As the summer comes to a close and school is starting up again, I know exactly what I’m going to miss the most about the past three months: outdoor markets. Where I live in the Hudson Valley, there are constant farmers markets and flea markets to keep us busy throughout the summer.
Of course, many people (including me) will automatically refer to farmers market ingredients as the superior products, but is there actually a difference? Obviously, I had to go find this out. This past weekend, I went ahead and cooked the same recipe with ingredients from both the farmers market and the grocery store to find out which is actually the best.
What should you know before buying from farmers markets?
When choosing a recipe for the comparison, I really wanted something that I could make entirely from what was available at the farmers market. My local market, the Peekskill Farmers Market, is relatively small so there wasn’t much outside of your typical vegetables, grains, and dairies. Lucky for me, there’s something incredible you can make with just those three groups: grilled cheese and tomato soup.
Not only is it a classic recipe, it’s super easy and incredibly delicious. For the soup, I followed a simple recipe that only required tomatoes, onions, garlic, and chicken broth. For the grilled cheese, I used sourdough bread and some mild cheddar.
First things first, one thing that stands out is the price difference between the two. My grocery store of choice was Shoprite, and the total for half a loaf of sourdough, four sticks of butter, three tomatoes, one onion, a clove of garlic, a pack of cheddar cheese, and a container of chicken broth totaled out to only about $25. The price of the same ingredients at the farmers market was double the price of how much it was at the grocery store. Just the bread, cheese, and butter needed for the grilled cheese cost $32.
Now obviously locally-grown and made products are going to be more expensive. It’s not a bad thing at all, but it’s definitely something to keep in mind when deciding whether or not you want to shop more from farmers markets.
Secondly, before we get into how the ingredients tasted, I must confess that there is a flaw in the comparison. I could not find any sort of local chicken broth, so the same chicken broth was used in both recipes. It was a sacrifice I had to make for the sake of good tasting tomato soup. Anyways, with that being said.
Are the ingredients from a farmers market actually better?
I had my girlfriend taste both the dishes and tell me what she thought. Even though I didn’t tell her which one was which, she found it pretty easy to distinguish between the two because of the grilled cheese. The tomato soup looked basically the same because it was blended up, but grocery store sourdough and homemade sourdough look drastically different.
Tastewise, it was actually pretty surprising as both of us preferred the grocery store grilled cheese over the farmers market grilled cheese. There’s this hint of artificiality in the grocery store grilled cheese that makes it almost nostalgic in a sense.
What was completely unsurprising was that the tomato soup made from the farmers market ingredients was eons better than the other tomato soup. All the ingredients from the farmers market looked better when I had bought them, and they definitely tasted better when I cooked them.
There’s no doubt about it, when you’re craving vegetables and fruits, it will not get better than your locally grown produce. If you can afford it, I really do recommend paying the extra few dollars for fresher ingredients. Tasting it firsthand with my tomato soup, it really does make the difference.
As for bread and dairy, it really depends on what you’re looking to use them for. I’ve never been the biggest bread or cheese fanatic growing up so I can’t really tell the difference, but that doesn’t go for everyone else. Odds are, if you really like cheese and bread, you’re probably gonna find the local stuff tastier.
So this experiment basically confirmed what we already know: local products are a little more expensive, but 100% worth it. And while the ingredients do taste better, buying from a farmers market is not solely about quality. It’s about supporting your local farmers and rejecting large scale corporations. So if you can, take some time to go to a farmers market and cook a delicious meal with the best fresh ingredients.