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I bought the cheapest and most expensive kitchen gadgets I could find, like this $40 pizza oven and this rice cooker that costs nearly $1,000. To answer one main question, is spending more money actually worth it? With my total spend for the expensive gadgets exceeding over $15,000, I really hope so, because we're starting with the humble toaster. So we have the one here to the left for $15.99, and the one to the right for a total of almost $350. I ain't never seen a toaster that looks like this. A horizontal toaster? Oh, now that I think about it, every toaster is vertical except for this one.
Now, the toaster itself is $282, but in order for you to even plug it in and use it, you need this power adapter. Sorry. Specifically, it's a step up and down transformer. And this alone costs $65 just to power it. Uh, we're off to a start. One other thing. We all know a toaster slices two slices of bread. This only slices one. Toasts this one. You said slice. Oh, wait, sorry.
This only toasts one slice. Depends on the size of the bread though, right? Maybe in Japan, their shokupan is tiny. Maybe. Well, we have shokupan. Shall we toast? Let's toast. Cheers. If there was an emoji for a toaster, this would be it. Vertical, push down, two slots. What about your uh. This one looks kind of sick, though. I thought that this played music when I first saw it. I think it will play music just looking at it.
You can have one slice. Thank you. We're going to toast these at the exact same time. So maybe one will toast faster. We'll see. I'll give you a head start. Whoa. Okay, so you gotta select the function. There's one with a blank piece of toast, one with a snowflake, one with a. I don't know what that is. Frozen toast? And one that says FR, which I feel like would be frozen. But I'm just gonna choose the regular blank toast. And then you choose 4, 5, 6, 8.
Oh, that's thickness. I'm gonna say 5. and then toast amount. I'm gonna put it in the middle, I think. I don't know. This is extremely confusing. I think I started it. Now, while we're waiting, I just wanna talk about something really important. This is the cheapest possible, functional, well-rated toaster that we could find. Of course, there's probably a $1 toaster on Temu, but everybody says that those fall apart. We wanted the cheapest possible gadget that was guaranteed to succeed. So it has a fighting chance. So we're now finding out that the FR does not mean frozen.
It means French toast. This has a French toast function on it. This does not. Can you put a waffle in there? It doesn't have a waffle function. You'll notice that the slot is square, not circular. But then again, the slot. Oh, done! Well, you won the speed test. Let's see the toast quality. Eh. Oh, it's very inconsistent. Smells really good. Yeah. Leave it in there. Stay warm. We're gonna wait for this guy. How do I know when this is done? Is it going to tell me?
It'll sing to you. Oh. Oh, wait. So the click is getting faster. It feels like a f***ing bomb. I found the bomb. What? I honestly thought it was going to sing. Did it just beep? Does that mean it's done? I'm actually kind of surprised it worked so well. The top side looks a little bit better than the bottom side. I mean. Eh. Look at your other side. Pretty similar. Okay, okay, okay. There's only one way to test this fair and square.
Blindfolds, please. So we're gonna try. one by one, and then say which one's better. All right? Okay. Ready? Yeah. Do you have a piece of toast? Yeah. Am I feeding you? No! Oh. What the hell's wrong with you, man? All right, here we go. Going center or you going corner? Always corner. Weird. Wow. One bite. Everyone knows the rule. This bread is amazing. What are you thinking? It tastes like bread.
Tastes like good bread. I think it's amazing. Crisp on the outside, but, like, gummy and moist on the inside. Really like that. Mm, yeah. Next one. Oh. Mmm. Way crispier. Mm. Less gummy. Wait a minute. Why is this so much better? I mean, you heard that, right? Yeah. Yeah, I felt that. I thought the second was surprisingly. a step up, a little. What do you think? I like number two better.
Me too. Which one was number two? It says on the plate it's. cheap! no way. I mean, I think we have our answer here. Is it worth it to spend more on a toaster? F*** no. Moving on to the next one. Slushy machines. This is the cheapest home unit at $58. Very humble price for a slushy machine. Visually, what do you think of this? Who is this dude? It's Mr. Slushee. I don't know. Oh, it's Mr. Slushee. Good point.
Wait. Oh. That's just in case you got a big cup. This is for a medium cup. Big cup. Oh. So aesthetically I'm not gonna say this is my favorite look, but let's get this going. Remove the inlet. Fill the ice canister with ice through the ice salt inlet. All right, pour two inlet caps of salt. Pour water into the ice canister. Fill the rest with ice cube through the ice. They could have made that hole bigger. There's another page. God. This is an 11-step process.
Pour a further. three inlet caps of salt. Layers, guys. Layers. One, two, three. All right. Another 1.4 ounces of water. This is horrific. Slowly pour your preferred soda drink or syrup dilution pre chilled through the square inlet at the rear right of the canister. Okay, I'm going. Go, go, go, go. Are you gonna go, Max? Should we go, Max? I need to max win. Leave the Mr. Slushee machine running for approximately 10 to 20 minutes.
What's the switch? Right here. Look. Is this thing gonna be okay? Now what about the expensive one? $500. I will say this looks like some sort of a weapon from Halo. It looks premium. Although it's plasticky, it has an AI assist on it. So let's just open this bad boy up and pour some of this in. Oh, God. Don't miss. Another one. To turn this on, they have a SlushAssist button. I'm going to assume that's going to do it all for me. So I'm just going to press that.
