Today we’re putting two grocery stores to the test. It’s Walmart versus Dollar Tree. Today we’ll be attempting to answer the question. No, no attempt. Do or do not, there is no attempts. That’s what the little goblin guy said in Star Wars. Today we’ll be answering the question, does it actually matter where you buy your groceries? That’s also what the Green Goblin guy in Star Wars said. Today we’ll be attempting to answer the question, does it actually matter where you buy your groceries? We’ll be making two versions of country fried steak with gravy, cheesy, loaded mashed potatoes and green beans. It’s like Sunday night of the Cracker Barrel up in here today. One made with Walmart ingredients, the other with Dollar Tree ingredients. We’re gonna have a judge do a blind taste test to see which one was better, and if the more expensive one is actually worth your money. The Mythical Kitcheners are out shopping right now. Let’s see what they got. Now I know what you’re saying, Josh, you’re wearing a From Mars to Sirius shirt, despite the fact that your favorite Gojira album is L’Enfant Sauvage. And I get it, this is a cooler t-shirt. I also know what you’re saying. We got a bunch of food in front of us here, man. We’re making chicken fried steak primarily because we have used this here rib eye steak from the Dollar Tree before. We just cooked a normal steak dinner. But the problem is, it ain’t exactly the highest quality meat. And when you’re getting budget groceries, like yeah, sometimes you’re gonna sacrifice quality, but! You can make up for that quality with just beating the crap out of it because that’s what we’re gonna do today. We’re just gonna beat the hell out of that with a hammer and we’re gonna see if it still holds up as well as these These are pretty good looking ribeyes from walmart steaks, man. They are expensive though. So over at the Walmart, these are $14.97 a pound This is only about eight dollars a pound over the Dollar Tree for the mashed potaters. We are going with instant mashed potatoes. We’re using the old idahoan brand on both except at the Dollar Tree, they only came in the little snack pack, which I think you should switch that to gogurt style packaging. I don’t think you should eat it out of the easy mac bowl. I think you should be able to just go… As far as price goes the total bill over at Walmart was sixty dollars and sixteen cents and it was just over thirty two dollars ov. r here at the Dollar Tree, but a lot of that has to do with the fact that we got twenty seven dollars worth of steaks so you can save that for later, man. You can make steak salad steak soup steak and potatoes steak sandwich steak tacos… You can do about anything you want steak. The biggest difference over Dollar Tree, the dairy’s always more expensive because they’re using refrigeration. Dollar Tree, you know, 7- Eleven makes their money on cigarettes and lotto tickets. Dollar Tree makes their money on convenience foods. Dairy’s more expensive to store for them. I think where they’re really gonna win though, I love Velveeta. I have a tremendous amount of brand trust in Velveeta. I think they make a really good product. And these shreds, they are thicker. than these Great Value fiesta blend treads, which generally means they’re going to melt better. So I think the mashed potatoes could take us over the edge here, if they are enough to make up for the fact that this ribeye steak has been soaked in salt water. And if I’m being honest, like where did the rest of this cow go? If they’re doing this to the ribeyes, I really have no idea, but it’s about to be a dog fight today. We’re using, oh, we’re using canned green beans, both Del Monte. Why are they different? They’re both just cut green beans. These are Blue Lake beans. That’s exciting. I don’t know. It looks like they just ran out of a label budget for this Del Monte can. We’ll see if that comes through in the taste. But, uh, I’m excited, man. I love chicken fried steak. Let’s get to it. Looking at all this food before you, I know what you’re thinking. When Gojira came out to the 2024 Paris Olympic opening ceremonies and played Açaíra, was that part of a new album that they’re working on? Unclear, but they dropped it as a single. And then also what you’re probably thinking is wow, holy smokes, making instant mashed potatoes. Are you sure you can handle this with all of your training as a chef? Only time will tell, we’ll figure it out. One could surmise that Idahoan buttery homestyle mashed potatoes and Idahoan brand buttery homestyle mashed