Happy to say I'm past the piss-broke stage of life, but I'll never forget how much is sucks. One of the really shitty things about it is all the products marketed toward selling us a 'cheap' meal, and we buy it because you don't question it: it's poverty food, right? Must be among the cheapest options in the store, right?

Then you start pricing stuff out by things like cost-per-gram and realize you're getting ripped off. To answer OPs question, I'd call that dish: predatory, bc it's an up-charged box of ingredients that you can buy separately in probably that same aisle for much cheaper.

For anyone reading this who is stuck in that hell, first off: /hug. Second, the real poverty food MVP is rice. I don't recall the price off the top of my head, and even if I did I'm sure it's inflated since I was a frequent buyer, but look for "fortified short grain" which is usually the least expensive and is 'fortified' with some extra nutrients to get something other than carbs. Buy it in bulk - you can get it in 50lb bags at places like Costco (if you don't have a membership, mooch a ride there off someone who does, they can get you through the door/checkout) or Asian/Middle Eastern grocery stores. Price it out to what you're paying for the amount used in a single meal, and it's like a literal nickel.

Rice makes for a boring meal by itself, but it'll fill you up. Your second best friend is the clearance shelf. Pretty much any meat or veggie can go with rice. You'd be surprised how well other shit work with rice too... I recall having a single slice of shitty supreme pizza in the fridge; not enough for a satisfying meal, but, fuck it, whipped up a serving of rice, chopped up the slice of pizza crust and all, and threw it in when the rice was just about soft enough to eat and kinda stir fried it in. The oils from the cheese and sausage all got soaked up by the rice... end result wasn't amazing by any stretch, but it was away more satisfying than a single slice of pizza or bowl of plain rice, tasted decent, costed pennies.

Pro tip: buy some snack-sized ziplock bags, measure out what you need for a serving, portion it into a ton of individual bags, and keep those in a sealed 5-gallon buckets. There's a type of beetle that lays its eggs in rice, and it may not hatch until after you've bought it. Then they propagate, and there are tiny beetles all over the batch... and losing the better part of a 50lb bag to those fuckers is pretty heart breaking. If you portion it out first, and then it hatches, you lose a single-portion ziplock full. No biggie. Also keep the empty ziplocks and reuse them for the next big bag of rice.

Also get a cheap rice cooker as soon as you can afford it - a pot works fine, but a rice cooker will get you much more consistent results for much less effort.

Hamburger helper is bullshit. They give you some dry noodles and a "spice" pack of dubious powder, you have to provide the beef and milk. That's not helping very much.

Some of y’all never had Helper and it shows.

“Want to eat at my house? My mom’s making Helper.”

“You mean like Hamburger Helper?”

“Yeah but without the hamburger.”

Being too poor to afford hamburger is not exactly a new condition.

with real cheese

Yeah, I don't believe that an just the fact you have to say it makes me suspicious.

Money aside, beef has a horrible environmental impact. Pork (as found in hot dogs) is way better.

This is cooking with training wheels and I'm not gonna shit on it.

I hear the comments that you need to add noodles, add more spice... you know that because you started here too. I'm glad this exists to open the door to cooking for yourself, but if you know better, do better.

Give yourself so much hypertension that the inevitable heart attack is so quick you won't need to worry about paying medical bills

Hot Dog Self-Harm Assistant

Use Hot Dogs instead of Hamburger in Hamburger fucking Helper?

I think it means we are great again?

Foreign Nations gaze upon our culinary prowess in fear.

The real recession indicator is when they swap Hamburger Helper for Tuna Helper.

What the hell is this? are you supposed to eat that?

I think this was designed with poverty in mind in the first place

We did this all the time when I was a kid, my dad would make macaroni and cheese and toss in some hot dogs. It was delicious then and its delicious now.

I call this the dinner I most often had as a kid.

Uh yeah we were poor.

T-rumps in a blanket.

hotburger doggler

Try it with Ramen instead of hot dogs for even cheaper calories /s

Try with dog food!

American food is insane

A waste of money.

Box of elbow macaroni, 1/4 block of velvita and a single hot dog is WAY less than that box

This shit will raise your cholesterol like nothing else.

This shit taste good. I once microwaved and ate this on a plate. My ex looked at me and said that I eat puke like dog. I didn't flinch I was happy eating that like a dog eating puke indeed

I call it my childhood

Weiner cheese helper

Wait, so it doesn't come with ground beef? Is it just mac n cheese then?

We don't have this product in my country so I call this cheap looking food for people who can't cook.

But money is tight all around, so if this is all you can afford, I hope things get better for you soon..

Pain.

The Hamburger Helper brand sucks. Buy the store brand version. I personally enjoy the "Lasgana Skillet Meal". Has more flavor than HH, and a bit cheaper too.