Whoa! That is. tantalizing to look at. So no ice necessary at all. It's huge because it has a huge refrigeration compressor. So it's freezing it without needing to touch it, you just press the button and supposedly this will make it. It'd be kind of crazy if the cheap one produces the same quality slush. Well, I guess now we wait. The question is which one is faster than the other one? We let these guys rip for a while, but the main difference that we noticed is the Ninja finished making the slushie significantly faster than our friend, Mr. Slushie.
All right, we're done. These are very loud. There's a whole dispense button for this. Whoa! Looks a little clumpy. Looks like pebble ice. Okay, well, while we're waiting for that. Always wanted to do this. Oh, my lord. That's a visual I don't know if I want to see ever again. Well, that was quiet. This is the loud one. Blind taste. We got a drink here. Where? Okay, I've got one here. I have. I have both the straws.
Put your drink down. My drink is down. So there's a straw. Is there. there's another straw in there. I don't know what I just touched. Stop touching my straw. Do you have a straw? I have a straw. All right, you ready? Yeah. Here we go. Okay, that's one. I'm gonna pick up the other one. I think we gotta mix it up a little. Take my hand. You be the holder, I'll be the sucker. Wait, are you ready? Yeah. Let's just pick a favorite before we take them off, actually.
Okay. Second one. Second one for me also. I feel like the difference was not that substantial, but it was definitely more refined and smooth and soft. ice as opposed to, like, icy. Yeah, it came in. It went into my mouth faster than the first one. But why'd you choose it as better? It is more enjoyable. Like, I can enjoy it versus me trying to suck it hard. You guys got to pick a different word. So which was which? Expensive was the one you tasted second. Mmm, the expensive one won this one. But is it worth it to spend $500 on that?
Honestly, I would say. Well, look at this. This one, not a lot fit in there. It was loud, and you had to do so many other steps. This one, I felt like you could enjoy hours of slush. Imagine you're just kicking it with the homies, you know, playing a little card game, and you just go, one sec. Yeah, that's a good point, actually. Yeah. Versus, like, Yeah, and you only get like two drinks out of it. That's a good point, actually.
This one drink was half of the entire batch. So I guess in this case, like, if you really want a lot of slushies, spend the extra money. Probably worth it. Moving on. The next one is a coffee maker. This one is $13, and this one is $800. We have the exact same coffee. I guess we'll start these up. Yours will not make as much as mine. For $13, it better make at least a good cup of joe. I'm gonna fill mine up with water.
I've got a bigger filter than yours, so I can fit a little more coffee into mine. Oh, God, nobody's measuring. These ground coffees are already pre-measured. For the systems, I would assume. For the Ratios. Oh, funny enough, that's the name of this brand: Ratio. I've got a separate apparatus, a silicone topper going on. I don't like that. You have to align this. There should be a magnet where it's perfectly aligned. That's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. How do I turn this on? Is it voice activated for $800?
Coffee machine, on! Bloom. Do I just press this button? Should we race? Should I just press it? One, two, three, go. I don't think that's a button. It always reminds me. when we get lost, it's like, Start brewing. Zoolander, where they're hitting the computer. Wait, wait. Oh, yours is working. Oh, it's going. Oh, it's pissing. It's dripping. Whoa, this is cool. Look at the tube sucking up the wawa. Oh, he's getting coffee.
All right, brew time. Side by side so far. I think mine's still blooming. Yours is straight up brewing, 'cause I don't think yours has a bloom. Man, it's dripping! Yours is not really pouring. like mine has. Well, it's blooming, bro. I think bloom's already been done. Why does it still say bloom? Oh, we're brewing. Look at the silicone top. It's kind of messy, right? Yeah, because the water's dripping down. But there's so much distance between the shower head and the grounds
that the pool of grounds is being splashed and coming out. Not that clean. For 800 bucks. If you're going to spend $800 on a coffee machine, you should be able to set the volume of coffee that it's going to produce for you. You got a little burpee. I thought that was yours. Yeah, that's yours, dude. Yours is the one farting. Yeah. Oh, I love my coffee machine, but do it fart? It gurgles. I think yours is also farting. Yeah, mine is also farting. Look at all this condensation on here. His is still gurgling. Mine is done. So now I know where the $800 went.
It completed the brew process. like a minute earlier. While we're waiting for yours to finish, I'll show you how you disassemble this. So you take this bad boy out. You'll transfer your brew pod to this guy so it doesn't drip all over your countertop. Now, that's nice. And then you got a nice little lid. that you can pour out of that keeps your coffee hot. This is a nice little system, but this is covered in condensation and is extremely dirty on the bottom, which is kind of gross. So if you forget to wipe that off, this will become gross very quickly. Or just buy a black one and you'll never see the mold.
Wow, this is hot. I'm scared. Is it hot? It's perfect. Oh, really? Yeah. I don't believe you. It is perfect. All right. I know which one I like better. Slow down, buddy. Hang on. I haven't gotten the second cup yet. Yeah, the first one is tremendously better. Yes. The second cup literally tastes like plastic and glue. Okay, so what was the first one? Just under the mug. What?!
