Not the same, but Restaurant Impossible would show making restaurant quality meals and the actual costs associated. Puts into perspective how much you can do if you budget ingredients

Atomic Shrimp does this all the time - I sorta believe that his £1 / 2 days challenge might have been the basis of some MP misunderstanding it and claiming that people can live on 50p/day

https://youtube.com/@juliapacheco

Watch her she does this and her meals are great.

I’ve wanted to do this in conjunction with Aldi using only aldi ingredients for a long time now. I’ve always wanted to make a rehearsal video and send it to them. Think they’d go for it?

I’m going to date myself, but we used to have this show called Yan can cook. Chinese guy teaching you cheap ways to cook Chinese food.

How tag line “Yan can cook. And so can you.” Dude is a legend.

The Marvin Show is your poor man’s cooking show. Hosted by one time Big Brother participant Marvin Latimer. It’s hard to put to words or describe the show so I just linked a memorable episode. This was on broadcast TV at some point. Green screen doorway and all.

Another poor man’s cooking show was Masaokis. He had a poor grasp on food in general and his genre is more “cooking with hoarders” with a heavy splash of harebrained philosophy. One video is about hot dogs and peaches. I haven’t watched the video in a long time but I can still remember the sound he made after tasting the concoction of hot dogs blended in peach juice. He tried to cook a steak on the rim of his toilet by burning paper. He thought the shell of an egg was the egg whites. He made a smoothie with whole moldy peaches and unpeeled oranges and who knows what else.

I believe his whole mythology was that he filmed in an apartment he would go to when he was on a bender. I think I remember seeing a much nicer less trashed apartment in one video. It has been a long time but I remember seeing a ton of books on a shelf with all their spines placed inward. The conditions he cooked in are not for the faint of heart. I can think of at least 2 fires starting from all the shit on his stove.

There are like nine seasons of a show called Struggle Meals.

Because no one watches cooking shows anymore.

Plug for BeyondFoodMarket

He’s got a lot of short videos where he makes something for $10 or less (his lowest was $2 if I remember right).

There are a number of cooks who did that, even as series or cook books. Low budget cooking or student cooking are the terms to look out for.

If you want low budget cooking, you can also look into food prepping and freezing, as large batch cooking is often a very money-conscious idea. I often cook large batches of some meals, usually 12-15 liters. Portion it off as needed and freeze it. One day of work when you’ve got the time and the ingredients are on sale, and countless hours saved on everyday cooking.

Where could you even find healthy ingredients for under $10 that will last a few days?

It can’t be beans and rice again, all the time.

This sounds like most daytime television anytime I catch it tbh

Every match ends with an 8 way tie of

Welp, it’s edible! You Win

In Sweden (where food is generally more expensive than in the US) we have several options. One food blogger launched a series called ”Portionen under tian” (Meal portion under 10 SEK/$1) which got so popular that she got to write several recipe books from it. We (or at least the people I hang around with) also use thrifty options like “Karma” and “Too good to go” which can stretch healthy meals for a family of three - four for almost a whole week (given that the kids eat lunch at school) for under 300 SEK/$30, and not be the same food every day.

Others in this thread have commented that the very cooking shows you’re asking about already exist.

There’s surely got to be something like this on YouTube