The A5 Wagyu Hamburger Helper

east meets west, in my ass

What the fuck is up, clowns?

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! Ours was pretty low-key, and the EMTs only had to come once to remove the turkey from my ass. That’s a record low. Me going straight to talking about a turkey in my ass within three sentences in this newsletter, is also a record low.

If you’re anything like me, you probably don’t want to cook for a whole week after Turkey Day. Thankfully, it’s 2023, and the marvels of food science make it such that you can craft an entire meal by throwing some shit together from a box.

That’s why products such as Hamburger Helper come in handy during your time of need. All you need to do is brown some meat (who doesn’t love some brown?), pour the pasta and sauce powder in along with some liquid, and voila, you’ve got dinner done in all of 20 minutes.

However, if you’re an important food writer like me, you must avoid talking about enjoying these sorts of convenience foods at all costs. You see, if you admit you fix yourself Hamburger Helper publicly, there’s a tiny rule in the James Beard Award handbook that says you are no longer eligible to win anything.

But there’s a loophole. If you do something cheffy with Hamburger Helper, like how you say, zhuzh it up somehow (you can’t see me but I’m doing a swirly finger gesture), you will automatically win back the attention of your peers and be heralded as a genius.

Well, it just so happened that I had an unusual ingredient in my freezer that has been sitting in there for years now: an entire A5 Wagyu steak.

The thing was a leftover artifact from my day job at The Takeout, when I wrote a piece about how to cook a Wagyu steak without royally fucking it up, nearly two years ago. This whole time I’ve been too chicken to try cooking the extra steak myself, which is ironic, considering that I wrote the piece to instill confidence in your cooking skills should you find yourself equipped with one. (Thankfully, I had my friend Dave Park of Jeong Restaurant here in Chicago to walk me through the process.)

I thought deeply about how little I wanted to cook this week, yet how I still wanted to bask in the lap of luxury because the world has beaten my morale to a pulp. And that’s why I decided to put the king of all beef, an A5 Wagyu steak, in actual Hamburger Helper.

First, I decided that it would be interesting to compare the opulent Hamburger Helper against the usual variation containing regular old ground chuck. I mean, it’d barely involve any actual cooking, so it wasn’t like this was going to be much extra effort.

Also, you may notice that there’s a new gang member in the photos today. That’s because friend of the newsletter, Kimmi (who’s inspired previous editions), brought Davida and I a little gift from Japan in the form of a new friend.

When we brought our new pal home, I asked Davida, “What should we name her?”

After a few moments, Davida declared, “Yoshimitsu.” I just stared at her.

“Isn’t that a character from Tekken?” she asked me.

“Why are you asking me? Didn’t you just pick that name?” I replied. In case you’re not into video games, Tekken is a fighting game franchise from Japan. I think Davida and I have played it maybe once together, so why she instantly came up with that, I don’t know.

“So we have Harvey, Mr. Bee, Pepper…and Yoshimitsu,” I said. She nodded. My wife, ladies and gentlemen. Everyone, meet Yoshimitsu.

For today’s experiment, Davida and I got into a long discussion regarding which flavor of Hamburger Helper would be best for this.

What’s interesting is that there’s about a million of them. Our mutual favorite flavor by far is Stroganoff, but the thing is, that one feels almost too fancy to do a proper job of representing Hamburger Helper. So I went with a classic, Cheeseburger Macaroni.

I prepped one box by following the instructions, using heavily discounted ground beef I got from the store. After about 20 minutes, I set the normal version aside and went straight to work on the Wagyu version.

In case you’re wondering whether or not I have a conscience, yes, I felt real weird about doing this.

Maybe even a little bit guilty. But then I realized that I also convinced myself to deep-fry a fresh black truffle and dip it into ketchup once, so I said to myself, “Dannis Ree, if you managed to desecrate a black truffle, you can certainly put the finest and rarest beef in the world into Hamburger Helper.”

I can feel a few of you getting real mad right now. You’re valid.

I trimmed the big bits of fat off the ribeye (don’t worry, I kept it for future cooking purposes) and cubed the meaty center, which frankly, was also almost all composed of fat too.

As I did this, I could feel my hands getting slick with glistening lipids as the Wagyu warmed up to room temperature. Mmm…glistening lipids.

“Hey, do you think I should drain the Wagyu after it’s done cooking?” I asked Davida, as it sizzled away in my non-stick pan that would add absolutely no appealing color to the meat.

She thought carefully and said, “Well, if we were eating the steak like normal people, we’d be eating all of it including the fat, wouldn’t we? So no.”

I appreciate that she clarified her reasoning by citing what “normal people” do. Apparently we’re a pair of space aliens.