Oh, my God. That's almost embarrassing. Dang, dude. How is that possible? It is so much better. They're fucking with us. There's no way. I was going to say this is so much smoother. It's probably from the phases. Yeah. I was like, this isn't a fair competition because the expensive one is, like, doing a special way. The first one was, like, so smooth, not bitter at all. The second one was bitter and just acrid and terrible. The cheap one won. Damn.
Wow. Wait a minute. That means I wasted $800 on that thing. What's the return policy on that bad boy? Is it worth it or not worth it? Is it worth it? Not worth it at all. Cheers. Moving on. So far, the cheap items are not only producing better in value, but somehow producing a better product. At this point, anything is possible. Pizza ovens. For the cheap, $40. And for the expensive $1,000, we have a pizza ready to slide on there. It's preheated and ready to roll. It's very hot.
Let it rip, dude. We'll check it in five minutes. I'm a little concerned about the smoke on this bad boy, but I guess we're gonna find out. I do like how compact this is. You can only do one pizza at a time. That's fine. A lot of pizza cookers are like that. You essentially have, like, a very hot pizza stone at the bottom that's been superheated as this has been preheating because it's obviously preheated. And then on top, you have, like, a broiling coil. It's already going pretty good.
We'll see how consistent it is. Making a noise. You hear that? The clicking? No, the. yeast screaming. So this is rising in the center for some reason. I don't know why. Oh, it's touching the coil. This is bad. This is not good. This is going to be a problem. We got to open this. All right, I scooted it over. Instead of having one singular coil in the center, maybe doing an even coil around it. Also, maybe it's so shallow.
Maybe if there was more dome. We'll have to do it on the other side over here. I think it's already touching it. Yeah, you can hear it. I guess I just flatten it at this point. So far, not great. Not a great experience. So despite us rotating the pizza, it kept hitting the coil over and over again. So we decided to stop once the pizza was fully cooked. At this point, the expensive one should beat it by a landslide. But based on the previous examples, I guess we'll see. Oh, that's nice that it comes out.
It brought the stone to you. That felt fancy. We have all of our knobs set. There are all sorts of different choices here. You've got a timer, you've got a pizza style, which we have it set to 750, so it's essentially max. And then the last knob chooses how dark the pizza is going to be. We chose the middle because we don't want to go overkill here. Do we not need to rotate this at all? They said no turn necessary.
It does it all in one go. So now we wait for three minutes. It's definitely done. I mean, that looks pretty nice. Okay, so we have our two pizzas. I will say this one, it didn't quite create a nice crust. It's kind of like all one singular layer because of the way that this thing heats. But it did cook more nicely than the last one. It looks good. They both look okay. Now for the taste test. Here's our first slice. That was very thick. They're both really thick.
The first one seems crispier. Yeah, there's a lot more chew on the second one. But taste wise, I feel like the second one's a little bit underdone. They're very close, honestly. Only thing is, for me, I like the exterior of the second one, but the interior, it feels undercooked. Not raw. Just. It needed a little bit more time. Well, what if it was cooked perfectly? I would say the second one wins. I think it wins by a hair of a margin, like, barely, but yeah, the second one's a little better.
I would agree. Okay, which one do we pick? Oh, yeah, we. Yeah, we picked the expensive one. Is it worth it? I mean, honestly, I don't know if you need to spend $1,000. I just think anything is better than that $50 one. My God. Just use your home oven. Honestly, buy a stone, use your home oven. In my opinion, spending $1,000 on a pizza oven, look, if you got the cash, sure, but you could just use your home oven. So I'm going to say, not worth it. I've made better pizzas in an air fryer. Moving on. Air fryers. Our cheap version coming in at $30.
Okay. I mean, the capacity of this can be better. Oh, listen, listen, listen, listen. It's got, like a physical analog ticking clock on it. Why do all these machines feel like they're gonna explode on us? Okay, so honestly, this doesn't look that bad, but it does look really cheap with the lights and the turned off knob. I think it's passable. I wouldn't look twice at that, honestly. How long are we frying these? 8 to 10 minutes. 8 to 10 minutes! versus 3 minutes in a deep fryer.
Health or time, you pick. Here we go. I don't wanna overload it. I think that's good. Now for the expensive one, we have the Typhur Dome 2 for $400. I mean, this thing's huge. This looks like a pizza oven. We're going to use an app. What temp should we do? Oh, there's an AI function. Yo, there's literally just press fries. Those are your six food groups. 17. minutes. That's so long. Wait, what? Please head to your device and tap start.
17 minutes seems like way too much. You know what? I'll follow the AI system. Well, then run it. This is AI cooking, guys. Here we go. I mean, you could do a lot more fries, that's for sure. I almost did the whole bag. You know what I noticed about this? Tons of surface area. Instead of making it deeper, they made it wider. It's going to take up a lot of counter space. Yeah. Where are you going to put this?
I can't even fit this in any of my cabinets. I'd pick a different color, but it's nice. Good for them. Oh, you don't like this color? Smells like potatoes. Yeah, it smells like if someone ate potatoes and farted in my face. Perfect. There are a few things that this comes with, though. Number one, it also heats the bottom, not just the top. Every air fryer you've ever seen only heats on top. Well, most of them.
