What everyday foods are 10/10?
People eat a lot of food. So much, in fact, that we tend to overlook exactly how good our food is. In celebration of this (and to get our minds off of the scary stuff), I thought this was a good time to reflect on the good things in life. So I give you this question: what average, everyday supermarket food is secretly fantastic? So fantastic that you could eat it everyday - and probably actually do.
My vote is bread. Bread is so delicious you can practically make a complete meal out of it. But it's also versatile and with just a few more ingredients can be transformed into something even more delicious. Buttered toast is absolutely divine. Everyone has their favorite sandwich, and any of those would also be perfect for this list as well, but you can't have any of them without bread.
I'm also not above ultraprocessed garbage food, so as a bonus suggestion is (bread-adjacent!) premade frozen pizzas. While some people will prefer fresh made pizzas, I've never seen anyone hate frozen pizza altogether, and everyone has a favorite brand. I personally like Totino's; it has a strangely appealing artificial quality to it, and most importantly it's a filling meal that takes zero effort (it can be cooked in the toaster oven without even needing to dirty a pan) and costs only about a dollar.
Peanut butter. A tablespoon is a solid snack on its own, or works in a sandwich or with some crackers. You can drop it in oatmeal (oatmeal being another 10/10), make a great curry with it (+ coconut milk + curry powder/spice, etc), make a sauce, or throw it in a desert. It's probably one of my favorite flavors of all time, and has been since I was a kid.
I haven’t needed one in a long time but one of my favorite struggle meals as a kid growing up was peanut butter on toast. The bread was always the discount kind that was almost too gross to be used in regular sandwiches, but once you toasted it and let the sweet oils from the peanut butter start to permeate the toast it becomes amazing.
And of course you had to get the chunky style because it felt more “rich” even though it was the same price.
That's not even what I think of as a struggle meal, peanut butter on toast is just good eatin', it's also just beautifully simple and cheap.. As a kid my favorite thing to do was toasted PB&J sandwiches, and as an adult I'll still do that, or set up half my toast with PB and the other with J.
I think of it that way because it's a childhood thing and most of my childhood was struggling with poverty - but yes, it's certainly good eatin'. In case you were wondering, dessert was buttered toast with cinnamon sugar - which is still good eatin'. Nowaday's I'm extra fancy and if I'm to eat toast anywhere but home I will have it buttered and with orange marmalade.
Oddly enough I don't like peanut butter sandwiches (with or without jelly/jam) too much, and that's because at one time I had a stepmother who insisted on making them (and every other sandwich) with mayonnaise.
But no matter what choice you make, anything's better than the British toast sandwich.
Watching FoodTribe I learned there are quite a few weird British sandwiches, ignoring the ones James May randomly made up.
Because of an AskReddit thread I tried peanut butter and mayonnaise and it wasn't bad. It felt like an affront to nature, so I had to work to eat it, but I found the flavor surprisingly pleasant because the mayonnaise just added something savory. I also get why being force-fed them would turn one off of peanut butter sandwiches.
I love a good Totino's, but pizza in general. You can have it decadent with meat, healthy with veggies, or however you want. You could eat nothing but pizza (you shouldn't) and never have the same combination twice in a month.
Some pizzas are not great, but it's very hard to find a pizza that is irredeemable.
Andrew Zimmern's recent Hot Ones appearance ended with a 'love letter to 99¢ gas station pizza' that perfectly exemplifies that fact.
I have to go with seasonal produce. Indulging in a peak season peach or tomato has to be a consistent annual highlight. During the winter months I almost forget just how good they are. Now slice up said tomato and throw it into a BLT and you've ascended to nirvana. But truly, very very fresh, perfectly fresh produce is the zenith of cuisine for me.
That and tiramisu. I didn't have it until I was nearly 30 and it rocked my world.
Lots of people agree that very fresh produce is exceptionally tasty and noticeably better than out-of-season store-bought produce. I agree
But I also think certain microwaved vegetables are underrated. Microwaved foods are actually more fresh than what you see at the store: they are flash frozen at peak ripeness, whereas non-frozen produce has to be picked earlier otherwise it would rot faster being transported or displayed on grocery shelves. Broccoli and carrots, if you avoid freezer burn and microwave at the correct time / settings, actually taste almost as if they were steamed fresh.
