Mia Boyd and Maeve Hickok tested ORHS foodie favorites, and then used their stellar buds to recreate the recipes at home. Watch this video to follow their recipes, ratings, and discover whether what you’re spending on eats is worth it, or whether you should give making these favorites at home a shot. For Maeve’s written synopsis, read on.
VIDEO COMING SOON….
Synopsis
What is a synopsis you ask? It’s what people with a thesaurus use instead of summary. The synopsis of this article is simple. This is a food article, but not just any food article. It’s a food article that involves tasting, testing, recreating, and (the best ingredient) a dash of chaos. Mia and I (Chef Maeve) set out to answer the long contemplated but never ever answered question: make it or buy it?
Three foods were expertly tested and remade along our journey. The trifecta included mac and cheese, pizza, and french fries (in that order). And it wasn’t just any old mac and cheese, pizza, and fries but Oyster River High School student favorites. This line up included The Work’s mac and cheese, a slice of cheese from Durham House of Pizza (DHOP), and the local Ronnie’s Steakhouse french fries. If you just thought to yourself, I’ve never heard of Ronnie’s Steakhouse, this article’s comedic sophistication might be too much for you.
But why test these three foods specifically? The answer: post-game munchies. And what is the end goal, you ask? And I say, you have asked too many questions during this and you need to just let me explain.
Before writing this article, if you had asked me if I’d rather make a pizza for little to no cost or go out and buy a slice of DHOP for a little over 3 dollars, I would tell you DHOP on every day ending in Y. I would tell you the convenience and taste of DHOP is unmatched. But the real reason is that I have no idea how to use an oven. And another real fear, I make a pizza so good that it puts DHOP out of business. Because I’m always looking out for the little guy, like Ronnie’s Steakhouse, what would they do if I made a better french fry.
But I knew my bank account needed a break. I needed to unlock my inner Jeremy Allen White, and “Yes Chef” my way back into financial stability. Mia and I weren’t messing around in our recreations, almost everything was made from scratch. Starting with the Mac and Cheese.
MAC AND CHEESE
Everyone knows if you want a good bowl of Mac and Cheese, The Works is the spot. For only 1,110 pennies you can purchase that bowl of cheesy goodness. Old me would have said, “What a deal” but new me says, “Whatta rip off.” The cost of our Mac and Cheese is 0 pennies, because like many of you, the ingredient cabinet at your house is fair game. If you are a parent, the cost might be a little more than zero, especially factoring in the cost of the house, the oven, the refrigerator, or the electricity that you would need to run this operation.
Mia and I first had to taste test for journalistic and research purposes. We found key ingredients: cheese, pasta, and various spices. The cheese was thick, and the pasta was in shell form. Then, using only this basic knowledge, we attempted to recreate Th. The process and reviews can be found using the QR code, but the result, I kid you not, is better than The Works mac and cheese. It took just as much time as it would to go to The Works and order and cost us nothing. So, if you were reading this thinking, I was gonna say The Works is worth it, you are wrong.
Ingredients
8 oz of pasta shells
2 tablespoons of salted butter
2 tablespoons of all purpose flour
¼ cup of white cheddar cheese
¼ cup of mozzarella cheese
Measure with heart Garlic and Onion Powder
Good Ol’ S&P
Breadcrumbs
PIZZA
Is there anything better than a good slice of pizza? World peace, maybe, but there’s room for debate. I love pizza so much that it’s hard to articulate what it means to me. I think at this moment my blood pizza sauce content, BPSC for short, is at an all-time high coinciding with my Dominoes Rewards.
But enough about me, let’s talk pizza testing. We took inspiration from the great pizza reviewers of MOR’s past. Zach and Spencer’s Pizza Adventure was the OG pizza article written in 2017. We replicated their reviewing process to analyze the flavor profile of DHOP. Zach Leichtman (‘18), co-author of Zach and Spencer’s Pizza Adventure, commented on his process. “We were very serious in the way we went about testing, including all the angles of the cheese pull. . . We were very cautious not to have any bias.” Using the advice of MOR’s greats, we did just the opposite; our process is riddled with bias and tomfoolery.
Our analysis of the pizza included the sweetness of the tomato sauce, the crispiness of the crust, and enough cheese to put a lactose intolerant into a diaper. Using this knowledge and some help from Mia’s Italian ancestors, we crafted a pie so delectable Dave Portnoy would give it an 8 out of 10.
The only problem that occurred was a debate so heated it could have cooked the pizza. Pizza sauce versus pasta sauce. According to Mia Boyd’ardee, the two are in no way interchangeable. I say, “tomato tamato.”
Now, let’s get to the meat and potatoes, or should I say, the sauce and cheese. Was the pizza better than DHOP? The answer, for me, is no. I’m an honest critic, and even though I have pizza bias, nothing beats takeout pizza. It’s impossible. But does the cost of DHOP ($3) justify it? That’s a hard no. Especially considering that we, amateur pizza makers, handmade the dough and sauce.
Ingredients
2 and a ½ teaspoons of yeast
2 teaspoons of Sugar
Sprinkle of salt
2 cups of AP Flour (Cause it’s smart like that)
¾ Cup of Water
2 tablespoons of Olive Oil
2 tablespoons of Tomato paste
½ can of Tomato Sauce
Salt and Peppah
Crushed Red Pepper
Onion and Garlic powder to taste
FRIES
I think if I ever go to flavor town, Mcdonald’s fries would be there. I’m salivating just thinking about them. Knowing this, recreation was a difficult task, but not one Mia and I shied away from.
The first thing to analyze about any fry is the cut. Mcdonald’s goes with a classic shoestring, but its knot hard to mess up. The average Mcdonald’s fry is 2.3 inches long, or 58.9 millimeters for you Europeans. This is important to know because as we selected potatoes, we wanted consistency in both fry size and distribution of crispiness.
The process of french frying was slightly more complex than anticipated. It wasn’t as simple as throwing sliced potatoes into a fryer.
We first soaked our sliced fries in cold sugar water for an hour, then we boiled the fries, dried them off, and finally fried them in two rounds. This process took much longer than expected but the result was a fry just as tasty as one handed out of a drive through window. And for the price of a few potatoes, which is practically nothing, it was financially worth it. Although for the time it took, I’d freeze a few pre boiled batches.
Ingredients
Potatoes
Salt
– Mia Boyd and Maeve Hickok
Mouth of the River 
Leave a Reply