This one, on the other hand, heats the bottom and the top for more even cooking. So you never have to flip. And you don't need to preheat, so that's what you're spending like four times the price for. So I guess we'll see how this turns out. And after waiting 17 minutes. Okay, let's see. The quantity is very impressive, but they look the same. Yeah. The question is, do they taste the same?
Let's find out. Right here, buddy. Why do we keep touching hands? Oh, these feel crisp. It's honestly not bad, actually. Okay. Is this the new one? Yes. This one feels a little more stale. I don't even know if I notice a difference, honestly. Oh, actually, no, you're right. I just bit my lip so hard. I bit my lip so hard. Let me bite your lip. Okay, step back. To me, they're the same. I mean, I can't even tell by looking at them.
Maybe the first one was a little better. That's where I was leaning towards. I mean, we still can't tell. So I think I'm gonna go find a good fry from each one. That was my fry. Sorry. It's okay. Pretty similar. Yeah. More hollow and crispy. More stale. Yeah. I'm going first one. But it's marginal, though. I think the average person would not be able to tell. Okay, so we're picking this one.
Cheap. Not worth it. I got to be honest, I'm shocked. The cheap items are way better value, and they're getting the job done better in every way. There's no chance that the cheap ones will outwin the expensive ones. There's only one way to find out. Stand mixers. We have a cheap one for $49.99 and an expensive one for $800. Everyone's saying this is not a kid's toy, but it sure looks like one. I will say I like this one. I like the heavy-dutyness of it.
The crane arm to bring it up and down is like this fun, detachable thing. I think the coolest thing about this is it's sturdy, it's heavy duty. Right? But it's got a few interesting features. So to remove this, you just pull down and it pops off. And then if you want it back on, you just click it back in. But even cooler than that, this has a built-in scale. So you could theoretically measure your ingredients directly into the bowl. Let's see if this scale here works. Well, first of all, it's really. hard to pour in here. What's it say? 315 grams. That's accurate. There's flour left.
Oh, nice. I mean, it's really. hard to pour in this. This is how much I can turn this. If only this thing came out, right? Let's just mix and see who does a better mixing job. So we'll go in with flour. Like, how the. How do I get. the scale, dude? Thing's pissing me off, man. Do, do, do, do, do, do. That's insane that you can pour yours in there. All right. Flour goes in.
Sugar, salt, yeast. All right. Come on. Pikachu's winning this battle so far. The f***, man. There we go. All right. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. All right. Added my water. Kind of shocked yours is working. Shocked as in Pikachu? Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. Because mine isn't as heavy duty as yours. I gotta hold Pikachu's head. Dude. Like, the back end is like popping off. Well, I got a nice dough mass going. Yo. This goes the other direction. Oh, it doesn't work as well going the other way.
I think it's to get the rest of the stuff around the bowl. Oh, yeah. Now go back. Ah. Okay, that's cool. That is cool. All right. I think I'm ready for my butter. Me too. I'm surprised yours is working because it's at capacity. Also, if I let go of this, Pikachu's moving. Yours is making its way out of the bowl. Let's take our dough out, bring it together, and I wanna see what they look like.
Same ingredients to the gram. So I'm not gonna knead it. I'm just gonna leave it as is. Okay, so that's a bad sign. You said you weren't gonna knead it. I'm getting it in the shape of a ball. I'll do it to yours too. Thanks. Whoa. Why is yours so much more loose? So, I mean, you can tell right away yours is breaking apart. Mine's a lot more stable. Taste test. I mean, look, at the end of the day, yours was so much less expensive. And it did do the job. Like, theoretically, you could just keep kneading this by hand at this point.
And it's done the majority of the work after a couple minutes of kneading. Like, your dough is not going to be that different from this one. Overall, I think it's clear to say that the expensive stand mixer did a good job. Is it worth it to spend 800 bucks on it, though? I mean, honestly, for 50 bucks, yes. It doesn't have as much capacity, but it did this. It's very comparable to what yours did for $800.
Yeah, that's true. Is it worth it? No. You can get something nearly as good for way less. Maybe not $50, but you get the idea. Next up, knives. This knife is $3. This knife is $3,000. This might be one of the most expensive things we have in the entire video. Ironically, this is a one of one knife made by Jody Hale, Pie Cutlery, hand forged Damascus steel, handmade maple burl handle.
There's only one of these in the world. And there's a million of these. Probably more than a million. The question is, is one better than the other? Maybe we start with a potato and just do a clean slice in half. Ready? Go. I mean, I feel like I won that one. I was almost a close second. Let's look at the quality of the cut, though. Yours is pretty f***ed up. I'm gonna be honest with you. So you had to work a little harder, but still cut it, right?
It still works. So I'm not gonna say that didn't pass. I say that's passable. Next up, bell pepper. I think we just do something very basic here. Cut the ends, unroll it, julienne. Oh, yeah. I'm done. Ah. This knife's too heavy. Slow, dude. I do. I don't usually use a cleaver this big. This is huge. That was, I would say, one to one. Yeah. All right, not bad.
