Hamburger Helper

Hamburger Helper is a packaged food product from General Mills and is sold as a part of the Betty Crocker brand. It consists of boxed pasta bundled with packets of powdered sauce and seasonings.

The contents of each box are combined with browned ground beef, water, and occasionally milk to create a complete dish. The product line also features products with other starches, such as rice or potatoes.

The pasta brand "Hamburger Helper" was first introduced in 1971. In 2005, Food Network rated Hamburger Helper third on its list of "Top Five Fad Foods of 1970".

In 2013, the company shortened the brand's name to "Helper".

The Hamburger Helper mascot is the "Helping Hand" or "Lefty": a four-fingered, left-hand white glove, with a face on it and red spherical nose. It often appears in the product's television commercials and on their packaged products.

The basic and most popular version of Hamburger Helper is a box of dried pasta with seasoning that requires it to be cooked with ground beef. Hamburger Helper offers a variety of flavors that include Lasagna, Cheeseburger Macaroni, Bacon Cheeseburger, Philly Cheesesteak, and others. There are also variations using other meats, such as tuna and chicken, named "Tuna Helper" and "Chicken Helper".

In 1979, Scott Spiegel wrote, produced and directed a short film entitled Attack of the Helping Hand, which featured a "Hamburger Helper" oven mitt as a killer glove.

On April 1, 2016, General Mills commissioned an EP as an April Fools' Day prank, titled Watch the Stove. According to a press release, the EP was produced for General Mills by a team at St. Paul, Minnesota's McNally Smith College of Music. The EP's title is a parody of the Jay-Z and Kanye collaborative album Watch the Throne. It contains five songs, all of which are about Hamburger Helper. It instantly achieved viral status, garnering over 4 million listens on SoundCloud in less than three days, with many listeners finding value in the brand's promotion of younger artists.

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