My single Mom swore by Hamburger Helper! It was one of the first things she taught my brother and I to make. Find memories of both the time and food. My brother and I are in our late 40s and still see it as a comfort food. ❤
My mom would make it when my dad was deployed to Afghanistan and I was one of 4 kids. And now that I think about it, browning a log of ground beef was probably one of the first cooking skills I learned as a kid
I grew up poor in the 1980s, and this was a common staple in our family. I don’t think I’ve eaten hamburger helper for decades, but it still has some nostalgia associated with it for me. Thanks for the video!
I actually like Hamburger Helper. It was something different from the standard stuff I ate growing up. Grew up eating lot of Asian food and sometimes you want something different.
It's super interesting how the post ww2 economy transitioned into forcing pre packaged and processed foods out to americans. There was a huge push to canned and packaged goods because you had all of these factories that were producing goods for the war effort suddenly run out of contract. Banana Pie, one of my favorite desserts, is basically a made up thing to sell nabisco crackers. A lot of it was aimed at giving housewives more free time as well. You can put everything in a jello mold, still go to your bridge club, and family will have a dinner.
@@toastedt140 The UK (and europe in general) also had this issue, in part due to the destabilized infrastructure. But because they had less money due to that, the concoctions are decidedly more... sad looking. That's where "beans on toast" and "toast hawaii" as british and german things, respectively, came from.
@@toastedt140Oh yes I loved Banana Pie! But like Twinkies, you could put one on a plate and leave it there for 100 years, and it would still probably be there intact, because even mold knows it's not food.😂
I'm 81, and was completly surprised that the Helper didn't come out until the 70s. I thought it was much older than that. But, now that I think about it, I never had it as a kid. Its been a long time since I've eaten it, and I'm not sure why. It was pretty good, and easy to make. May have to try it again.
I was born in the 90's and I thought it was a product of my time... I had the opposite reaction finding out it's so much older than I thought 😂 Makes me love it a little more.
I would have sworn and be damned that tuna helper was the product of the 80’s health food craze. Also what I find funny is that all of these convenience foods are associated with being poor or stretching a dollar. When I was a kid I wanted to eat this because my family thought it cost too much. I was mad because we are pork chops for breakfast, and homemade spaghetti sauce 😂😂😂 Edit: Haggis is the OG helper.
@@thepusherwoman You assume wrong. I am super Dee duper American. I grew up in the south eating soul food. I’ve come to learn that if a person knows how to cook, they don’t need convenience food. One can be much more creative with their dollar.
@@jer103 nope. Every Hamburger Helper was gross. I wouldn't eat dinner when my dad would make it. I am vegan now. That and Kraft macaroni and cheese were the two dinners I dreaded the most as a kid
Definitely ate my fair share of Hamburger Helper growing up! My family's favorite was always the cheesy hashbrown flavor, but it seems that flavor is either hard to come by or just plain discontinued now. One of my other favorite easy meal kit brands growing up was Chef Boyardee! I remember them having a pizza kit that had an extremely fluffy biscuit-like crust and didn't really taste like normal pizza and some sort of ravioli bake/skillet, and my sister and I loved them. Pretty sure those have gone the way of the dinosaur now too.
As a 2002 kid, I used to have this sometimes when my mother couldn't cook. Definitely heavenly, at least in my opinion. My father was definitely a huge fan of it.
The other dinner staple from childhood that goes hand in hand, pun intended, is the LaChoy lineup. With the two cans and the hard as rock noodles, you knew dinner tonight was going to be special.
I DESPISED La Choy when I was a kid. So much so that I didn’t want to try Chinese food from a restaurant for a long time. I was pleasantly surprised to find that type of Chinese food didn’t taste like soggy metallic bean sprouts!
Hamburger helper was one of the only things our mom ever cooked. Almost all of our meals were pizza rolls and chicken nuggets, but hamburger helper night (once every two weeks or so) was always a good night.