Now for chives. Chives are an interesting one because I feel like this is, like, the one thing that everybody judges knife skills on. But, like, it's not just knife skills when it comes to chives. This is what nobody wants to talk about. Nobody wants to admit to this. It is how sharp is your knife, but also the quality of the steel. Do you have good enough steel to get the bevel thin enough that it doesn't crack? So you can get crazy chives? Regardless of how great you are, if you have a bad knife, it will bruise the chives. Shall we?
Yep. Okay, we got our chives. I mean, look, if I'm being honest. As you should be. I do think these chives look better. No, for sure. But there's something important to recognize, though, and that is the distance of the blade from my finger makes it so much easier. Whereas this. Look at this. This knife ends before the blade does. Do you see that? Yeah. So you had to adapt to the knife way more than I had to. If I were to use the technique that I used on the chives, this knife will hit the board before the blade does, which means you won't finish your cut.
We're switching knives for a second. I mean, I can literally see it not doing the cuts. This is horrible. I hate this. This is like a 50/50. Which one was better? Clearly the more expensive one was better. But do you need to spend three grand? I don't think so. I think you could meet in the middle or even closer to the cheap end. But this still did the job, though. You could take care of a knife. Any knife works. Is it worth it to spend that much? Not that much. Onto the next. pepper mills.
We have this guy here for $3, and we have this guy here for $200. This. is actually revered by Michelin-starred chefs. Why is this $200? Well, first of all, shall we give it a crack? Ready? One, two, three. All right. Let's see your result. Yeah, I mean, I'm gonna say you lost, bro. Dang. Oh, it smells great, though. Doesn't it smell? Well, you can't adjust the coarseness on this. This, you can. Of course.
I mean, look, obviously this is grinding things faster, but there's a few other points I should mention about it. Like, this is, like, engineered to be a great grinder. You can adjust the coarseness. You can quickly. take the top off and refill it and then done. And you have this, like, basin thing where if you put the basin on it and you grind into the basin. Now if I'm like, in the middle of cooking and I don't want to, like, get my meat hands on that, I can just take this basin and hand sprinkle. Which one was better?
I mean, this one was clearly better. Is it worth it to spend $200 on a pepper grinder? In my opinion, I actually don't know if it is for everybody. I think this is one of those investments. If you buy it, you never have to buy another one. To me, it's worth it for, one, time efficiency. My wrist is sore for that. And you seamlessly did that. I think that this is worth it if you cook a lot. If you don't like, maybe you should just buy the $3 one.
I'm going to say worth it. 100% worth it. On to the next. Next up, nonstick pans. One for $13 and one for $270. I don't know how a nonstick pan gets up to almost 300 bucks, but, hey, I guess we'll find out. We're going to make a country style omelette. Visually, I will say this is beautiful. It is. It's definitely shiny. So it's got, like, shards of diamond or is it just sprayed on Teflon? To make our country style omelette. Four eggs, gonna add a little splash of cream. Season them, salt and pepper. Whisk them, one knob of butter. in your pan.
Nice. It's working. Yours is definitely hotter than mine. Even though they're at the same temperature. I'm gonna increase my heat to medium. Your pan is so much thinner, so I wonder how it's gonna affect the cook of this omelette. Oh, God. This butter's melting faster than mine, which, by the way, not always a good thing. True, true. I'm not trying to burn it. My butter's melted. Mine's almost melted. But I will say this is heating super evenly, which I can appreciate.
All right, let's go in with our eggs. I'm gonna up my heat just a little. This is the Jacques Pépin style. So as the edges start to cook, you're gonna kind of just bring them towards the center like that, and then refill. Center of the pan, refill. Then you'll just repeat that. I will say this pan is kind of difficult to tilt. It's, like, super heavy. So keep repeating it until there's, like, virtually no more wet egg to do that with. I'm kind of out of wet egg at this point. I don't know how that happened. I thought your pan was hotter than mine. At that stage, we have cheese.
You're gonna add it to one side. Cheese. One side. Yes, chef. Oui, oui, baguette. And then once it's cooked just enough, you're gonna get underneath the other half that does not have the cheese, and then fold it over the cheese side. Simple as that. If it's cooked enough. Should be fine. Nope, we folding it. Here we go. Yeah, it's fine. Bring it over to one side away from you. And then you're gonna add in that other knob of butter. Increase the heat to medium. And then I want you to just kind of spread it around so that it melts a little faster. Just, just tilt the pan away from you and let the butter kind of seep underneath your omelette.
God, your pan is just, like, hot. The goal here at this point is just melt the cheese and toast the underside of this omelette. If yours is done, you can flip it onto the plate. Yeah, that looks nice. This one's, like, too nonstick, bro. All right, here's our omelets. They both look nice. Yours got way more browning because your pan was thinner, so you got more color. But it looks nice. It looks good. They both look good. Two different omelets. Let's blind taste test. The omelette is on the fork already. Oh.
Are we holding the same omelette? Okay. Cheers. That's nice. Very nice. Seasoned nicely. Okay. Well done. Beautifully. Fork down. Forks down. Now what? I got another fork. I got another fork as well. Cheers. It's also nice. Mm, some twang on that one. What are your immediate thoughts? Both delicious. Talk to me. Sorry. I want you to know that when I put my hand down, I touched something warm and wet, and I just tore it off and put it in my mouth.
