US vs UK Costco | Food Wars | Insider Food

Harry: From calorie counts to portion sizes, we wanted to discover all the differences between Costco

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s in the US and the UK. This is "Food Wars." Here's an iconic hot dog from Costco in the UK. Oh yeah. Costco's famous hot dog. In the UK, the length of a hot dog is 8 inches. Do not laugh. Joe: 8 inches. Dog almost exactly 8 inches. He also advertises himself as a quarter-pound hot dog. Let's see if that's true. Thus, with the bun and some onions, the whole thing weighs 250 grams. I want to take the sausage out and weigh it on its own to see if it weighs a quarter pound.

Turns out, without the bun and toppings, it weighs exactly a quarter of a pound. That's pretty impressive. I know it's mass-produced and manufactured by machines, but, you know, it's still cool. Oh Lord. It's exactly 4 ounces. Wow! They kept it a quarter pound after it was cooked and everything. See? Costco. It is not impossible. All these people see this and say, "Mm, it's a quarter pound before you cook it." Well, they said 4 ounces. Whatever they do, once cooked, it's the advertised 4 ounces. Way to go, Costco. In the UK, a Costco pizza is 17 inches in diameter. That makes the surface area 227 square inches.

In the US, our Costco pizza must also be 18 inches in diameter. Let's measure it! More like 17 ½, Costco. It's still $9.99. It's a ridiculous deal. You can keep that half inch. Our pizza today was cut into six pieces. I would say that for a pizza this size, it is unusual to see only six slices. I'd expect eight or ten, like at Domino's. But let's weigh a slice and find out how big it is. Now let's weigh a slice. That's a dense slice of pizza. Some citation is needed, but this might be the heaviest slice of pizza we've ever weighed in "Food Wars." That's a big layer of cheese.

Not a lot of tomato sauce. I'd say maybe it's 70% bread. So I don't know if you're getting great value for money when it comes to toppings. I like a lot. It has that nostalgic, cheap frozen pizza quality. The baked chicken. I don't know what the origin of this is, but it is a very good idea. It's like a giant Hot Pocket chicken, right? The guy holding the fish he just caught. We already used this joke in a recent episode, but we can reuse it. I'm curious. Oh, why is this so good? This is so good. I will say that I love heavy

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So I feel like I'm the target audience for all these foods. Fountain drinks in the UK come in one size and are supposedly 22 fluid ounces. Of course, we have to check it. So, in what seems to be an increasingly rare occurrence in "Food Wars," it's actually as much drinking as we were promised. They are 22 ounces. But fountain drinks in the US are 20 fluid ounces. Check it out. It's exactly 20 ounces. And I filled it in the thing. Man, Costco is very precise with portions, right? They leave nothing to chance. Thanks Costco. Here are all the Costco menu items in the UK that you won't find in the US.

Here are all the Costco menu items in the US that you won't find in the UK. Quick disclaimer that the menus seem to vary slightly depending on where you are in the UK or the US. I bought these in Chingford, just outside London, and Joe got his in Burbank, California. We have an exclusive pizza option from Costco in the UK, and it is this, the BBQ Chicken Pizza. As the name suggests, it is a barbecue chicken pizza, which also comes with some green peppers and some red onion. When I see a BBQ pizza in the UK I usually grimace because it usually means the sauce is BBQ, and I don't like that.

But I think here they just kept the same cheese and tomato base, but added the barbecue toppings on top, which in my opinion is what a barbecue pizza should be. Leon disagrees. He still feels pretty heavy. It may not be as dense or heavy as cheese pizza. The dough seems not to be as thick. First try just the chicken alone. Not bad. I don't get much barbecue flavor from it. It's more of a kind of grilled chicken. Usually my biggest complaint about barbecue pizzas is that they are too barbecue-y, whereas this one actually isn't barbecue-y at all.

That means I like it. But if you normally like a fairly strong barbecue sauce flavor on your pizzas, this may not be enough for you. In the UK, you can also get whole pizzas as part of a family pack. The packages come with a large pizza, one of these gigantic garlic breads, two of these garlic and herb sauces, and also a 2-liter bottle of Pepsi Max, half of which I spilled on the studio floor. . Twisted churro. We have these, you don't. It's not many things. Alright. This thing, churro, cinnamon, dough. Hmm. Next we have Costco's version of a classic British dish, homemade pie.