I grew up on Hamburger Helper, but the couple times I've tried to make it for my own family, I was the only one willing to eat it. Every now and then, though, I do get a nostalgic craving.
As an incredibly lazy person who loves beefy pasta food byproducts, I love it. And the sodium isn't even that bad, I just checked the box in my cupboard.
It’s the perfect “don’t worry about it” meal. Just fry some hamburger, throw in everything from the box with some milk and water, then stare at it for 30 minutes until it’s done. Simple.
Growing up, we mostly ate meals cooked from scratch - a lot of stews. My mom taught us all how to make these. Hamburger and Tuna Helper was a treat. The stroganoff and lasagna flavors were favorites. When I moved out on my own I cooked the Helper beef lasagna, the tuna tetrazini and an odd but delicious tuna pot pie. Though I still cooked a lot from scratch. Today I mostly cook from scratch, but I do appreciate how convenient and tasty the Helper meals could be.
Back in 1981 or so, punk icons Dead Kennedys did a song called 'Dear Abby' which featured the line 'just mix with my tuna helper and ta-daa!' Being in the UK I had no idea what a tuna helper was, so cheers for finally solving my mystery! I haven't covered what the song was about as this is a family channel, but if you know, you know.
Damn, I didn't even know that existed. I was just a little kid in the 1980s (the GREATEST decade, I don't care who disagrees) so I must have missed that one or it wasn't very popular on the shelves at the local Albertsons. I did love their beef stroganoff. That was heavenly.
My favorite was the Lasagna for the regular Hamburger Helper. But my favorites were the Tuna Helper line of dinners. Why? Because you didn't need to brown the ground beef, just open up and add two cans of tuna, skipping the whole messy step of cooking the beef then draining off the grease.
Never drained it. Just put the meat on the skillet w/o any additional oil. Wait 7 mins and it is done. There is some natural fat but it is eatable and tasty. What was the point to drain it? To lower the calories?
Two AGGRAVATING things about modern Helper: 1) They used to require only water, most of them now require water AND milk. I assume they used to incorporate powdered milk in the sauce packet. This makes them less convenient AND more expensive, and 2) They stopped bagging the carbs (noodles, rice, whatever) and put them straight in the box, making them more susceptible to water or dampness ruining them, spoilage in general, or vermin. Even my local Piggly Wiggly store brand CHEAPER knock-off dinners package the carbs/starches in plastic. A great Helper tip: most flavors are amenable to the addition of diced canned tomatoes, plain/chili/Italian style. Just cut down the water a bit. Really adds something, especially to the Italian and Mexican inspired flavors. I also like to add mushrooms and/or black olives to the Italian type varieties. 😋😋😋
the milk was optional it made the cheese thicker and more kraft like, and for the bag part they used to do a bag also but stopped when they started giving us more pasta per box
Can confirm, you don’t NEED milk, just gives it better texture. I’ve done with milk/water, water only, and more milk than water. I’d rather have more milk to water ratio, than what it says on the box. If you don’t have milk, just use less water than the box calls for, or add in any thickeners you may have on hand like flour or more cheese if you have spare cheese
@dylanbinkley266 Corn starch (or any starch really) is probably better than using flour, since flour has a distinct taste to it that has to be cooked off, which takes at least 10 minutes
I remember the hamburger helper. What about rice Rice-A-Roni. And also Shake and Bake and Ortega taco mix.They were all powdered flavors we added to common plain foods back in the 70s and 80s.
You are so right! Another one was Lawry's ... Lawry's seasonings were everywhere as well (they still are). I remember going to a Lawry's restaurant in LA when I was young, and my Mom threw that taco mix into hamburger and we thought it was the best dinner ever.
here in europe we had aromat odlschool but it' was still pretty good all purpose seasoning stuff, actually does good on steak too if you add some black pepper but they turned it into garbage now, it's barely more than overpriced yellow colored salt these days, so i'm back to the old style stock cubes, they were good enough for my grandmother
Does anyone else remember the Tuna Helper Tuna Pot Pie? Me and my whole family loved them. I don't know why they discontinued them. They could take unappetizing tasting tuna, and make it into the tastiest buttery, flaky pot pie. I miss it so much, and still get cravings for it sometimes. I wish they would bring it back. 😢
This stuff got us through the great recession. To this day my husband will ask "what helper are we having tonight?"😂 I'm not a chef or even a cook. HH saved our butts more than once.