It wasn't me. It's tough. Cause they're so different. I mean. I know which one I like better. I kind of like the first one a little bit more. Same. I feel like there's a nicer, even crust. Yeah, it's cooked more nicely. Yeah. Seasoning, cheese, all that aside, we're focused on the pan. And I think the first one cooked the better omelette. You know what's crazy though, is that they were both in the pan the same exact amount of time. Yeah. Okay, so the first one, we're picking that one. Which one was the first one?
This one. Yeah! So the pan actually did affect it pretty tremendously. That's kind of crazy. Seasoning aside, cheese aside, the cook on the egg was totally. Same amount of time in the pan. Fluffier. Same heat on the pan. This is harkening back to one of my favorite age old things. It's like sometimes the analog stuff, you do really get what you pay for because the material really matters. Conductivity, how the heat transmits into your food ultimately does impact the quality of the final outcome.
I will say, though, if somebody has a less expensive pan, there is a way that you can get eggs like this. You just have to work way harder. You gotta control the fire. You have to move along and just be more hands on. This one, it does a majority of the guessing work. So is it worth it to spend more money on a nonstick pan? Kind of, yeah. All right, moving on. Rice cookers. This one, a humble $17. And this Zojirushi that you can buy for literally $855. almost $1,000 to cook just rice.
Mm. Cooks more than rice. It could cook oats. It can cook pancakes. Fair play. Okay, so let's open these bad boys up and get this going. So rice goes in before you guys any say anything. This is washed rice. Water goes in. Water's already pre measured for us. Lid goes on. Twinkle, twinkle. No, no, no, no, no. You can't say the words because it's copyrighted. One thing I should note is this takes like 15 to 20 minutes. minutes to cook.
Is the wait time and the cost gonna be worth it? Let's find out. All right. Good Lord. That was surprisingly loud. Our rice is done. We're gonna open these bad boys up. But also look at these rice paddles. Look at this thickness. It's ergonomic. And wait. Oh. we're gonna fluff this rice. I will say Zojirushi is my go to rice cooker, but this one is insane. Cause you can get a Zojirushi for like 150 bucks or something like that. This one being 800, I feel like is overkill. So this rice better be tremendously better cooked than that. So time for the blind taste test. All right.
Here we go. First bowl of rice in front of me. Hmm. It's cooked decently, but there's definitely like some spotty wateriness in that. It's good rice. This one. The second one's a lot watery. Second one's way more overcooked and it's watery. It's like very oversaturated with water. I don't think it's steamed. as much. This would make better sushi rice, this one. If you did anything more to it, it would have just been mush.
You're saying this. I can't see. First one. Sorry. First one. To put it simply, the second one. To me, I would not serve the second one. The second one is totally overcooked. First one. Easy. I'm going to be really upset if this is not the expensive one. Three, two, one. Thank God. Finally, the money being worth it. The expensive one was better. Is it worth it? I would say yes. Not necessarily to that specific one though. If you want better rice, get a Zojirushi. But you don't have to get this expensive $800 one.
They make them for like 150. Get that one. There you go. Done. Moving on. Finally, we've got some expensive items getting some wins. So that I don't feel so bad for spending a bunch of money on all this. But will that hold up with our next item? Cast iron pans. The cheap one for 14.75 and the expensive one for $250. I didn't even know cast iron could get that expensive. This is what, Mainstays? And then apparently the most expensive 12 inch cast iron pan that we could find was a Yeti. Like the cooler company.
I will say one thing that's a little annoying about this pan is it comes completely unseasoned. But it is beautiful, I will say. I mean, feel that. Do other cast irons come seasoned? I feel like regardless if you buy it, you still have to season it. Yeah, but you're spending 250 on this. Don't you think they can pre season it for you? Is this what a season one looks like? That's what a season one looks like. So we're gonna be using the season one.
Aesthetically, I do think that this one looks way better. It looks beautiful. Let's see the weight too. Just. Okay. Pretty heavy. Trade ya. This one feels heavier. This is lighter. Yeah. Holy. But it looks good. Let's hear it. I just broke my knuckles. We have a steak which we will both cook identically and see which one does a better job. All right, so we're preheating our pan to medium-high heat.
Season the beef with salt and pepper on both sides. I'm a no pepper guy. Interesting. Until after I finish with pepper. Well, we don't even have pepper over here, so. You don't have a pepper cannon? So this pan's at. 216. Oh, shit. This is way hotter. This one definitely heated faster, which tells me that it's less dense. You're at 400, dude. Burning your steak. This pan got actually a little too hot. I'm kind of shocked.
Can you not hold your handle? I can. That's expensive. Actually, yeah, kind of. How hot is this one? Oh, this one's not hot at all. Wow. I like that one so far. Appreciate you. Quit having so much fun. Why don't you pick up your pan and move the oil around? Ow. Shall we? Yep. Ready? We're just gonna do it very basic. Two to three minutes per side. Baste with butter. Call it a day.