potatoes would be the same. They’re not. This is meant to be a ready to eat product, but both of these are just meant to add water. However, this has buttermilk powder in it. This does not. This one got a little dried corn syrup. So they are slightly different, but we’re also gonna add some other things. Water! And now I’m gonna add… Math, woohoo, math part. Three quarters of a cup of water to that part because this is four ounces of potatoes, that is three ounces of potatoes. We’re gonna rehydrate and we’re gonna add some milk, some cream cheese, some cheese cheese, and then some little spicy spices. Go dumpy dumpy. Rippy rippy dumpy dumpy. A new single from Gojira. Listen to some Gojira man support support heavy music artists. You know what I mean? Now we’re gonna add milk to it. Now that the potatoes are seized out. I’m probably gonna need to take a whisk to it. I should have said if i’m being honest I got distracted talking about Gojira. I should have added milk to that right away, but we did not. Dude I really did mess up the instant mashed potatoes. I said I wouldn’t I said I could nail it as a chef and here we are the good news is instant mashed potatoes. What a forgiving product. Instant grits incredibly judgmental not forgiving at all. Look at those beautiful velvety mashed taters. Now, we’re gonna add some margarine in here Here’s the thing Dollar Tree ain’t got no butter. However margarine clowned on right now. It’s heavily disrespected. But there was a time when… A time when I was growing up when people was like margarine is way healthier because it’s made from plants, and now we’re like, ooh, maybe the saturated fats from plants are actually worse than animal fats and you got a bunch of like weird influencers on TikTok being like all you gotta eat is butter and papayas and some testicles and you’re like if you are peddling toxic masculinity so hard that you convince people to literally eat testicles One, good for you, that’s crazy that you were able to do that. But two, man, we’ve lost the plot. But anyways, margarine, I think it still has its place. I think it is delish. You guys hear any little beeps? The fudge are the beeps? Oh dude, it’s because I put something on the new stove. Here’s the thing. New stove hates me. Cream cheese! Cream cheese is fun to mash potatoes. I want to make these cheesy mashed potatoes. You’re working with instant mashed potatoes. It’s fun to jazz them up, you know what I mean? And what’s jazzier than cream cheese? Enough, Chetel? Get out of town. We’re gonna add some cheese in. We’re gonna top with some more cheese. But I almost want to make this like pomme aligot. Oh, I misspoke. Technically not cheese. These are Velveeta shreds, a pasteurized processed cheese product. Um, which, I think it, uh, you know, the chemicals, again, if you look at it in one way, it’s kind of molecular astronomy like. They’re adding the sodium alginate. There’s gelatin in this. I think it could actually just make it taste good and give it like a really velvety mouth feel. If you really want to creep someone out, like, going like, you know, like a third date. Which is like, you know, like the first, like, makeout date. Say, I appreciate your mouthfeel. Do it. And then say, no, no, no. I heard it on Mythical Kitchen. I think that’s really gonna win them over. You see that nice stringiness. I might want to thin this out with water just because when you’re adding cheese, you never know how much of the, uh, what do they call it, cellulose is caked on the outside. We’re gonna add a little bit of black pepper. We’re gonna add a little bit of garlic powder. We’re gonna add a little bit of dried parsley. That’s what makes them loaded. Like herby, and if you thought, hey, are these mashed potatoes and herby partially loaded? No! Fully loaded. Give it a taste, see where we’re at. Dude, that tastes like the TGI Fridays. You guys ever go TGI Fridays and get the loaded mashed potatoes? Damn. Okay, color wise. Again, this is the ready to eat. I don’t think it’s from the cheese, because I was noticing this earlier, too. This is a lot yellower. Yellower mashed potatoes, to me, look better. We’re gonna top it with some cheese, some chives, load them up. Uh, then we’re gonna start chicken frying some steaks. I know what you’re saying, I chicken fried this steak? Well, no. You see, chicken fried actually functions, that’s what it’s called, a compound adjective. That’s why you’ll see a dash in between chicken and fried. So it’s implying that the steak has been fried in the manner that typically