Once the meat was browned, I poured in the pasta, sauce powder, milk, and water, per the Hamburger Helper’s usual instructions.

Look at that A5 Wagyu beef, simmering away in Hamburger Helper liquid, just like God intended.

Rich people would kill to get their hands on this stuff and here I was, just making it for a casual weeknight off-the-shelf dinner. It’s less that they’d covet the actual beef; if the well-to-do people I know are any indication, they’d order the A5 Wagyu at a restaurant and post a pic of it on social media just to watch the jealous comments roll in.

Then they’d take a bite, shrug, say it was “only okay” to their dining companion, and roll off in a Maserati while discussing potential new strategies to commit more SEC violations.

I decided that if I was going to put what I’m conservatively guessing was $120 worth of Wagyu beef into $2.25 Hamburger Helper, I should put a garnish on top.

So I dusted it with the finest of all dehydrated herbs, dried parsley, which essentially tastes like nothing. But it sure looks nice!

I let the gang plus their new friend Yoshimitsu take a gander at both versions of Hamburger Helper, and no one said anything.

The regular version is on the left, and the Wagyu is on the right. As you can tell, the Wagyu one ended up being a lot more saucy—the volume of Wagyu beef was a lot smaller than that of the ground chuck, plus a lot of its fat had rendered out during cooking.

Since Yoshimitsu was our newest adopted friend, I let her examine both versions of Hamburger Helper before I did.

She just stared at the first spoonful. Maybe she was scared of the language barrier or something, but she was awfully quiet. Anyway, the Hamburger Helper was exactly how I enjoy it, not too flavorful (that bright orange color is deceiving), heavy on the meat, and pretty darn filling. Basically, it’s the pinnacle of American food.

Then, of course, I had to try the A5 Wagyu beef Hamburger Helper.

After I took my first bite, my eyes rolled so far back into my head they came tumbling out my ass. This was hilarious. Those little beef bits had shrunk quite a bit, but they were still essentially pure fat, the excess of which had also leeched into the sauce. I involuntarily moaned, and my arteries hardened as if Medusa had stared them straight in the face.

The interesting thing about Wagyu fat is that it has a very distinct flavor, sort of like slightly toasted nuts, and you can just tell that it’s different. I felt like I was eating diamonds or something. I didn’t have to convince Davida to try this, as opposed to some of my other bullshit.

“I’ll never eat Hamburger Helper any other way from now on,” Davida said, around a mouthful. But after a few more bites of it, I actually had to stop because I wasn’t feeling so good. I guess doctors don’t recommend you drink beef tallow for a reason. I packed both versions up and put them into the fridge.

The next day, I brought a Tupperware container of the Wagyu Hamburger Helper to work, excited that I had something special to eat at the office.

(In case you’re curious about that photo—The Takeout shares an office space with my comrades at multiple other sites, one of which includes The Onion.)

I sat in our break room alone eating lunch, and it turns out, Wagyu Hamburger Helper is an awful thing to eat at work. I didn’t eat a ton of it, but the further I got into it, the worse I felt. Halfway through the bowl, I realized I’d been slogging through a bunch of mushy greasy pasta full of little fat deposits, but I was determined to finish what I brought. Later that afternoon, I could barely type a word, since all I could do was feel that pool of grease in my stomach. Great job, numbnuts.

So as I sit here wrapping up writing today, I did a genius thing and googled “Wagyu Hamburger Helper,” and it turns out that I am not the only person who’s done this—turns out a wildly popular YouTuber, General Sam (with 1.43 million subscribers, yikes), did this a year ago.

Fuck me, I guess. At least General Sam, Davida, and I, have shared a very unique experience (and Yoshimitsu, who refused the spoonful I offered her). But don’t worry, if you rush over right now, I’ll microwave you a bowl of the leftovers. We can all feel sick together. And if this is what it feels like to be rich, I think I’ll stick to the discounted ground beef.

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There’s a million ways to cook a steak, and now I can say I’ve tried one of the rarest. If you guys enjoyed reading today’s edition of the newsletter, don’t forget to share it on social media like Reddit, Instagram Stories, and Facebook.

And of course, don’t forget to upgrade your subscription to the full one—paid subscribers get exclusive editions, and, well, you keep the newsletter running. That Hamburger Helper was an investment, you guys.

Plus, if you’re upgraded, you can view all of the previous Food is Stupid content, which spans back over four years now. That’s a lot of fucking around to read when you’re on the toilet.

Okay, everyone—time for me to haul ass. As always, I love you guys, and next week’s edition is for paid subscribers. Go get some holiday shopping done.