Now, our American viewers may have heard of meatloaf. Homemade pie is basically the same as it is a layer of cheese on top, usually mashed potatoes, but instead of the lamb and minced meat mixture, homemade pie contains minced meat. This is a classic British dish and we are passionate about things like this. So let's hope Costco did it justice. The strategy seems to be to sell large quantities of food, but actually package it with cheap products. So, for example, there's a small amount of cheese on top, a very small amount of beef on the bottom, and I'd say 80% of this is just mashed potatoes.

Let's make a try. It's actually quite tasty. I don't work for Costco, I'm simply a truth seeker. Again, the meat is very rich, quite thick, but has a real meat flavor. Is it the best homemade cake you've ever tasted? No, probably not. But is it an affordable and complete version that is quite faithful to the original? I would have to say yes. You also get more filling as you move towards the middle. Not everything was like that, fortunately. Yes, I don't know. In fact, I don't think they did a bad job here. Next we have this one, which is the double chicken fillet sandwich.

Considering the topic of heavy foods, this is absolutely huge. Look at it! Yeah, I think maybe they were supposed to stack the chicken burgers instead of placing them next to each other, because the bun barely covers anything. Also, they only put one slice of cheese on it, so only about 40% of it is covered in cheese. I may have to do some quick tactical rearrangement here. Oh, maybe there's... oh, there's another little bit of cheese on the bottom, so you get cheese. Oh God. But then it's like, can you eat this? Because that's also a logistical nightmare to eat.

I think any way you stack it, it's going to be pretty messy to eat. But this is the double chicken fillet sandwich. There are two chicken tenders, two slices of cheese, some lettuce and some tomato. Extremely dry. Very bland. None of the components taste like anything, somehow. It's a bit strange. Again, it's like it's big. It would fill you up. Next we have the Korean oven roast beef. It's like baked chicken, it's kind of like a baguette with a little cheese on top and a meat filling, but instead of chicken and bacon, this one has Korean roast beef.

I imagine it will be a similar level of heaviness to the baked chicken and also everything else we've eaten today. The filling alone doesn't taste much, which is a bit disappointing. That's dull. That's dissappointing. I'm still eating it, but it's soft. It's just that nothing stands out to me like Korean flavors in this. If you're going to make something so bland, I think don't drag Korea through the mud, just call it roast beef and be done with it. There's another classic British dish on the UK Costco menu, which they unfortunately forgot to give me today, and that's roast potatoes.

There's a note in the script where Joe says that he doesn't know what a jacket potato is, so I'll do my best to explain it to you now. As the name suggests, it's basically a potato that you keep in your jacket in case you get hungry. These can be boiled or baked. Typically, you'll wrap it in aluminum foil so it doesn't touch anything else you have in your pocket. Keep it with you and when you're hungry during the day, you'll have a nice snack with you. As the name suggests, it's basically a potato that you keep in your jacket.

We also have two UK-exclusive dessert options, including a caramel sundae and a caramel coffee frappe. I didn't get any of them today, but here's what they look like. Ahem. Two cold drinks you can get here at Costco USA are fruit smoothies. Oh my god, that's great. Hmm! Wow, that's really good. And cold mocha freezes. Wow, that's melted. I'm really surprised at how good these cold drinks are. I mean, their food is good, but these are really good. Hmm. Yes, that's cheering me up. That's cheering me up, Yuels! Come on! Ah! Now I need to calm down a little.

And finally in the UK we also have mango smoothies on the menu, although their machine was broken today. They were not being attended to. This is what they look like. I want to take this moment to talk about Kirkland, Costco's signature brand that offers a wide variety of products at low costs. Over the years, the brand has developed a loyal fan base among Costco members. It would be impossible to introduce all of Kirkland's US-exclusive foods and drinks outside of the UK. And believe me, I begged management to let me try Kirkland's many alcohol options, to which they said, "No way." So here are some favorite non-alcoholic Kirkland exclusives in the US.

Let's start here: animal crackers. I mean, come on, UK. Who doesn't love animal crackers? Are animal crackers popular in the UK? Oh my gosh, let's do the animal check. I think cute. Gorilla? Orangutan? This looks like a hippopotamus. We have a hippopotamus. Oh, this is definitely a koala. I've seen that guy before. We're already getting reps. Alligator, I think. Possibly a dragon. A Brookfield Zoo at your fingertips here in cookie form. Fantastic. And the United States doesn't play around with its cheese selection. So many. And the one that, according to the Internet, everyone is talking about is, of course, Parmigiano-Reggiano.

