Prices keep climbing, so I’m trying to pick my battles in the supermarket. Which items do you refuse to cheap out on, and why? Taste, health, longevity, peace of mind… I’d love to hear what’s worth the few extra dollars for you.
For me, it’s honey from local beekeepers—supermarket brands locally are known to sell fake or adulterated sugar syrup as honey.
Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. As someone who’s lactose intolerant, their non-dairy stuff is amazing and so worth the extra money.
Chocolate, coconut milk, tea, coffee, mustard.
shout out Ayam milk
Real parm instead of the canned stuff.
Chicken breasts - you can get massive pumped up chicken breast for the same price as “normal” chicken breasts. The problem is when you cook the big ones, they just leech out all their liquid.
Coffee. It’s something that I refuse to compromise on. It may be especially important to me because I like to drink it black. If it doesn’t taste great without adding anything to it, it’s not with drinking at all in my opinion.
Fresh corn tortillas.
Tequila.
Haircare stuff
Husband bought “the good eggs” once and has not looked back since. I used to keep chickens and the bougie store eggs are much closer to those than they are to the factory farmed thin shelled light yolked ones.
The best eggs are eggs from a farm that are unwashed and you keep on the counter. They taste a zillion times better and last for a long time. I get 3 dozen for 15 dollars at the local farm. It’s honestly better than the store.
Pasta. It takes pasta dishes from “eh, it’s food” to “this is really good”.
Mozzarella (talking about the balls of fresh mozzarella you get sealed in with their brine).
Can’t do store brand anymore after having tried Galbani.
Farmer’s market tomatoes. I went through my whole life thinking I hated tomatoes. Turns out, I hate grainy tomatoes that taste like nothing, and real tomatoes grown nearby and picked ripe are wonderful.
Eggs. I bought the expensive ones once just for laughs and they taste great without the weird funk. Now I have my own chickens, and the eggs are better than anything in the store. It’s probably more expensive though!
Carrots and celery I always buy organic because they seem to take on the flavor of whatever they were watered with. It makes a difference there for me.
And tortillas, I get the local boutique ones instead of the national mass market ones. Big difference there.
Silverware
The cheap metals taste like a magnet, have rough edges, and lose their appearance after a few washes
Lunch meat. I eat sandwiches every day for lunch and I have tried all the discount store brands for various types of ham, turkey, and chicken, and it’s all pretty shit, so I’m quite happy to pay the buck for the Hillshire Farms stuff cause it’s the best.
Butter, life is too damn short to cook with and eat shitty butter.
Also anything that goes between me and the ground, my bed, my shoes, and my tires.
What grocery items are always worth the extra
butter … my bed, my shoes, and my tires
Hello, fellow Costco shopper.
Canadian maple syrup.
There’s nothing wrong with new england maple syrup, but yes, real maple syrup not “pancake syrup” with maple flavoring.
While I agree, the price difference between “maple syrup” (maple flavoured corn syrup) and maple syrup is way more than $5. A bottle of genuine maple syrup is $20+.
Good ketchup Real butter, not reconstituted which should be illegal Good bread, fresh or at least not the cheapest stuff
Real butter for things where you can taste it. Store brand for things where the other flavors are more overpowering and don’t really notice the butter.
Canned tomatoes. Get the good ones if you can!
My husband and I got curious about the variance in canned tomatoes one day, so we got one can from every brand we could find. We had a blind tasting session where we tried each one without knowing what brand it was (palate cleansers in between) and ranked them all out of 10 with some comments. We didn’t share our rankings or thoughts with each other until the Big Reveal at the end when we found out which tomatoes were which.
Turned out we actually preferred some of the cheaper brands, and the most expensive ones got worse ratings. There wasn’t a direct relationship between price and preference, but it was interesting.
It was a fun day. We also did the same thing with soda water.