is used to fry chicken. So, I’m starting to think I don’t know what you’re thinking. Uh, over there. But we’re gonna chicken fry some steak. So, uh, we got the Walmart steak that, like, it just looks a lot better. We got just a big old line of gristle running through, uh, the Dollar Tree steak. This almost has the texture of liver or kidney, which I find very interesting. And I know what you’re thinking. Josh, you sound like freaking Hannibal Lecter out here. Uh, yeah, I know. I like the feel of it. It feels very soft. Um, but we’re gonna pound this out until it’s super, super thin. This is a… God, I feel powerful, man. I just wanna throw this hammer, just wind it around, just freaking get into it. So I’m just going to take that and I’m going to gently bash this meat out until it’s super, super thin. And then it’s just going to hold all of that batter, that coating. Okay, this meat is split in multiple parts. We got to keep… Woo, Dollar Tree! All right, that’s pretty bashed out. This is going to take a lot more work to bash out. So I think I know what you’re saying. You should probably do this to the tune of your favorite Gojira single, Explosia. You feeling the “progginess”? It’s a lot more complicated than you think. It’s, it’s like metal for nerds. Pretty good. Thank you. Thank you. Our steaks are pounded out, and even when they’re pounded out, boy, do you still tell that quality difference. But over here at Walmart, this costs 15 a pound. Over here, this costs about 8 a pound at the old Dollar Tree. Again, dude, frying stuff, like you can really, really save a lot of things by crusting it in flour and spices and frying it a little bit extra. We’re going to add some spices. We got a little paprika. We got some pepper. Heck yeah. Um, I’m gonna show you a different technique here. I’m going to stir the salt and spices into my flour mixture. This is going to be. I like the lean. There’s gonna be a double dredge right here. Uh, they don’t have any eggs. Typically, I’d go eggs. I’d probably go egg white, typically, as we found out. It’s a really great way to get your stuff extra crispy. They ain’t got no eggs at the Dollar Tree. So, we’re gonna go an old school method. We’re gonna go an old school method that is actually going to satisfy two different things, and I’ll show you. How so we got lemon juice boom going into some water We got baking soda going into our baking soda. There’s a bunch of like weird shi double hockey sticks. In food because it is such a heavy basic solution. And so when you add baking soda to meats if you ever have beef and broccoli and you’re like, how is this beef? So tender it feels unnatural. It’s baking soda. It’s due to a process called velveting. So what we’re going to do is effectively do like a quick velvet on the steak but also use that water, uh, to let the dredge stick to it. Yeah, it didn’t spoil. It smells fresh. It smells like milk. I don’t know why, but that’s okay. And we have a lot of salt in the, uh, in the dredge. And so like, this is such a thin piece of meat, but salt’s just going to stick to it. So what we’re going to do, you take, you take the flour, you pat it in your meat. Really important on chicken fried steak to like really bash the flour into the meat. And, um, I think you can look to nature for some inspiration. Meow. Meow. You’re making biscuits, but don’t do the other thing that cats do, which is show your butthole to everybody. Don’t do that. Okay, so we’re going to submerge this really quickly into the water baking soda solution. And then that baking soda is actually going to penetrate that meat, and then that’s going to go right back into the flour. And again, we’re just going to knead them biscuits right into there. And then we’re going to let this sit in the flour for about five minutes before we actually fry it. Because that’s going to allow all that moisture to really soak in there. No! No! For cats only. Other steak. Boy does it, I’ll tell you what, this steak looks a lot better. Okay. Yeah, buddy. Ooh, a lot of nice fat in there. A lot of nice fat covering it. Listen, this is a hearty meal. You know? You know, health is all dependent on your goals. You know, so if you want to like, bulk up, you got a shot put competition coming up? You know what I mean? You’re competing in Ryan Krause’s new shoppa classic that I think deserves to be in the, uh, Arnold classic. Anyone? No, nevermind. Just me. That’s okay. Chicken fries steak. Great option. Great option. Cool. We’re gonna let this sit for about five minutes. Then we are going to