Hey Veeky Forums, what's the best Helper flavor? I've only tried stroganoff but I liked it

>go on their website
>24 flavors

what a time to be alive

I started making this exact recipe about a year ago. It is fucking good.

>a bit of salt

A single serving of Saltburger Helper is literally half your RDA of Sodium. Like says, it's so much fucking salt it just tastes bad. It's like licking a salt block.

>daringgourmet.com/homemade-hamburger-helper-cheeseburger-macaroni/

> Cover and simmer 10-12 minutes or until the macaroni is done. I prefer mine a little al dente and check after 9 minutes.

Hamburger Helper is nearly "free" when you combine a coupon with a BOGO sale. They're not expensive. The box is often only 50 cents more than buying plain pasta. I can see why people buy it. One pot meals are also satisfying, but as many have pointed out, they're not all that great, and literally only one step quicker than doing something from scratch.
Try to create your own stocked pantry and work out how to make your dinner with a few items that are also as convenient as your box of pasta and packet of seasonings.
Example:
Stroganoff: Shop for a tub of sour cream, which lasts literally a couple of months in your fridge, brown your frozen hamburger, sprinkle in a Tbsp of flour into the rendered fat, roux it up, then add with some frozen pearl onions, frozen bell pepper strips, hit it with and overabundance of paprika, canned mushrooms, dollar store parsley flakes, maybe a tsp of low sodium beef base, and then simmer on low with half a tub of sour cream while you boil thick and luscious egg noodles. Drain noodles, enjoy with hamburger topping, and good grate of pepper, maybe even some french fried onions or crunchy noodles. Of course you can sub in anything fresh you want, from a box of fresh mushrooms. If you are totally lazy, yes, you can buy fresh noodles (or frozen) and add water to your hamburger and boil the noodles right in the skillet, but the texture isn't as good.
Cheeseburger macaroni: Literally it's Kraft mac n cheese to which you added hamburger. If you can't make a roux, then add milk and cheese and serve over your pasta, you're missing out on the really more delicious cheese. The powder just won't cut it, no matter what brand you buy. Top with breadcrumbs and bake a few minutes and it's infinitely better AND, very freezeable for your leftovers. Pasta casseroles handle the reheat-in-microwave game like a champ. Talk about fast and easy.

>awful
You're awful, fuck off they're great

youtube.com/watch?v=0wlZd9YSuDg

Its a women writer what did you expect?

>People pretending salt tastes bad

>2:58, after some basic arithmetic
>"Yah I can do that pretty fast"

>Shop for a tub of sour cream, which lasts literally a couple of months in your fridge, brown your frozen hamburger, sprinkle in a Tbsp of flour into the rendered fat, roux it up, then add with some frozen pearl onions, frozen bell pepper strips, hit it with and overabundance of paprika, canned mushrooms, dollar store parsley flakes, maybe a tsp of low sodium beef base, and then simmer on low with half a tub of sour cream while you boil thick and luscious egg noodles. Drain noodles, enjoy with hamburger topping, and good grate of pepper, maybe even some french fried onions or crunchy noodles.

As opposed to:

>dump this box of shit into a pan with some water and turn on the heat.

"One step quicker" my ass.

Sorry man, as a single man, if I have all of that shit in my fridge/freezer, it's too much work and prep to plan out a shitton of meals as opposed to just buying a variety of boxes of this and some ground beef.

>it's too much work

Gotta free up that time for shitposting online, right?

If you're single then you have plenty of fucking time to cook. You just choose to use it on other things.

you probably don't work very late then

I often work late. For those times I heat up food that I've made in advance and kept in the fridge/freezer. Planning, user. It will save you from shitty food.

depends where you want to allocate your time

shitty food tastes good sometimes. Kind of an indulgence thing

>I indulge with every meal
>implying the extra money you're spending on convenience is worth the extra late hours you have to work to break >inb4 I make 16$ an hour breaking boxes for UPS and am going to be a manager I'm just lazy

>shitty food tastes good sometimes

No, it doesn't.

Were you raised on this shit and get a nostalgia boner for it or something?

considering I work 12 hour shifts 7 days a week most weeks I'll eat my salt box

Opinions, am I right guys???

Honestly, yeah, after a long shift at work where my brain is exhausted from big decisions all day, I want to come home and make something quick in most cases. Or go to a nice place and have someone cook for me because I can afford it.