Parmigiano Reggiano. 1 ½ pounds. How much do you think a 1 ½ pound block of Parmigiano-Reggiano costs? Go. What do you think? Actually, it was $16. God, you two. I thought everyone was going to say, "$50!" Nope, $16. That's still very good. 16 dollars for all this? I mean, this is going to last, man. This will last many of your wine and cheese parties. And of course, Costco has a fantastic selection of wines, which I can't seem to get close to. According to the address. Alright? This video would be much more entertaining if we were doing a wine review. Peanut butter, peanut butter, peanut butter.

When I went to the UK, I'm not kidding, every single person I spoke to when they realized I was American, literally a second after I opened my mouth, they all asked me the same thing. "What's up with Americans and peanut butter?" Isn't peanut butter popular in the UK? They said, "You put peanut butter on everything." In a way we do. This is a really good peanut butter. Please forgive me, all you peanut butter heads watching. Do you want it that liquid? Because I'm thinking about peanut butter sandwiches, peanut butter and jelly, peanut butter and honey, anything you mix peanut butter with, of course, you want some thickness to the bread.

Do we want thin peanut butter? I don't know. I ask you, the viewer. What is the preferred viscosity of peanut butter? I mean, this is creamy, but I mean, creamy cream. Italian sparkling mineral water with added carbonation. If anyone was wondering how boring I am, my favorite sparkling water is actually unflavored. Good? Like LaCroix, my favorite is the single. That's right, it'll be better than "ugh." I just like the bubbles in the water. Hmm. It smells like Italian. Oh yes, it's very hard. This is really good. Joe: Mm-hmm. I want that hardness of the bubbles. What do you mean "ewwing"?

Speaking of Italy, pesto. So the basil was imported, but I don't think it was made in Italy. Basil. People trust these things. They swear it. Dried mango slices. This right here, look how many of these they gave me, man. It's 2 ½ pounds of dried organic mango slices. I'm a mango boy. That's an impressive list of things. We don't have that many Kirkland exclusives in the UK, but I found an interesting one, which is this hazelnut spread. This is just Costco's version of Nutella. Not "new-phone". Well, it was interesting because I was looking at the ingredients in this and the percentages piqued my interest.

So, out of interest, we Googled what is the content of real Nutella, and the ingredients said it contained 13% real hazelnuts and 7.4% low-fat cocoa powder. So if we compare it to this one, León, how much hazelnut do you think there is in this one? Thirteen percent. Exactly the same. Defatted cocoa powder, 7.4%. So aboutpaper, this has basically identical ingredients to real Nutella. I mean, it smells and looks a lot like Nutella. I would have a hard time distinguishing this from real Nutella in a blind taste test, and it's cheaper. So hey, next time you're around here and you really love Nutella, you can buy it in bulk here and you really won't know it.

I also found some products that were not Kirkland brand but that piqued my interest. Pot. I found this catering-sized Marmite tub, which I couldn't resist. I'm assuming this is exclusive and not something you can find in the US. I'm not 100% sure. I made Marmite pasta and put it on Instagram yesterday and people were upset, so it seemed relevant. And I also found some American products at Costco that you wouldn't normally see on British shelves. For example, Skippy brand peanut butter. This is not bad, but there is a lot of oil here. You can see it's coming out of the top, and it kind of made everything very runny.

According to the ingredients, it is 10% hydrogenated palm oil, which could go some way to explaining why it is so liquid at room temperature. These caught my eye as I was browsing the shelves. Smucker's Goober? None of those are real words, first of all. But this is peanut butter and grape jelly strips. Is this what Americans are putting in PB&Js? It claims to be "America's favorite peanut butter and jelly combination." How much competition do you have in this field? I would love to know. Americans love grape flavored things and it's actually not common in the UK for some reason.

I mean, it's pretty nice. I would love to see the machine that puts this in the jar with that pattern. This is much more solid. I think they added gelling agents and things like that to keep it in that uniform shape with the cool color pattern. The grape jelly is extremely sweet and the peanut butter, I think even on its own, is also quite sweet compared to the Skippy. I want to make a disclaimer. Although this is the exclusive section, I don't think they are exclusive. I just know that one amazing thing about Costco here in the US, I don't know if it's in the UK, Harry can confirm this, is that they have ridiculously good baked goods.