My favorite Hamburger Helper is Potato Stroganoff. My Mom was a working college student. When she broke out a box of HH, I knew it was gonna be a good dinner time.
For the names of the hamburger alternatives, they should have gone with “Tuna Tutor”, “Fruit Facilitator” “Chicken Collaborator”, and “Pork Partner” All about that alliteration, baby 😂
Growing up in the 70s and 80s It was the Rice Oriental Hamburger Helper I was introduced to and learned how to make. It no longer exists. Finding myself craving this comfort food from the past, i am reduced to looking for knock-off version recipes of it. I wish it would be brought back.
At least 45% of all meals I ate as a kid were probably the beef stroganoff hamburger helper. My parents aren't exactly cooks so hamburger helper made it a lot easier for them to make meals that weren't horribly bland. Although, it was a big reason why I started to teach myself to cook food for myself.
I always loved Hamburger Helper and still do at 67-years-old. I never realized how many flavors they have or had. I looked for tuner helper in my local IGA and they didn't have it. I keep forgetting to look in the bigger supermarkets. It's back on my radar now
I haven't seen Tuna Helper in a long time either, but I have noticed that a lot of the boxes suggest swapping out tuna for chicken (like the tetrazinni or alfredo)
I had a boyfriend in high school who's mom wasn't the best cook. My mom on the other hand was somewhat of an almond mom. We never had soda in the house, cheerios and corn flakes were the only cereals and she never made dinner from a box. So it was at his house that I had Hamburger Helper for the first time and LOVED it! I still love the single cups you pop in the microwave. Long live Hamburger Helper!!
I remember so many of these. Tuna helper worked with chicken just as well and you could take the underlying idea to make so many casseroles. We werent poor poor, but my grandma survived the depression and she was in charge of the kitchen, so it was a cheap kitchen. A helper style skillet or casserole, and pillsbury biscuits was 4 nights a week. She made scratch stuff the other 3, usually an awesome pizza, a grill night, and taco night. But the casseroles were the best.
Ugh! I remember eating Hamburger Helper and Riceroni so much as a kid because we were low-income -.- almost every weeknight a box of it was made. I now have an aversion to it.
Back when I ate this type of food, the Crunchy Taco was probably my favorite.. I did prefer the Velveeta dinners, but HH generally was less expensive and had a bigger variety of flavors
My Taiwanese mom made Tuna Helper for us when we were kids in the 80s. She rarely cooked American food but Tuna Helper and Hamburger Helper were two of the rare American dishes she made. I still love eating both.
My mom made Hamburger Helper quite often in the 1980's. I loved it! I still make meals to this day with ground beef that are similar to Hamburger Helper.
I ate it as a kid growing up poor, and I eat it still now with a family of my own. We aren't poor, but hey its quick, easy, and enjoyable. I do take liberties when cooking it now though, like seasoning the meat while I'm browning it, etc, but its still on regular rotation in my house.
Although my mother is/was a fine cook (she is in a care home now and no longer can cook), she did work for a good part of my growing up years. Sometimes there was no time to spend cooking if we wanted dinner before 8PM! So when Hamburger Helper showed up on the grocery store shelf in 1971 (we were on the West Coast), Mom tried it out and it was a hit. Even my picky brother would eat it. Mom would put the skillet on, make a salad while it cooked, and dinner was served in plenty of time to still watch prime time TV before bedtime. Over 50 years later I still buy Hamburger Helper on occasion; hubby never turns it down. But hamburger sure isn't cheap anymore! So pork and chicken are "helped" as well.
i started cooking dinner for my family of 5 when i was 8 years old and i started out cooking hamburger helper. for cheese lasagna, cheesey shells and stroganof are still nostalgic favorites despite having not had them in years. the way the meal is made also worked in my favor as if you didnt cook the noodles and sauce with the meat i doubt my first attempts at cooking ground beef would have been safe to eat. for the record i started cooking by choice and as only my dad was home my first dinner i made i did as a suprise, i was a kid ok? it wasnt to bright at the time but as life got better for my family i got better at cooking other stuff and making fresh food. it all began with that little box though.