And even when microwaved veggies don't taste as good as fresh, they are extremely convenient: they allow you to heat up a healthy meal in 5 minutes, without a kitchen or access to grocery stores that sell quality fresh produce.
I love David Chang for championing the microwave. I totally agree, the microwave gets a bad wrap. You can make some incredibly tasty food in the microwave and it has earned it's spot as a key component of the modern kitchen. I would also like to propose the toaster oven as another often overlooked kitchen essential.
That said, one of my big Covid takeaways was that steaming veggies isn't the only way to prepare them. They totally have their place, but I grew up on nothing but steamed veggies. Chard, Spinach, broccoli, carrots; all warm and slightly... mushy? A friend moved in with my partner and I during Covid who was a strict vegetarian. He made foods that I had previously found unpalatable (kale, collard greens) into beautiful salads and mains. He showed me how to cut the center cord out of the kale and crush it with lemon to break down it's fibrous texture. He taught me how to flash fry veggies in a cast iron with all the oil/garlic/onion to make it stand as a main instead of a sad side. I think veggies in general get a bad wrap because they are seen as boring. We just need to treat it more like meats, give it spice/caramelization/general consideration and veg can be just as exciting.
Agreed wholeheartedly. Most people honestly don't know how to use the microwave, and will as a result cook everything at 100% power, resulting in a superheated exterior and frozen interior. And even though everyone's been microwaving for all of their life they still haven't figured out how to manage moisture levels.
And the toaster oven has basically replaced the full-sized oven. It heats up faster, has more even heat, and when it comes to my crappy oven it's also more accurate. Full-sized ovens are just too big unless you're doing huge roasts for a very large family.
Roasted veggies are my favorite. You can make full dinners really easy by just putting your meats and vegetables in the oven with some oil.
Apparently you can actually roast frozen vegetables and they even get a little crispy, but not nearly as much as fresh.
I'm almost certain that you actually mean frozen vegetables, right? There's not a place that sells you vegetables that have been pre-cooked in a microwave, is there?
yeah frozen vegetables
AppleBee's
I’m not a huge fan of tomatoes but I do think fresh fruit is amazing. I think one of the under-appreciated marvels of modern living is that we have found a way to enjoy whatever fruits you like any time of the year.
Legume soups / stews. Very easy to make in big batches, fairly healthy (depends on what you put in the pot) and you can turn them into many different dishes just changing the spices or some of the ingredients.
Steamed white rice (I like longer grains). It's interesting because this is one of the biggest palate shifts I can remember from childhood to adulthood. I remember thinking that rice was very, very boring as a child, but now it is one of my biggest vices in terms of keeping my caloric intake down. Well, I'd consider it 10/10 in taste anyway - perhaps in terms of health, it's not very good for you, if you live in a developed nation.
I'd also say that unlike, say, bread, rice is rice for the most part (especially if you use a rice cooker and so stave away poorly cooked rice), and while there is different grades of rice, I'd say the difference between cheap rice and expensive rice is way less than the difference between Walmart sliced bread and a local sourdough.
I'm with you about good rice, but to your last part about bad rice... you've never eaten my rice. It's the one dish I cannot for the life of me cook well and often end up with more of a pudding than a rice. Oddly Risotto goes fine, I think I'm to handsy with the little guys.
I used to think it was impossible to mess up rice. Then I went to a random yoshinoya in an area I have never been to before. I don’t know what they did to do this, but somehow every grain of rice had exploded. To make matters worse, the exploded bits started to dry out, making the mouthfeel very gritty.
I wanted to cry. It was such a betrayal.
I would like to like rice more! Do you add anything to it to make it enjoyable?
Here is my tip: use it as a replacement for pasta.
Rice “spaghetti”
Rice casserole
Rice as the “bed” for any dish that can be served on a bed of anything
Also get a rice cooker. They are cheap and they make perfect rice every time. Definitely worth it.
Also, jasmine is my favorite. Basamati is okay, but nowhere near as good. Brown rice is bad. That’s my opinion, so try them yourself.
What don't you like about brown rice? I find it to be much more interesting than white rice, which just tastes like starch or whatever it's being cooked in-- at least brown rice adds that nutty flavor and chewy texture that's so nice, IMO.
Plus brown rice is more nutritious than white, so there's that too.