Spending an hour on prep, cooking, and dishes, is more often than not a pain in the ass. It's not like I never do it, but buying all of the ingredients you're talking about means I HAVE to come home and use them. It means I'm going to be eating some variant of them, or letting them spoil.

I don't want to spend my Saturday or Sunday preparing meals for the week, either. I'd rather be out doing something with my life.

I'm not anti-cooking but nothing rustles my jimmies like you people that insist EVERY a home cooked meal is just leaps and bounds better than the simple option. Pic related.

Homegrown tomatoes are better than just about any other tomato. Period.

I just calcumuhlated that the ingredients necessary for the homemade equivalent of six HH boxes would cost $1.25. It wouldn't take any longer to cook, either. So why are you paying a 495% mark up again?

If'n y'alls're curious:

pasta, 79c/lb
knorr mini cubes, 20 pack for $1.22 (you'll only need six)
cornstarch, 1lb box for 99c (you'll only need six tbsp)

Boil pasta.
Crumble cook beef.
Add pasta, cornstarch, minicube, water.
Cook until thick and well mixed.
Serve.
Should take about 15 minutes.

That's assuming you want to buy six fucking boxes of hamburger helper and make it every night. One or two boxes is good for a hearty meal that uses essentially one dish when it's a night that you couldn't be bothered to work harder for it.

I make $47 an hour. I don't need to panic about a couple of bucks for convenience. Even when I made $35k a year I didn't.

Simply, if you buy these ingredients, you HAVE to go home and eat them or throw them away. If you're a family of four that eats at home every night besides the occasional pizza night, fine. But as a single adult who wants to have a social life and not be tied down to coming home to cook dinner every night, the boxed version is fine.

Cause we're blessed by not having extreme autism and it's really not that big a fucking deal.

>Hurr durr they go bad
M8, pasta stocck cubes and cornflour have best before dates lasting like 3 years

>"One step quicker" my ass.
The only extra step is boiling noodles separately.
You are in your kitchen while you have a pot on the stove. Whether you drain noodles or cook it in the pot is the ONLY other step.
You're already shopping for hamburger, hamburger help. It's not any different than having sour cream or cheddar on hand as well. You're already going the shopping step, so we're not going to count stirring items in your pan.

But that's just it: it's still a one pot meal, the ingredients are all shelf stable and therefore stay good practically forever and there's no knives or cutting boards to dirty to make the way I described. I understand convenience, don't get me wrong, but this is just as convenient as HH plus the bonus that you're not tied down to one meal. You can use the cubes, pasta and cornstarch in other things besides fakemeout HH.

Sick burn, bro.

>too much work and prep to plan out a shitton of meals
You stop planning once you've made a recipe once or twice, it's in your internal database. Cook more and you'll understand. Textures are as important as flavor. And, a big ol' soggy mess of mushy food cooked in the same pot without any kind of order isn't craveable once you have some simple things you know how to make in the same amount of time. Get crackin' and ask for help, vs complaining.

Okay, they take up space in my pantry or fridge or whatever half opened. Still, I don't need ingredients for six boxes of Hamburger Helper in my pantry.

Stroganoff with ground turkey

>daringgourmet.com/homemade-hamburger-helper-cheeseburger-macaroni/

In the comments:
>Delicious! I also make my own homemade version of this, and my kids adore it. And I adore controlling the ingredients and limiting it to ones I can pronounce.

I wish I could shoot people who had this fucking mindset. Also if someone can't pronounce silicon dioxide then they might be mentally retarded.

It's a false equivalence. None of the extra steps he listed are part of an HH box. There's no pearl onions etc. It's literally just bouillon powder, cornstarch and pasta. That's it.

>he stores dry pasta, dry stock cubes and dry cornstarch in the fridge
A box of minicubes is a 2x2x2 inch cube. And you probably already have cornstarch and pasta on hand, don't you? And if not, what do you cook? I assume you have those things because you're on Veeky Forums, a board dedicated to food and cooking, after all, and literally everyone in the western world cooks pasta with some regularity.

>Homegrown tomatoes are better than just about any other tomato. Period.
Although I agree they're amazing, they also take some monitoring.
I'm pretty happy paying my markup for Campari and Tasti-Lee brand tomatoes, which are absolutely as delicious as home grown.