toss this in some shallow oil, get it fry and make a cream gravy plate up. We can turn it up. Life’s too short to cook on… E. eryone’s favorite catchphrase that they know me for it. Life’s too short to cook on medium. How many of those aprons we sell? A couple? Hey, welcome back to the cooking show. We’re about to chicken fry some steaks, and I know what you’re saying, a chicken-fried? Sometimes, if you don’t score your chicken fried steak, which is to say, cut little slits in it, it can curl up, and I do anticipate that, but this is such an amorphous steak that I wouldn’t even know where to score it, per se. So we’re just gonna add that in there. You wanna see a sizzle. Shit. All right, great. Here’s the thing with shallow frying, the oil temperature, uh, it changes so quickly. I like, you don’t have to stress about it too much, but… Crank that Soulja Boy. There’s the sizzle that we wanted. Just don’t touch the oil with your fingers, but I can do it because I am a professional. There we go. All right, what you want to do is cook it. We’re going to let these fry for like three or four minutes on each side. You want to do a shallow fry, because especially on chicken fried steak, I love that little browning that you get. And that’s the reaction between the flour hitting the bottom of the pan with the oil, nice crispy crust, brown. My favorite chicken fries steak I’ve ever had: Norman, Oklahoma! Home of the OU Sooners as well as, and I know what you’re thinking, Josh, isn’t that where the Softball National Hall of Fame is? You’re right. And I know what you’re also thinking, is that devoted to both professional women’s softball, like Jenny Finch, Cat Osterman? Yes, but also just men’s beer league softball, which is strange because you’ll have like cat osterman who was like, you know, an olympic gold medalist next to like, you know, uh, stinky McGuffin who like pitched a perfect game in his beer league in 1973. It’s a wild place, dude. Shout out to Oklahoma. All right. You know what a chicken has. Fried this steak, and I think that that having fears. I think that makes me human. Sue me. I jumped into my best friend’s arms in the theater when the trailer for Smile came on. It was very scary She’s like nah, and I jumped into his arms. So, you know what? Yes, the chicken did fry this steak and I like that about myself. Steaks done. That looks dank. See if this one’s done. Give that a flip. Nice browning. You see what I mean with like the browned edges over here I just think that’s gonna make it extra delicious dude. You top this with gravy. God Oh, no, I used to go to IHOP every year for my birthday, and I would get a chicken fried steak with, uh, gravy and a biscuit and eggs and New York cheese steak pancakes and about six Coronas. Um, they were always expired, the Coronas, and I never had the heart to tell the IHOP in Goleta, California. But, uh, that was, that’s the meal of kings, if you really want to indulge. Yeah, yeah, it looks way better. We’ll see how it tastes though. Again, this is all gonna get covered in gravy. It’s gonna be eaten with potatoes, some nice canned green beans. Uh, we’ll see how it goes. We’ll see how it goes. Chicken fried steak and gravy goes together like prog metal and heavy pedal drums. I’m going to stop trying to force it, but what I am going to do is I’m going to start trying to make gravy. We’re making a typical black pepper cream gravy here. It’s super, super simple. It is the combination of a roux, which is fat and flour. And you don’t want to take this like in gombo. You got like a dark roux or like chestnut roux, they call it. But when you’re using a cream sauce, you want to work on somewhat low heat. Despite the fact that. Alright, so the cool thing about this margarine, somehow water is melting from it, and it’s separating into just yellow fat and water, but it’s all sizzling together, um, so that’s pretty cool. The butter’s melting like butter. Love that for us. I’m gonna dump the flour in right here. You can do that as your fats are melting. I like to cook I like to angle myself this way. It’s nice. I don’t know. I kinda like to chill here. I think this is a lot more casual. You guys feel this is more casual? Alright, so now what I’m gonna do I’m gonna stream in a little bit of milk Because you want to be able to like whisk this into a paste Make sure everything’s dissolved because that gives it like, oh shit on a dick. Now we’re gonna do this one over here. I’m gonna burn my bum. There we go. Whisk that into a paste. There’s no mistakes in the kitchen, only