and we’d like you to buy them if that’s something that you think would improve your life. As you can see, the T-shirt comes in shirt variety. We have many colorful characters on it. Is that me? I’m sort of like a demon. Yeah, I’m like a voracious demon eating one of the letters covered in slime. Well, that’s the T-shirt, and I think it’s, really fun. See you. Did you lose your voice? We’re making a meat sauce, is what we’re doing right here. We’re gonna crank these on. We’re going real rough and dirty. We’re starting with pre-seasoned sausage right here. The great thing about doing that is that you don’t have to add as many seasonings to your meat. You’re gonna infuse a lot of flavor throughout that. So first off, we’re gonna get some fat here. We got some oil, a little bit of margarine. This is like doing the old oil butter combination, which is always a fun thing. I’m gonna lube up the handle. That way it’s gonna make the stirring so much faster. Lube up all your kitchen equipment, it’ll make you a faster cook. No friction. I’ve lubed up both handles now. And then we’re going to wait for this to heat up and we’re going to brown off some sausage. Speaking of brown and sausage, that’s the brownest sausage I’ve ever seen. Most sausage, some would say, is supposed to look red. On account of meat, should be red. This might be old. However, sausage is literally a meat preservation technique. So, we’re probably not going to get sick. This is actually, hey, valuable tip. I have a valuable tip for people. Incredible. Smell your meat. All the time. I do this all the time at home, and it freaks Julia out because I smell it, and she goes, what’s wrong? What’s wrong with it? And I go, nothing! And the reason I know nothing is wrong with it is because I smelled it. If it repulses you, that means you shouldn’t be eating it, and it will be very clear when meat repulses you. This does not repulse me. It does smell a little like blue cheese. Just like grass fed, dry aged From the dollar store? I don’t know. No, I know it’s not that, but this, come here. Does this not smell like a dry aged steak? Does it not have that, like, blue cheese, rindy tang to it? No? She’s lost her voice. She’s choosing not to speak. She’s giving the silent treatment. Dumping in the meat. Dumping in the sausage. Okay. And now, I’m gonna use the old lubed up ambidextrous technique. They call it the pepper grinder! So you’re gonna go ahead and just smash up your sausage, get it as broken up as possible. Come back in a couple minutes, we’ll have it all smashed. I’ve been doing this for about eight minutes! Just order takeout. Just do it. Go get some El Pollo Loco. They got good family meal deals. No, we’re committed to the lasagna. I want to try the sauce. I want to try the sausage. God, I love sausage, man. The fact that humans figured out that we can slaughter animals, mix them with tasty things, and stuff that animal back inside its own intestine and create that. Wow. I don’t care about cathedrals, skyscrapers, or cars. I care about shoving animals back inside themselves. This has more meat. The Farmer John sausage. This is more expensive. It is higher quality in terms of this one definitely has more fillers in it. You can tell that because it’s snappier. It’s a little bit looser. This one definitely has more meaty chew. The flavors though, very similar. Bunch of jarlic. Jarlic a lot more expensive from the Target. That one. You want to toast the jarlic in a little bit of those sausage fat spices down there. Hell yes. Ditto with your other spices. We got onion, garlic, we got black pepper, we got crushed red pepper, we got oregano, and Italian seasoning. If you shave your mustache you might be able to pass for an Italian. Anyone name that movie? And then we pause for trivia and we have a lower third pop up. Can we do that? Can we do that? That is actually smelling super fragrant. I just want to nosh on more sausage. That was for nothing culinarily, I just wanted to eat it. Good. Dump in tomato purée, and then we also want some chunks of tomatoes. I like getting some nice rustic chunks. We’re gonna add that in there. Little bit of sugar. They say, when I say they, I mean the Italians. No, not every Italian says this, but some do. I don’t know if I believe in it, but I also think it’s bad luck to buck thousands of years of cooking tradition, even though tomatoes didn’t get to Italy until, didn’t really get popular until the mid 1700s. They thought they were poisoned for a while, but anyways. They say you add a little pinch of sugar, and it neutralizes the acidity of tomatoes. Kinda doesn’t really work that way, it just adds sugar to your sauce, which is perfectly fine if you like that. But again, we do it because one old Italian lady told me to do it, and it’s bad luck if you don’t. An Italian curse is among the worst kind of curses. You know what the worst one is? Latvian. You ever been cursed by an old Latvian lady? It doesn’t leave. I want to taste it. The canned tomatoes were more expensive at Target. There’s a lot of fraud in the canned tomato industry. This is a real thing. Certain brands of canned tomatoes I like really trust. Josh, you did not add sugar to that one. Oh shoot dude. Oh my god. No, thank you, Nicole. Wait, oh, I put a little drop of that in there. No, we gotta put a little drop of this in there. It’s gonna be fine, it’s gonna be fine. Everyone stop freaking out. This one