The main problem with brown rice is that there is a big difference in quality depending on the specifics of how it is milled. If it’s fairly thin milled, you get that lightly chewy texture. If its not milled enough then you get a truly terrible texture.
Beyond that they do taste different and some people don’t like that different taste.
Usually if I cook rice I am making it to go with a specific dish, and if I am doing that it would ruin the whole meal if it’s the wrong kind of rice.
Honestly, I probably have not had good quality brown rice. I would be interested in trying it, but I can only get rice in large quantities, so I would have to go through a lot of rice I don’t like to try more varieties. I know I love jasmine rice, it goes with anything, and it’s cheap. I don’t have much incentive to change.
Granola, even without fruits or milk or anything else.
Kraft mac and cheese is my go-to. It's low effort and tastes good either right out of the box or with whatever you want to add in there. (I used to love mixing in ketchup as a kid for whatever reason.) Really, what more can you ask for?
Yes, but you must add in hot dog slices to make it a complete meal. 😺
Beanless chili. It's the best.
Everyone who knows beans about chili knows that chili has no beans.
Beanless chili is a Texas abomination, it's basically spicy Sloppy Joe mix. It's like eating spaghetti sauce without noodles, which I hope nobody does.
I always have to specify though, lest the spicy bean stew people think I'm adding beans to mac and cheese or spaghetti (another favorite "+chili" food.)
lol yup got me.
Not saying it's correct because Canada can hardly be considered any sort of authority on chili but where I'm from chili has beans in it and people would specify Texan or beanless chili to refer to the 'proper' kind of chili.
Ha! Was just speaking to a friend of mine that lives in Paris a few weeks back and they mentioned they were going to make chili that weekend. Asking for details, I was sent a recipe and teased a bit about their "spicy bean stew" weekend. They were completely unaware that chili doesn't have beans and then envious of the price of meat in the US when I said I make my chili with leftover smoked brisket.
Haha it's funny how that took off. I wonder where beans in chili originated from? I will be the first to admit that Texan-style chili is my favourite although I do have to say, I do make a mean 'spicy bean stew'.
hikes up gigantic belt buckle in the shape of Texas
I tell you whut, it was probably some darn yankee!
I honestly don't have a dog in the fight and have made and enjoyed many a mouth watering chili and spicy bean stew without a second thought about it. It's just fun to give friends a bit of ribbing. I also love food anthropology, so it was enjoyable to teach them chili origins and why it doesn't have beans by default even if I can't track down where the beans became commonplace.
It’s basically just a cheap filler. Chili got popular but beef is expensive in most places so they added beans.
Don't worry, it's all friendly ribbing... I just don't like beans.
Haha no harm here, I had never heard the 'spicy bean stew' moniker before and it made me chuckle. :P
ULTIMATE BOX MAC AND CHEESE HACK: Revolutionize your low-effort meal with this ONE SIMPLE TRICK!
Replace the milk and butter with 1/2 cup of plain yogurt.
I promise this is real. It makes it creamier and adds a nice tang to the flavor. My husband and I tried this out once and have never looked back.
I've heard of this and tried it once. It was terrible!*
*
Of course, I was unaware that my wife had put honey yogurt in a plain yogurt container when she had dropped the honey yogurt container and it cracked. I love honey, but I do not recommend honey yogurt macaroni and cheese.
shudder
Seriously, I do need to give this a try.
Oh no!
Lol, I can definitely see why that went sideways. Now I'm weirdly curious to try it for myself though?
You may like it, but I was not a fan of oddly sweet cheese noodles.
Same here actually, Though I have a very strange reason.
Growing up overseas in the third world, Mac&cheese was only ever gotten when relatives sent us it in the mail (only the cheese package, we could get the noodles locally.) So, as a child, Mac&cheese was an ultra rare treat. Then we go back to america for good, and its 99 cents! Still, no matter how many times I have it, it still feels like a special treat.
Just reading the title, I was going to say bread, but you beat me to it! I guess I’ll put my vote in for burritos. They’re incredibly versatile, and they can be cheap and easy to make.
You can't go wrong with ramen. Instant ramen is okay as-is, but there are tons of little "hacks" you can do to kick it up a few notches. I like to toss away the seasoning packet and instead make mine in chicken broth instead of water, and drop an egg in it. Also, it sounds weird but a slice of American cheese melted into ramen makes it creamy and delicious.