gifts. It’s something that bad cooks say. There we go. Many things are made by mistake. Um Reese’s peanut butter cups It was a high speed collision between an officer and a fugitive on the run, and the officer was eating peanut butter out of the jar. Fugitive, chocolate, smashed into each other. Nope, that was a Family Guy sketch. You guys just aren’t as cultured as I am. Don’t watch as much Family Guy. Alright. Whisk it, and then it never works out when you’re whisking with your left hand. There’s that robot, though! Is it a stirring robot? Anyone see it? What’s it called? The Stirry 5000? Stirry Eye Surprise? Send it. Adding all of it. I’m not intimidated by robots. The only robots that I’m intimidated by are the really sexy ones. You know the type. They exist. Uh, Michael Fassbender from Prometheus. I’d be intimidated, spoiler alert, robot. But I’d be really intimidated by Fassie. If he was a robot that was also stirring my pot of gravy. But as it stands now, the sexiness of the gravy stirring robots, low. They’re really, really low, but it will get there. I believe in the general progression of technology. Great, all the flour and butter mixed up. We still wait for that to, to heat. Hefty pinch of salt. Same hefty pinch of salt in this. Fat loves salt. Add some black pepper. I’m gonna eyeball it a little bit. We got a teaspoon in here, but I’m gonna make sure it’s not too black peppery. Normally I’d use a coarse ground black pepper, but here’s the thing. Neither of these places ain’t got no coarse ground black pepper. I don’t like to turn it gray. Alright, perfect! We’re gonna let this come to a boil. We’re gonna let it thicken. Check back in a second. We got our cheesy mashed potatoes, we got the chicken fried steak, and we got our gravy. Hey, speaking of gravy, segue into Sporked Plug. Uh, Sporked, they’re ranking all your favorite Thanksgiving foods over at sporked.com Including the best packaged gravy, stuffing, all the Thanksgiving classics. We’re very proud of the work they do. Please go check out Sporked now. Canned vegetables have been around for a very long time, and they are Oh god, that got hotter than I thought it would. Uh oh. Oh boy, well just send it. Send it. Get in there with the wet. Uh, canned vegetables. People talk about canned vegetables losing their nutrition. They do, technically. Unless, here’s a trick. You gotta drink the water. That is deadass true. I remember looking up. Shit, dude. Margarine. We’re doing a little bit of mar… Waaah! Do a little bit of margarine, a little bit of onion powder, a little bit of garlic powder in there. These are already salted because that helps preserve them in the can. Jiminy Christmas! Fantastic. Um, what was I saying? Yeah, you got to take the liquid like a shot. Because, uh, I looked up the study, I believe it was a Japanese nutritional study about boiled vegetables versus steamed vegetables. Boiled vegetables did, I think, lose like 30 percent of micronutrient value. However, all that just gets transferred into the water. So I’m telling you, start ripping green bean water shots. That’s gonna be the new thing, man. You know, Gwyneth Paltrow had, like, oil pulling and, like, she told you to steam some holes that shouldn’t be steamed necessarily. I’m telling you, rip green bean juice. Plate her up! We’re just here at the Cracker Barrel in Chattanooga. Plate her up! We got one chicken-fried steak, mashed tater, green beans, table 72. We got an unruly customer that’s about to start throwing a chair like it’s a damn Waffle House. I could work at a Cracker Barrel. Ow. Gravy time. One last call for Grave Hall. Gonna scoop up this gravy. Use this, it’s like, yeah, there we go. Perfect. Nice, beautiful gravy blanket. Prance over here. Yeah, this gravy is nice. I do love a cream gravy that gets like super thick. And fudgy. I use the adjective fudgy a lot. And um, if you’ve never had fudge, it was invented at Sarah Lawrence College. Do you guys know that? Fudge. Sarah Lawrence. Great things come out of liberal arts academies. That’s all I’m saying. It’s more complicated than that, but um, that is at least one of the stories. Uh, a little bit of chives and tons of potatoes. Wow. Now it’s a meal. Wow, now it’s a meal. Look at that. Look at that. There we… Dude, This looks this is a Cracker Barrel ass meal, and I get excited by ass meals. So this is gonna be really good. Jordan before you have one dish from Cracker Barrel another dish from Cracker Barrel, and we’re just gonna sit down and enjoy some Cracker Barrel together. That sounds