looks way darker. I’m just gonna get different spoons. I don’t know what’s going on anymore, man. I’m going Korean soup spoon. And this guy. Give the sauce a little taste. Korean soup spoons, one of the top six soup spoons in the world. I love the length of Korean soup spoons, but I don’t love their soup holding capacity. I’m not asking for any of you to fix it. But someone needs to. Damn. That is really good. That’s a really high quality, tomato purée in there. Just. You know what I think it is? I think there might be added sugar in the tomato purée that we use at the Dollar Tree. Because it is, the sweetness really is, it really is countering the acid. They taste really similar. Getting some more spice off the sausage in there. A lot more meaty bite in there. I think this is a much more balanced sauce. I think Dollar, I know I’m supposed to be an impartial judge here. Full on rooting for Dollar Tree at this point. We need to win, baby. This is a Latvian soup spoon. Well, we’ve got all of our ingredients. H-O-T T-O G-O Lasagna is sure to be Femininomenon. Let’s start building a lasagna. Should I do this ambidextrously? No, too difficult. I run from challenges. That’s not what I wanted to do first, but I did it. What we’re gonna do, we’re gonna prepare the ricotta. So we have the ricotta that we made here. We’re gonna add a little bit of cream cheese. I just, listen, add cream cheese to your pastas. Lean into the BuzzFeed tasty-ification of all American cuisine. We’re gonna add a hefty pinch of Italian seasoning. We’re gonna add another hefty pinch, but leave half of it back in there. We’re gonna add a tiny pinch of black pepper. We’re gonna do the same size pinch, my left should grab enough. Take another full pinch, drop half of that in there. Tiny pinch, black pepper. He’s gone insane! Okay, we’re gonna go ahead and take the rest of the cream cheese here, and then we’re gonna schlop this around. Oh, there’s another thing we’re gonna do. The Parmesan cheese. This is a big factor. This could lead to the destruction of the Dollar Tree, because as you can see, this is not cheese. This is a powder. This is meant to go on the popcorn at the movies. Boom, right in there. The way that, you know, you can inhale cheese fumes. And then we’re gonna take this, which is, Parmesan cheese is the number one ingredient. That’s good. And then there’s a lot more. Corn starch, just to protect caking. Powdered cellulose, A.K.A. wood pulp. I don’t know. I don’t know why I did that. I didn’t have any better way to do it. I didn’t want to lick my hands. It’s incredibly chewy. It is hard, like you’re a termite chewing through wood. That’s what cellulose is. But, adds a nice texture. I’m gonna schlop this around. The ricotta over here did turn out a little bit creamier. But, I don’t think there’s any variables from that that we can actually take away from. This is looking lovely though. This is gonna be a good, good lasagna. What’s another Chappell Roan song? What’s the Pink Pony Club? I don’t have any way to work that in, you guys. Femininomenon Feminine, I already said, oh, did I say that already? Yeah. It was a casual reference, thank you. – Good Luck, Babe. – Good Luck, Babe. Thank you, you too, babe. This is tasting really freaking good though. That homemade ricotta, it’s fun. Like, I don’t know. I’m somebody that enjoys cooking. If you enjoy cooking too, maybe you do. It’s fun to take up little projects. Like making your own ricotta. I knew somebody that made ricotta in their college bathtub. Maybe they were lying and they were actually making drugs. I don’t know. But, I ate them. Just fast forward through all this. I don’t want to talk anymore. I’m tired. Can we fast forward through it all? I won’t talk. I’m just going to build lasagna. You can see, it’s just all this has to, you understand. I’m going to do, what do they call it? Foley for the ASMR. I’m so sorry. Yeah, it’s just, listen, there’s a certain amount of time this takes. And I still don’t know what to do with my left hand. And then give it a cooking, thing. The sauce absorbs into the noodles. That’s it. You guys ever see a ziggurat? Man, that ziggurat’s big. All right. So what we did is we’ve layered alternately sauce, cheese, noodle, sauce, cheese, noodle, sauce, cheese, noodle, until we are now here. We’re going to go ahead and we’re going to bake this off. We’re going to top it with cheese later because we want these noodles to cook and we want all this sauce wet, the tomato wet, to absorb into the noodle dry. The noodle dry! Tomato wet, lasagna. You know what I’m saying? Made sense in my head. I’m gonna do it again. Don’t cut. Don’t you dare cut the cameras. Can we do the music? That one. You know? Benny Hill? Yeah. You’re so off. I am not a musically inclined man. I need another spoon. A quarter of your lasagnas are now incorrect. No, they’re not. Are you sure? Positive. Why? Why do you think they’re incorrect? I thought you didn’t put any sauce down. I put sauce down. You put sauce, noodle, sauce, cheese? Okay. Okay. Nevermind. Good talk. I’m sorry to accuse you. Nicole never believes me. You’re right, though. You’re right. Nicole the accuser is what we call her. Who was the accuser before, Nicole? I don’t know, it was probably some, like, Russian czar. Ivan the Terrible, Catherine, they had a lot of the’s. Satan! Satan! That’s what I was thinking of! That’s who you remind me of, Nicole! Satan! There we