We're gonna flip our steaks. It's been three minutes. Well, I think this could have had more time. I don't like the crust on this one. I guess wherever you were in contact in the pan, you got a little better Maillard. Let's baste and finish these and taste these steaks. Oh, this pan is just way too hot, man. The butter burned immediately. I also turned the heat down. Shout out to the butter, giving us the color that we wanted.
Ooh. She look good. Uh-oh, uh-oh. Let me see it. Ooh. Oh, Good. So the flip side of mine ended up going. way, way, way better. Better color, Maillard, kind of shocked. Side by side cleanup. They both look pretty much the same at this point. All there is left is to taste the steaks. But honestly, the steaks kind of look pretty much the same. Yeah, I think so. The only thing I'll call out is this one got way too hot, way too fast. Yeah. So it's thick enough to retain the heat, but it's thin enough that it gets too hot.
Okay, we have our steaks. Take a looksy-loo. Nice. Nice, dude. Bang. You ready? Is there one in front of you? That is a chewy steak. Beefy. Tastes good, though. All right. Why are you grabbing me, man? Do I have one? Mm-hmm. How do you know? Honestly, those taste the same to me. The second one maybe has a slightly better crust. Slightly? Slightly, like 5%. But maybe that was just the piece I got. What do you think?
I favored the second one. Yeah. But by how much? That hair that was on there. Okay, this is the second one. Money. Yeah, money. Yeti, AKA the one I cooked. Honestly, I will give it to Yeti. Is it worth it to spend more money on a cast iron pan? I gotta say, it was noticeably better and it was nicer-looking. Feel more durable. If I drop the Yeti, I think it would hold. The other one looks like it would crack. Based off of the sound.
Dink, dink. I have one nuanced thought. I think that if you're the type of person that's gonna use a cast iron a lot and you happen to have budget, there's no doubt you should get the more expensive one. But if budget is like, seriously constrained, let's be real, like, the other cast iron still works. It's not like it doesn't work. So I think for the specialist, it's worth it. But if you're not a specialist, like, probably not. It's like 50/50 worth it. Not worth it. For me, it's worth it. I would go with the more expensive one, 'cause I would cook with it more than an average person.
Worth it. Next up, the blender. We have a classic Oster blender for $23 and the industry-standard Vitamix. But the most expensive, nicest one you can get for 750 buckaroos. I will say I've always been a big Vitamix advocate. I use the restaurant one. That's like 500 bucks. That one to me is enough. I wonder if we'll get more from this.
I felt like cracking my back. That was nice. That was worth $750 right there. The best way to test these was to do a jalapeno salsa with a bunch of oil that you emulsify into the jalapenos. There's no egg yolks, no nothing. Because when you blend this, the power of the blender is really what determines how good the sauce is gonna look. If it's a good blender, it should be completely smooth and completely creamy. So we'll add probably, honestly, all this, if you can. You might need a splash of water in there. You can throw in some garlic. Why not?
Throw in some lime zest. Why not? Little bit of lime juice, a little splash. Here we go. This is gonna be really loud. God, yours is loud. Done. Not horrible. Let's get it out of the blender and then we'll decide. How about that? All right, here we go. The moment of truth. Get it all shaken up. Get some of those bubbles out of there. Although they do look similar, I will say you can see. this being far more emulsified and just generally glossier.
Let's talk about that real quick. How did that even make it through the whole blend process? All right, so visually, I'm gonna say that this sauce won. But we didn't blind taste test it yet. It's hot, but not too hot. I like that. Okay, so that's one. Now for two. The texture of the first one was it felt like a sauce, but the second one, it was more watery. It felt watery, but it was way more cohesive, though. Cause I definitely enjoyed the first one. But I think the first one was the Oster one.
Should I take my blindfold off? No, no, no. Why? I'm still thinking. Yeah, I think the first one tasted better. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, yeah. I gotta find my glasses. Hang on. Where the. did I put them? Considering you still got a good sauce in the Oster one, it kind of makes me think this isn't actually worth it. I agree. It depends on who you are. If you're just home cooking it up, then it's fine. Use the cheap one. If you want to take it to the nth degree, like, chef level, you can always spend more. But is it worth it? For most people, probably not.
The durability of that blender being 750 could probably make gallons on gallons and gallons that might break down after, like, the fourth time if I'm overheating it. So what you want to say, like, in the middle of one? Yeah. I wouldn't pay 750 for an outstanding blender. I'd meet in the middle and even go a little cheaper if you want to. I like that. We'll just go in the middle. We're in between worth it and not worth it right in the middle. So we move on.
Ice cream makers. We have a $20 ice cream maker and an $800 ice cream maker. In fact, this is considered the best, most expensive home unit ice cream maker money can buy. And we have a special guest. Mr. Haynes is here. He's usually behind the camera, but. Christian had a baby just now. Well, he didn't have the baby. Maybe he did. The point is, Haynes is so kind enough to jump in and stand in for him today. I've got a bucket. That's about it. I think we should do this at the same time to show people what $800 gets you. Yeah, we're gonna race.
Is this a vanilla ice cream base? Yeah. Egg yolks, cream, sugar, milk. Super simple. Oh, it smells great. Okay. You know what? I'll let you get a head start. Go for it. All right, I've got my frozen canister. Stick my paddle into the base. So I'm gonna pour this into there. All right, I'm done. Hey, it's not a race. And now I put my motor on, and now I gotta start putting ice in. I think I'm having more fun than you.