so nice. So much better than what we actually did. We cooked one of these plates of chicken-fried steak with cream gravy and loaded mashed potatoes, a little bit of cheese on there, and green beans, both from a can. One’s from Dollar Tree. One is from Walmart. It’ll be your job to eat, to eat it. Okay, my guess initially, without even tasting it, is that this is from Walmart and this is from Dollar Tree? One of them is indeed from Dollar Tree, and I will say that both steaks were the same exact size. They were both, uh, 5.5 ounces. Didn’t you say one of them’s from Walmart, though? Yes, one of them is from Dollar Tree and one of them is from Walmart. Yeah, I think this one’s from Walmart and this one’s from Dollar Tree. I felt confused since we started filming, because when you said these were both from Cracker Barrel, I was like, oh, I’m I’m here for something other than what I thought I was doing. So I got confused. Did it excite you? Um, it just made me be like, man, I gotta read the schedule better. So I just felt inadequate in that moment. I just don’t read any of the emails. It’s my little hack. Okay. Classy chicken-fried steak. Uh, we did try and velvet the meat a little bit. Okay. I don’t like chicken-fried steak that much if I’m being 100 percent honest. Is it because of who fried it? The chicken that fried the steak? Is that a recurring joke in this episode? Yeah. Well, joke is giving it a lot more credit than it actually deserves. These potatoes are so creamy. And the green beans from a can. We went straight canned green beans on these. Green beans taste exactly the same. They were the same brand, but they were labeled very differently. Interesting. These mashed potatoes look more dry. The mashed potatoes were the same brand, but they had wildly different ingredients, despite the fact that they had the same exact labels. Isn’t that scary? Aren’t you scared? I don’t know, I am a chicken who fried a steak. So I am a little scared of things sometimes. Not a joke! I’m emotionally vulnerable. I just think chicken fried steak is so inferior to mashed potatoes. fried chicken. I feel that. I just wish this was chicken. It’s a fun indulgence. Sure. Once in a while like you want to get a little, a little freaky with it. Sure, sure, sure. So you go to IHOP. IHOP? I used to get it on my birthday. Wow. I’m not, I feel like I didn’t really grow up around like an IHOP or a Denny’s. That wasn’t a thing for me. Not very cultured. I’m blowing out like it’s hot. You went to the domestic waffle house growing up. Mm hmm. See, I went to the international house of pancakes. It’s like the kid that went to the international school. And they’re like, that’s why I speak Francais. Okay. I hate you, Adam. I think this is from Walmart. This is from Dollar Tree. But I think this gravy is made with margarine. And I think I like it more. Which overall dish do you like more? This one. Jordan, I will tell you, you are correct. That is from Walmart. It cost… line! Jordan, you are correct. That is the chicken fried steak from Walmart. That cost $13.73 to make. This is the chicken-fried steak from the Dollar Tree. This cost $9.60 to make. It’s about like a 30 percent jump right there. Do you think that’s 30 percent better than that? I do, yeah. Especially in the potatoes. I had a hard time even talking once I had these because they kind of coated my mouth in like a Mr. Ed Horse type way. You know what I mean? It really, yeah, it, ew. You know that scene in the Matrix when Neo has his mouth kind of glued together? Sure, it’s like that. Not horrible. I’ve definitely, you know, had things that are worse. It didn’t taste bad. It just was clearly not as good as this. You ever go to the Softball Hall of Fame in Norman, Oklahoma? No. You wanna go? Sure. I don’t know if I’ve ever even been to Oklahoma. I feel like it’s one of the few states I’ve never been to. Home of chicken-fried steak. Let’s go. I think it would be really fun if we went on a road trip together. We’re doing a road trip! Comment down below which city in Oklahoma do you want us to go to. You want us to go to Tulsa? You want us to go to Oklahoma City? Norman, El Reno for crying out loud! Let us know. Jordan, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me, it’s always nice. Anytime, and I’ll see y’all next time. Thanks for subscribing to Mythical Kitchen! Get the best store bought Thanksgiving foods with help from Sporked. Head to sporked.com for new and updated rankings of things like grocery store pumpkin pie, gravy, and even microwave turkey dinners.