go! Okay, it’s all coming together. You know what’s funny is that I like doing this at home. It’s, there’s not nine people watching me all trying to get on with their days. You know what I mean? When I’m at home, you know, I’m more just, I’m listening to System of a Down or something. Stop it! You know, it’s fun. And, there’s a cat biting at my feet sometimes, but I feed him little scraps of cheese and he’s fine. Cats love cheese. Garfield loves lasagna. Alright. Mondays, am I right? We got the, we got lasagnas in. We should remember which one is which. The one on the right is Target. That’s going in the oven. And bake that, we should cover it. Alright, we’re gonna put that, no. We got foil? What do you mean, we get foil? Josh has to do everything. All right, this is the Josh show. Brought to you by Josh brand wines. I wish! Label it. What? Label it. Alright, the one with the little pinch of herbs on it is Target. No, label it! This is labeled, herbs are Target. And it’s on the right. It’s oven right, not the real right. Dollar Tree. Gonna have just a little cheese stamp on it. Dollar Tree’s cheese. Target is herbs. I labeled them, Nicole. Are you happy? We’re gonna leave that in the oven 40 minutes covered, then we’re gonna take it out, we’re gonna top it with some cheese, hop it back in uncovered for about 15 minutes, then you’re gonna let it rest for about 15 minutes, and you’re gonna need to rest for at least 3, 4 hours after all this. You’re gonna wanna take a nap, you’re gonna wake up, you’re gonna forget that, oh god lasagna’s in the oven! Then you go, oh no, thankfully I took them out. Then you’re gonna have to heat it up for about, I don’t know, 30 minutes, 40 minutes. By about 11:35 P.M., you’ll be ready to eat. Gwynedd of House Stuart! – That’s me! – In the realm of the Sporked. Welcome. We’ve made gigantic slabs of lasagna. What it lacks in aesthetic beauty, it makes up for in size. It’s gargantuan, but could really use some green stuff. Ain’t got no green stuff at the Dollar Tree. Speaking of which, one of these is made with Dollar Tree ingredients. The other, you’ve done this before, they’ve watched this before. One of them is made with Target ingredients. Your job is to eat them. And guess which one’s is which. Okay. You got any thoughts about the appearance? I, honestly, the sheer size is intimidating, but arousing, frankly. Yep, if I had a nickel for every time I heard that. I’d be broke! Sorry, can I get under here? Yeah. Thank you. What are you getting? Oh, ranch. The ranch cannot be used to judge it. Okay. But this is the perfect ranch lasagna. You know what I mean? Just like they make in, Bologna. Thank you so much. Okay, now I’m gonna try the second one. I thought that this one tastes really good. Thanks. I don’t know. Oh, okay. I taste a difference. What are you tasting? There’s something different about the meat in this one that I’m actually not enjoying as much, I don’t think. Can you pinpoint, is it the flavor, is it the texture? I think it’s a combination of the two. Did you use different meats in these? There are different meats. They had different brands of sausages, but both are pre-made Italian sausage. So there is gonna be a big difference. Okay, listen. Now I have to taste one of these meat morsels. Also, we made our own ricotta. You did? They didn’t have ricotta at the Dollar Tree, so we just got some lemon juice and milk and we just did it. I think that’s incredible, but also I’ve made my own ricotta before, so it’s not impressive. Yeah. I turned a car into pizza once. I just want you to say you’re proud of me. – Good job. – Thanks. I think I like this one better. This is a tough one, okay? Lasagna can hide a lot of flaws, because it’s just a bunch of layers of slop baked into a brick. But I’m ready. Gwynedd, on a 3, 2, 1, you’re gonna put your hand over the dish that you think tastes better in 3, 2, 1! I think this one tastes better. And where do you think this one is from? I’m gonna guess this one’s from Target. That one is in fact from the Dollar Tree. Wow. And I’m shocked you didn’t get that from the absolute fine dusting of snow that they call Parmesan cheese. That’s so true. My gosh. Yeah. You’re totally, totally right. The difference is this is made with Farmer John pork sausage which was more expensive and this was made with Target’s own original brand of pork sausage. We all agree that the Farmer John is significantly better. Right? That’s great. That’s so nice. See, if you can get good quality items at Dollar Tree, you might have to make your own ricotta, but like I said, it’s not that hard. I’ll go make some ricotta right now, honestly. How much bathtub ricotta are you making at home? Who said anything about bathtub ricotta? That sounds like a weird euphemism. I know. Gwynedd, no, I knew a girl in college that made ricotta in her bathtub. Really? – Yeah, she was weird. – Wait, I have to know why. Well, she’s Italian. Oh, okay. Gwynedd, thank you so much for eating our giant slabs of lasagna, and thank you so much for watching Gwynedd eat our giant slabs of lasagna, and for watching Mythical Kitchen. We got more episodes coming up next. Tell us what grocery stores you want to see take on Dollar Tree next, and what you want to see us make. Yeah. Catch y’all next time. Never get caught with your hair down in the kitchen again. Pick up your very own Mythical scrunchie and matching T-shirt today at mythical.com