You're alternating rock salt and ice. Yeah. Nice little layering. Now I get to plug mine in. It's squeaking. This for sure will be done in 30 minutes. I don't know how long that will take, so I guess we'll find out. So let's open these up. I mean, mine looks. This looks insane. I'm a big ice cream guy. I'm a big gelato guy. This thing technically advertises that it's gelateria quality gelato or ice cream. If you were to serve it straight out of this, you would essentially have gelato because it's really soft.
You can see if I scoop in here, it scoops out, like, unbelievable. There's a smoothness to it. It's super smooth. And then if you were to freeze it, it would become ice cream. Mine's probably the same. It's kind of just hot in this room. Yeah, it was working. That must be what it is, right? It was working against the elements. Yeah. No, you're right. I think you're right. Yeah. If I got served this at a gelateria in Italy, I'd be pretty mad. Yeah.
The price disparity is huge. I will say, if you continue to churn this, probably you will eventually get ice cream. It just takes a lot longer. The one thing I want to note is look at the crystal structure. It's icy. It's super icy. You got big chunks of ice. Whereas this one is, like, almost glossy because it's super, super smooth. A lot of people would look at them, be like, oh, I don't care. Trust me, you care. Great ice cream, to me, is determined by, like, the crystalline structure. That's enough talking.
More blind taste testing. Wow, that's so good. I think I know which one that is. I'm at a loss for words. I felt like I needed to do that in private. If that's the cheap one, I think I need to leave the food world, like, altogether. If that's the cheap one, I'm gonna disfigure my body. All right, round two. Mm. Here's the thing. There's no flavor problem, but the texture of that icy. It was lacking lusciousness. Yeah, that was like a milkshake that, like, sat on the pass a little too long. The winner is number one to me.
Yeah, number one. Which one was number one? The expensive one. Yeah. Is it worth it? Here's what I'll say. If you just want ice cream, I feel like you should just go buy it. Honestly. Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. Like, this is so much work. Like, just go buy a pint of ice cream. Yeah. Like, this is like kind of like a fun activity. But that motor's gonna break. Yeah, that's not gonna last. That thing was smelling like it was on its last leg. If your goal is to make really good ice cream really easily, spending more money will get you there. So I'm gonna say worth it. On to the next.
Oh, wait, there's actually someone in here. What's that? You should follow this Instagram account, @benandlynns or go to benandlynns.com. I'm working on a special project. If you want to learn more, you can go to benandlynns.com and subscribe to the email newsletter, and we'll let you know as soon as possible. Link's in the description, or just go to @benandlynns on Instagram. That's it. Next up, microwaves. Our cheap one at $59, while the expensive one is a whopping $1,159.
We're going to test these with two different methodologies. A, water. How quickly does it heat up the water? Is this going to heat it up 10 times faster? And sweet potatoes to see if they cook at the same rate and if they cook as nicely. So let's start with the water. So we're not cheating. Let's make sure our water is at the same starting temperature, shall we?. Mine's bigger than yours. Does this have a boil water function? I think we're just gonna do 30 seconds. Yours is actually quieter than this one. Yeah, it's kind of built different.
I think we should put our heads right on top of this. I'm good. Mine's done. That's some hot water. We'll call it 110. 111. Okay. Oh, oh. 130. So I mean, that's a pretty significant. difference. Actually. This started at like, let's call it 70 and went up to 110. Yours did it like 1.5x faster than mine. That's significant. That should be 1.5x. the price. Instead. it's like 20x the price.
Yeah, that's true. All right, well, we have one more test the potato. One other thing you would typically do is you wrap these in a damp paper towel to keep them moist. This feels like a safety hazard. Here we go. Pop them in. I say we use the potato function. Baked potatoes. Sensor, press start. They both have potato function. Both potato function. But yours says it has a sensor. If it doesn't have a scale or a camera, what is it sensing in there?
Vibes? That's a pretty good thing to sense. See you when the potatoes are done. Is she steamy? Well, this side is cooked and the other side is raw. Let's see if it's forked tender. Now let's turn it around. So you just have to flip this one. No big deal. Mine's still ahead of yours. So is it, though? Because yours is half-cooked. If mine comes out fully cooked, you've lost. Not over yet. That's hot. That's not a good sign. That. That sounded a little dense. I'll give you that. That looks raw in the middle.
Unfortunately. it's not cooked. Okay, so your sensor doesn't work. Yeah, sensor doesn't work. I think we can make a determination. Spending more money on your microwave, not worth it. Okay, so the final verdict. We've now tested all these cheapest and most expensive. Here is the final list. This is how many were worth it. This is how many were not worth it. I'm kind of surprised. My takeaway at this point is I'm shocked at how many of the expensive items didn't even come close and actually lost to the cheapest items,
which I was going into this expecting this to be a wash, like all the cheap ones were going to lose. Sweep. The most shocking to me was the coffee machine. Yeah. When I drank the good cup, I was like, this is the expensive one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My jaw was on the floor. So I think the takeaway is very simple. Just because you spent more money does not guarantee you are going to have a better product in your hands. In fact, sometimes it's not even worth it at all.
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