>Also if someone can't pronounce silicon dioxide then they might be mentally retarded.

I agree. But those "hard to pronounce" ingredients are a great indication that the food is shit. I'm not talking about some silly health scare--I'm talking about taste and quality. Real food doesn't need silly chemical additives.

I think what /ck tried to make as its point to you is two things, that it's not any quicker or more convenient than homemade, nor is it less expensive.
You should have a palate, dude.
If you wanted really convenient and had a palate, you'd be heating up a tray of michaelangelo's lasagna or pouring some skillet bag like Evol or Birds Eye or PFChangs and calling it done for the price. You're not going to win a "it's just fine" argument over HH vs homemade, over convenience, esp not with cost.

To keep it shelf stable it does. Also, everything is chemicals, so quit acting like it's a scary buzzword.

>There's no pearl onions etc.
Maybe you never checked the label. It's filled with far more items than bouillon and thickener. If squeezing some frozen veggies into a pot is too hard or mindful for you, I guess you should eat your powdered onion already added for you. It's tastier texture, of course *rolls eyes*

broccoli cheddar tuna helper is the best flavor it powered my childhood. It may be discontinued but perhaps you could be ordering it online;

I like xanthan gum and I am not ashamed.

>it's more than just pasta + bouillon powder + thickener
Except it's exactly that.

Enriched Pasta (Wheat Flour, Niacin, Ferrous Sulfate, Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Corn Starch, Salt, Wheat Flour, Onion*, Monosodium Glutamate, Color (Caramel Color, Yellow 5 Lake, Yellow 5), Yeast Extract, Potassium Chloride, Hydrolyzed Corn Protein, Natural Flavor, Vegetable Oil (Canola, Soybean and/or Sunflower Oil), Spice, Monoglycerides, Sugar, Beef Stock, Beef Fat, Sulfiting Agents, Silicon Dioxide (Anticaking Agent). *Dried.

That's the same stuff as a box of pasta + bouillon + cornstarch. Literally the exact same thing.

>also take some monitoring

Yeah a few minutes/day checking for bugs, water and ripe tomatoes. Occasionally spraying with BTK if hornworms are present and giving water. And no, your overpriced grocery "gourmet" tomatoes are not as good. Go outside for a couple minutes once in a while; it grows on you ;)

Thanks. I'll pass on industrial petroleum based chemicals permitted for use in food by agencies controlled by the chemical companies themselves. These types of products filled with chemicals only exist because people have been sold on the idea that shit food is acceptable, much like buying into the agrichemical aesthetic of a perfect yard of worthless grass saturated in chemicals 6 times a year. You should be happy some of us feel this way - there's more for you!

Ok there, dreadlocks, have fun bathing in the mud because you're afraid of the fluoridated tap water :)

I have a well, uncontaminated at this point. But believe me, I'll be monitoring it closely, because muh Trump. Once again my neighbors with wells vote against their own interests to have their free water source ruined. Smart.

Sorry I can't hear you over the sound of my central a/c and my electronics because I live in the 21st century. Might want to check on your horse, he's probably dying of heat stroke right now.

I personally liked the Italian set of Hamburger helper. 4 cheese lasagna, pizza, and a few others.
Nobody around me sells it anymore.

This is probably too late to get back to you, but... No. I don't have cornstarch on hand, sometimes pasta. I tend to only cook when I'm doing something special or have a particular craving.

I enjoy some of the ideas here, I enjoy slice of life threads about fast food or restaurants, etc. I don't think everyone here is a cook.

yeah Drumpf is gonna pollute your well bro watch out

Tell me how "pasta, knorr cubes, cornstarch, water" equates to "pasta, seasonings, fresh onions, cheese, milk, flour and whatever else"? Who the fuck wants to eat pasta with plain ground beef and a knorr cube? That's not even close.

>fresh onions
>cheese
>milk
>whatever else
And none of those are part of HH.
See you fucking halfpenny ignoramus.
Ya wanna add them, add'em, but they're not included in the box. The box ain't shit else but pasta, bouillon powder and cornstarch.

Why does this trigger you? Genuinely asking.

>they're not included in the box. The box ain't shit else but pasta, bouillon powder and cornstarch.
You've never read the ingredients, I see.

you're troll-fu is weak, grasshopper