Edit: Forgot to mention what a difference a sliced green onion, or a squirt of sriracha sauce can make too. Also, mushrooms if you have 'em. The sky's the limit when it comes to enriching your ramen.
I like throwing in a handful of spinach in the last minute or so.
That’s actually a staple of Korean-American fusion (and more on the Korean side - as in, it’s served in Korea - the aspects of “American food” is the cool foreign part here!)
As an aside, I generally prefer Korean Shin Ramyun over the standard Japanese instant ramens. I'd recommend anyone start with that as their base, if it's available in their area.
I don’t really like the super cheap beef or chicken flavored ramen you can get for super cheap, but the Asian flavored ones are almost all good. But generally if I am going to want noodle soup I will spend a bit extra getting the fancier versions. The absolute best ones are in the frozen section because they have real concentrated soup and “fresh” noodles. But for instant I find the best brand from a value perspective (where I live, at least) is Sapporo Ichiban.
Though if I am going to eat instant noodles, it’s probably going to be IndoMie Mi Goreng. I’m just not a big fan of soup.
Adding Laoganma Spicy Chili Crisp to White Cheddar Smartfood is so easy, so satisfying, and surprisingly less trashy than some of the other stuff I eat.
I mix them together in a bowl and eat it with a spoon like cereal. It's basically low-effort, zero-prep Pepcorn.
Ice water on a hot day
Consider me seen. Urgh, Frozen pizza is classified as emergency food for me: Not unless I'm really hungry and the shops are closed. I usually have one in the freezer, which stays there for years, and ends up a fossil by the time it goes into the oven.
I love me a simple pasta dish. Pasta with Lardons and Emmental cheese, a dash of olive oil. Or pasta with canned tuna. Or my favourite, but it's harder to find here: Canned salmon!
Speaking of easy-to-find supermarket food, smoked salmon is the fucking best.
I'm going to run with the canned salmon and say cracked pepper salmon in the little individual pouches. The best meal I've ever eaten in the backcountry was a pasta made with the little bags of cracked pepper salmon, dehydrated pesto, sun-dried tomatoes, and little shell pasta. Good god that stuff is amazing.
+1 for frozen pizza not being great.
What I have in my freezer for emergencies are premade thin pizza crusts. Even if I use premade tomato sauce, using fresh ingredients and (a reasonable amount of) better cheese makes a very big difference.
Spaghetti. It's really cheap and I could eat it every single day without ever getting tired of eating it.
If you don't have sauce it's trivial to make a quick one with hot peppers, garlic, olive oil, salty herbs, fresh tomatoes.
A hot dog, specifically a roller grilled gas station hot dog. It's a 99¢-$1.50 tube of offcuts, offal, and spices that many will happily shun and turn their noses up at while praising the head-to-tail restaurant downtown that serves them the same thing in un-minced form for 20x price and half the flavor.
I, half-jokingly, refer to myself as a tube meat connoisseur. Gas stations, truck stops, food trucks, bars, ethnic restaurants, and trendy new spots that "specialize" in hot dogs are all fair game and even in a group of friends I'll gladly order whatever hot dog, sausage, or tube meat concoction they have on hand even if I'll be eating it alone.
However, the hot dog/tube meat must be able to stand on its own. I, more often than not, get a weird look when I order a hot dog in some trendy spot that has two dozen options on the menu as I always order it plain to start. If you went to a steakhouse and they brought you an unseasoned, boiled steak accompanied by even the greatest compound butter you've ever experienced, you'd still send the steak back. A bland poached chicken breast bathed in a sauce that would make a master French chef cry tears of happiness, is still a boring piece of protein with no character. The same goes for a hot dog. If the base element of the dish isn't capable of holding a tune alone, no grand symphony accompaniment can fix it.
Not too long ago there was a restaurant chain called Dog Haus that absolutely exploded with what felt like dozens of locations opening up in the general area around me. They have their own house-made hot dogs and sausages and they also make them in these godforsaken topping-saturated troths that are equal parts amazing and terrible. They have since imploded and there's only two or three left in the entire state.
I know you just said you're a purist, but I thought you might have been interested.
Oh yes, I'm aware Dog Haus, there are two in my area (not counting the one inside a music venue).