By far the funniest look back at nostalgic food! I’m ashamed to admit I’ve eaten a ton of HH. No, like you could have filled a semi trailer with the boxes! I always felt that getting my sodium levels up for every blood test would give my doctor something to talk about.
I was introduced to Hamburger Helper when I was 17. At the time, I had no idea about salt content or anything since I was still a teen and would also have other unhealthy foods like McDonald's, Wendy's, and Burger King. During that time, I used to have boxes of Cheeseburger Macaroni, Beef Noodle, Lasagna, and Beef Stroganoff. A few years later, I would try their different flavours like 3-Cheese Manicotti and Beef Taco. If I had to pick my favourite out of all of them at the time, I would have picked Beef Taco. It's been awhile since I cut out fast-food restaurants and Hamburger Helper from my eating habits.
We used to get HH once a week as a kid as a treat! When I first got married, HH was the only thing I knew how to cook. Luckily over the years, I have become a much better cook. I freaking love this stuff. I don't eat it anymore because I can cook and I don't want to get a years worth of sodium in one serving. But I still love this stuff.
I hear you, when I was a kid it was an awesome meal with fried potatoes and a vegetable, yeah it is nostalgic and I still get excited about a skillet of it today too and I'm 39
I loved this stuff!! My favorite was the bow tie pasta. It was the 1st thing I ate when moved out on my own. It was the first thing I learned to make..& it was a staple for me. I remember sitting in my 1st place with a plate of this, in front of the 📺TV-comfort food!! I'd love to have a "plush" of the glove 🖐 (glove) im a sucker for stuffed animals.. :)😊❤
Fun to find out about how Hamburger Helper was able to help jump start the careers of Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi. Truly not just a helper in in the kitchen. My favorite flavor of Hamburger Helper is the Southwest Pasta flavor, especially with some extra taco seasonings added. I don't make it much anymore, as I can get good dinner outcomes just as easily with hot sausage and rice-a-roni, or just whip up some chicken tikka or chicken curry with rice if I have more energy that day. Besides that, it's easier to mix up a pot of box mac and cheese and just mix in a can of chili. I do a lot of simple meals, but we kinda burned ourselves out on Helper a couple years ago and try to limit our use of it nowadays.
There used to be this item my grandparents would buy. They called it crust. Round brown stiff hockey pucks they poor warm milk over and eat. This goes back late 70s for me.
This was an amazing video, Weird History! My favorite Hamburger Helper meals are the Cheeseburger Macaroni [unfortunately I am the only one in my family who enjoys it], and the Four Cheese Lasagna. I am curious to try Tuna Helper, if that's still around, as I love tuna. Weird to think Lefty first started in the late 70s, as he seemed to have been around forever, which I sadly can't say for most other non-cereal mascots. Speaking of mascots, will you please do a video on mascots voiced by famous voice actors one day? I already have a few mascots for the list. 1: 70s era Jack [Jack In The Box]: Paul Winchell, who also did the other 70s era Jack In The Box characters, Burger Chef from Burger Chef, and the Tootsie Pop Owl. Although Paul is best known as Tigger from Winnie the Pooh, he also had his own puppet show [Winchell-Mahoney Time], and invented the artificial heart. 2: Tony The Tiger [Thurl Ravenscroft] 3: Toucan Sam [Mel Blanc] 4: The Frito Kid [Richard Beals, funnily enough he was also the voice of Speedy Alka Seltzer] 5: Claudius Crow from Post Corn Toasties [Jesse White, the Maytag Man himself] There are TONS of mascots voiced by famous voice actors, but these are IMO the most interesting.
