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During the previous round of shirkflation I warned people about knowing what year a recipe was from because "a can" means something different in 2004 than in 2010. And now it means something different again in 2025.
Now boxes are getting the shrink treatment too.
don't trust recipes that use terrible measurements like 'a can'
Sometimes you want to make grandma's recipe and she wrote one can and isn't around anymore to ask questions about the size of the can.
But if you head over to c/cooking you will see you can't even use cans as a unit of measurement in most of the things I cook.
... 2 cans Ro-Tel tomatoes... https://texashighways.com/food-drink/ro-tel-origin-story-from-the-rio-grande-to-pantries-across-the-us/
I have one recipe in my collection that calls for Rotel. It's extremely unhealthy but so tasty and it wouldn't be too impacted by a change in can size. I make this do infrequently that every time I pick up a can I wonder if it's gotten smaller because it's already so small.
Highly recommend for anyone that is trying to gain weight.
Cheesy Noodle Mix
Servings 3.
1 lb pork sausage.
2 cups pasta (shells).
1 can Rotel.
2 cups shredded cheese.
1/2 cup sour cream.
Or a box
I have a recipe that's cans cream of mushroom, with equal parts rice and milk. The can size does not matter because it is about the ratio.
Hell that's how most of my recipes are. I don't measure like 80% of my cooking. When you're baking yeah of course. But just cooking normally? Measuring is for losers. How many ounces of onions? How many you fucking got? Garlic? There's no measurement of garlic it's as much as you can. That's how I cook. Eyeball that shit and have a spoon for tasting.
Also cans are usually you know measured pretty well themselves actually. 8 oz can hold 8 oz. Not like it's any more holy to use an 8 oz measuring cup than an 8 oz can.
Man, so many people in this thread at least unintentionally defending shrinkflation. Yes, "a box" isn't what it used to be. I'm sure if Big Agg could figure out a way to shrinkflate chicken's eggs for profit, they would. Don't give these corpo's any support for this robbery practice. They will continue to shrink things, at the same t8ime they increase prices on them to blame inflation.
Seems to me they found out for the eggs not so long ago; we now have more boxes of 10 instead of boxes of 12. I don’t quite get how that went so smoothly.
I haven't seen those yet, but yeah, seems they figured it out.
My first thought is why are people using these box mixes, the ingredients are trivial. There are recipes online that have the ingredients.
The base ingredients for many things are flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt. -- these are not expensive and are shelf stable. A chocolate cake mix adds cocoa powder. Some need vanilla.
The mix already requires adding rggs and oil.
Mixing it yourself allows way better quality control; they aren't using high quality cocoa or vanilla.
Except that these mixes also include various emulsifiers, stabilizers and preservatives, which greatly improve the resulting product.
Which you can definitely add with the new found benefit of knowing exactly what is being included in your desert.
These are basically small amounts of powered milk and corn starch. In today's markets even some of the weirder options like soy letchin are available. At some point you can end up withering that is actually vegan which is a bonus for some people.
Dry Mix (equivalent to 1 Betty Crocker box, ~15.25 oz) • 1 ¾ cups (220 g) all-purpose flour • 1 ½ cups (300 g) sugar • ½ cup (45 g) unsweetened cocoa powder • 2 Tbsp cornstarch (softens crumb, mimics cake flour) • 3 Tbsp powdered milk (flavor, structure, moisture retention) • 1 ½ tsp baking powder • ½ tsp baking soda • ½ tsp salt • Optional “pro level”: 1–2 tsp soy lecithin granules emulsifier, boxed-mix texture)
Again, it is trivial to source these ingredients and these recipes are readily available.
I checked and Walmart carries all of these. Not that I suggest going to Walmart but it's at least an option against being way the whims of whoever owns Betty Crocker this decade.
It's a shortcut
Yes and the ultimate fuck you to these mega corps is to not use their shitty products and screaming loud and wide how easy it is to not use these things.
I'm so done with absolutely everything turning to shit at the same time. What should we burn down first?
I guess time to learn to do it ourselves.
She could buy an additional box to make up the difference, she acknowledges, “but out of principle, I just can’t.”
Out of principal, I just can’t adjust the added ingredients to use slightly less because I’m an idiot.
To be fair, it’s tough to use 5/6 of an egg.
Well, 1/6 of an egg either way isn’t going to change anything.
Out of principal, I'm broke
The recipe passed down from her mother....for fucks sake she's simply making cookies from mix...learn to bake
The recipe used the cake mix but for cookies. They know how to bake since they aren't using the box mix as intended but for a mixed ingredient (like bouillon in cooking) that gets them the perfect mix of leaveners and baking powder.
Learn to read
The levener is baking powder and baking soda. Rhese are cheap ingredients a container of each can last years.
Those mixes are easy to replicate. If the mix changing prevents them from making it from scratch they were never a baker. Anymore than making me making a Mac and cheeses makes me a chef because I added some sliced cheddar.
These mixes were created for convenience. They did not create the concepts behind the end product. They are made with magical difficult to source ingredients.
Thank you
Pity there are people in the thread who think we're part of the problem and refuse to acknowledge the solution being offered.
It's fine, they can keep complaining when the argument should be about price gouging