I've been to one location twice. They're good, but aren't anything to write home about for what they're charging (their plain hotdog is $7 here, credit to them though that the topping heavy creations are only $1 more). Dog Haus is one of the places I was referencing when I said I get weird looks when I order a plain dog to start. First time I went (as is typical for me) I was alone, second time was with some picky eater/less adventurous friends while we were in the area.
The second half of that last sentence is important because the Dog Haus location is only a few blocks from one of the Asian/Indian population centers in my area and if I'm going to be in the area on my own, Dog Haus doesn't hold a candle to the other foods I can get. So if I'm going it's because I'm specifically in the mood for a hot dog and a good beer and do not want any of the other incredible food that surrounds them. As is apparent, they don't win that battle often and looking at their current menu, it's clearly been a long time since I've been as I know they did not have burgers, chicken, or burritos the last time I went.
I don't necessarily have any problem with toppings, it's just the foundation has to be there. It's one of the problems I have with Korean corn dog places. They are all about the batter, coatings, and sauces on top, but the actual hot dog in the middle is, in my experience with 3-4 different places, the absolute cheapest, store brand, flavorless chicken dog I've ever encountered. You'd think with how highly Korea thinks of beef and pork that they'd at least have a solid base for the corn dogs, but I've been met with nothing but disappointment.
I have celiac disease so bread is a hell no for me. I do love corn tortillas though. I also enjoy grapes quite a bit. My pick would be grapes with some cheddar cheese on the side.
Corn tortillas are great! Doubly so if fresh.
I wouldn't refuse a wheat tortilla, but it would be very disappointing.
Oatmeal + raisins. I eat it almost every day for breakfast and it never gets old.
You would be soooo welcome on any long distance backpacking trip. I feel like everyone packs too much and no-one ever wants to eat the extra portions. You can't throw it out so someone has to take one for the team.
Eggs. You can boil them, fry them, scramble them, make a sauce with them, make egg tarts with them, and so much more.
Almost all protein with little to no fat.
My favorite breakfast food is steak and eggs, but you can just as easily make a great breakfast with an omelette or some french toast using egg.
Eggs are a big reason I haven’t given up all animal products. They are really awesome and go in so many dishes!
Literally any food handed to me with love when I'm having a really bad day.
After that, any food I grow myself. Right now I have little tomatoes on a plan I grew as a cutting from last summer's tomato plant and have managed to keep going through the winter.
One easy great food I come back to a lot is baked potato. It's literally Step One: potato, Step Two: bake. Then you have a great base to put other stuff on, or to just enjoy with butter and salt (and lots of pepper, if you're me)! I like it with sauerkraut lately, which I discovered when I bought way too much cabbage.
As for processed stuff, microwaved popcorn is probably my biggest vice there. I like those seasoning powders and often make my own little seasoning mixes too, it's just such a satisfying food to eat and it takes well to so many flavours. I straight up buy sour cream and onion powder seasoning from a local bulk goods store, that one's my favourite, but I also like cinnamon/sugar mix, nutritional yeast, or spicy seasonings.
The thing that's so convenient about baked potatoes is that it doesn't actually have to be baked to get the same basic result. I kind of like pressure-steaming them myself, but that depends on if I want to eat the skin or not.
As far as I'm concerned, sour cream exists only for baked potatoes.
My beef stroganoff disagrees with you. :)
As for potatoes, my favorite form is mashed. Mashed potatoes go so good with everything.
Good meat is not expensive where I am. 1 kilogram of quality meat cost less than going to McDonald's (McDonald's is expensive here, but still...). 1kg is enough for two or three meals. Just add salt, pepper, and toss it in the pan whit a bit of olive oil. I like my meat rare. Eat with rice, potatoes, or bread.
I'm jealous. 1 pound of garbage-quality ground beef is at least $5 over here, where food is supposedly relatively cheap.
I imagine your region doesn't have a lot of lands for cattle. That is usually what drives meat cost.
Ironically just 20-30 years ago all the land around here was used for cattle and dairy farms. Suburban sprawl got rid of those quickly.
You can get much better prices, but that's only if you're willing to buy in bulk. But then you have to deal with frozen beef and it's never quite as good.
I do not find frozen meat to be of less quality. I do buy it unfrozen, but I assume the meat was frozen at some point. If I freeze the meat at home, it stays fine for months. It is best to take the meat out of the freezer and leave it in the refrigerator for 24 to 48 hours depending on the temperature, so it'll defrost much slower and maintain its quality.