I don't get all the hate toward Hamburger Helper. It isn't fine dining, but it tastes good to me (and a lot of others,) it's cheap, filling and it's easy to make. Combine it with a couple of veggie sides and it isn't even particularly unhealthy. Cheesy Enchilada and Italian Shells are my favs. Slam a little Texas Pete on there and it's even better.
Yeah and you can add fresh toppings on it tonight I made the double cheeseburger helper I added freshly chopped Red Onion jalapenos a couple dashes of Tapatio and chopped up some roma tomatoes and topped it off with that just like you would with a cheeseburger and it is delicious I think all the hate is because it's seen as a peasant food because it's a one Skillet one-dish meal for one coarse Meal which throughout history is seen as peasant food typically fine dining and more wealthy folks will eat multiple course meals essentially it's a modern version of a goulash is what it is or a stew
Guessing Rice Oriental and Asian Helper wouldn’t go over well today, but I do remember getting the oriental flavored ramen in the blue packaging when I was a kid. I also distinctly remember seeing the Chicken Helper commercials.
Hamburger Helper, on its own just made by the boxes directions is OK. But it only takes a few extra ingredients and a little more time to make it really really good. Example: the tomato basil penne recipe. Make it by the box but add some diced tomatoes, use Italian sausage instead of beef, add some onion and garlic and when it's done, top it with some actual fresh basil and grated parmesan cheese. Is it restaurant quality? Of course not, but is it quite a few steps above just making it plain? Absolutely. Also, Watch The Glove was fire. I know it was released on April Fools as a joke but it was actually a great album.
I still remember a nightmare I had starring that mascot glove, that thing chased me all over the playground at schoolafter hours when nobody was there but me and that GLOVE!!! It scared the hell out of me and no it was not trying to pawn off his product it was chasing me!!
Being raised by a single mom in the late 90s and all of the 2000s and early 2010s meant that yeah I had more this my fair share of hamburger helper nights. I haven’t had it in a couple years myself but damn do i immediately get nostalgic for the cheseburger helper, five meat lasagna, tuna green bean casserole, and potato stroganoff. Mom always got the classics 👌🏼
My Dad used to buy Hamburger Helper for my brothers and I when we needed to prepare a good, quick meal that would be prepared in a heartbeat. Beef Noodle, Rice Oriental, and Cheeseburger Macaroni were my favorites. I still rather miss eating them.
My dad and I used to indulge in Hamburger Helper when my mom went out of town. It was our special dinner because mom was a bit of a health nut. He always asked me if I wanted him to make "gray flavor" or "brown flavor", which I found hilarious even as a little kid. I think that gray was stroganoff and brown was taco, but I'm not 100% sure.
I've been trying to remember the name of Fruit Helper for the last couple of months. My mom bought it when I was a kid and it drifted back into mind but I never made the connection to Hamburger Helper. Thanks, masked stranger.
Hamburger Helper Lasagna was a quick & easy way to whip up "I want to be real lasagna when I grow up" for a weeknight supper after work. I've made the taco version, too, but my husband insists on scooping it into a flour tortilla and eating it as an actual taco, whereas I'm fine with it just as a casserole. Velveeta used to also have some oven casserole varieties in addition to the Velveeta Skillets. I loved the Shepherd's Pie ("cottage pie" as far as the Brits are concerned), although my husband quickly tired of it.
Hamburger helper was fancy for this 80s baby. My mom just added browned hamburger or tuna fish to off brand macaroni with what spices she could to improve flavor and that was dinner. That being said, if you don't undercook the rice, the enchilada helper slaps nowadays.
@5:38 - The original Evil Dead Trilogy (Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2, and Army of Darkness) is THE BOMB! I have probably watched each one of those 10 times. At my college (Doane University), the theater department presented Evil Dead: The Musical.