Costco's in the United States is also famous for having a leaf-shaped cake. I couldn't get it. You have to order it in advance. I'm sorry. Let's put a picture of that on the screen. With my face in it. But they have lots of muffins, croissants and other things. I'd heard great things about Costco's baking section, so I had to try that too. This goes to Katya's father. Our producer Katya, apparently her dad loves Costco croissants. I feel like these would benefit significantly from being heated. Not bad as packaged croissants go. And lastly, these cookies. You get chocolate chips, double chocolate, and white chocolate chips.

In the UK, many of our pre-packaged biscuits, for whatever reason, tend to be very solid and you can break them rather than chew them. But this is the American style cookie, much softer, which is really good. Full disclosure: This is my first time shopping at Costco. And it's not something snobbish. Look, I grew up, my dad worked for a supermarket chain and then I moved out into the world, and the idea of ​​having a box of toilet paper or bottled water in my shoebox apartment was crazy. Also, $60 for a membership? I mean, I was barely surviving, so getting $60 to go shopping was crazy to me, so.

And I never went until now to see this video. And I think Costco is really amazing. I like it now. Shout out to Kirkland. Costco in the UK is a bit strange because not everyone can walk into a Costco. You actually have to apply for the warehouse membership, which is different from the standard online membership. And to do this, you have to work in a certain number of limited professions. Some of the professions make sense. They're things like teachers, who maybe work at a school and need to buy supplies, and some of them are really random.

Things like airline workers are allowed entry. I think technically I was allowed entry as a journalist, so this is journalism, if anyone asks. I think a year's standard individual membership costs around £30, maybe a little more. There are also different levels. You can get an executive membership, where you unlock certain benefits. Honestly, I don't really know why it's set up exactly this way in the UK. I guess they want to have some control over foot traffic in the stores. They don't want everyone crowding into the store. I went at 11 a.m. m. It was a Tuesday and it was very busy, I asked someone at the register and they said it wasn't even busy by their standards.

I think that's how it is in the US, but the store itself was basically a huge warehouse with stuff everywhere. It was not very well organized. The hallways were not particularly labeled. There were numbers in the hallways, but it didn't say what was in them. So I had to go around and try to find what I could find. Things were a little cheaper there than usual, but I don't even think they were heavily discounted, particularly the brand name stuff compared to Kirkland. So, I think you go more because you need to buy things in bulk and it's a little more convenient, than because you're trying to save a lot of money on your everyday purchases.

In order to sign me up for this, they needed to see a pay stub so they could prove who I worked for. Something weird. A whole pizza from a UK Costco will cost you £9.99, which at the time of recording was $12.38. A Costco pizza in the United States costs $9.95 or £8.03. That's a price decrease of 19.9% ​​in the United States. Costco's hot dog here in the US with a 20-ounce soda costs $1.50, the same price since 1985. How has Costco managed to sell them for such a low price all these years? In a time when seemingly everything has been affected by inflation, the Costco hot dog has become something of a viral phenomenon.

Their commitment to keeping the hot dog combo at $1.50 is so strong that, as the story goes, when the current CEO approached the former CEO about raising the price, he said, "If you raise the price of the f--- If you make a hot dog, I'll kill you. "Find out." And they did it. Costco would soon transition from selling Hebrew National hot dogs in its food courts to making its own. They opened a hot dog factory in Los Angeles and then Chicago, reducing production costs and keeping the hot dog at its current price of $1.50. It's fair to point out that our hot dog costs £1.50, which is more like $1.86.

It comes with two more ounces of soda, so maybe that's why, or maybe Costco just likes the aesthetic of having 1.50 on the sign. A slice of pepperoni pizza from a UK Costco has 826 calories, while a slice of cheese pizza has 751. The most caloric thing on the menu is a whole pepperoni pizza. A whole pepperoni pizza has 4,962 calories, which is 248% of your daily allowance. A slice of pepperoni at Costco in the US has 650 calories. A slice of cheese roughly the same size will have 710 calories. That's 60 more calories. Hmm. Does it make sense that cheese has more calories than pepperoni?

I have to. Mwah. A UK baked chicken has 911 calories. A whole baked chicken in the United States has 840 calories. A UK hot dog has 602 calories. The 20-ounce hot dog and soda in the US have between 580 and 850 calories, depending on the beverage consumed. So the lowest calorie count would be, of course, Diet Pepsi, which has zero calories. If you had a regular Pepsi, it would be 250 calories. And if you wanted to get the most calories in your drink, that, of course, would be an extra 280 calories if you had the Tropicana fruit punch. Animal crackers. I mean, come on, UK.

These things... This is a twist, right? It's like I'm entering a vault. Come on, just...