Has anyone used hello fresh/ gusto meal boxes?

[crazymumofthree]

Just wondered if anyone used these? Looking at getting a 3 day plan for our family just to try out some new recipes.

Any preference over each company?

New deal seems better in hello fresh (half price for 2 months compared to just 25% off gusto for one month) however with gusto you can pick the recipes. Children will try anything once so don't think that will be too much of a problem but OH cannot stand any fish dish!

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For the lowdown on the best recipe boxes, take a look at our best recipe boxes comparison of the most popular boxes out there and, of course, Musnetters’ reviews of their favourites. MNHQ.

[Rightmovestalker]

I wasn't impressed with Gousto, personally. but I am a good cook and I dont think it was right for us - we always have basics like garlic etc here so sending me a clove in the pack wasn't particularly useful. And I generally buy organic which Gousto isn't. My friend says Abel & Cole kits are great so I'm going to try that next.

[Rightmovestalker]

And I know someone who is impressed with Hello Fresh (ditto Gousto tbh!)

[Fruitcocktail6]

I love hello fresh, we use it every week. Not a fan of Gousto, quality and portion size wasn't as good.

[FeedtheTree]

Yeah. I used Hello Fresh for a few weeks. I wasn't that impressed. The recipes were ^such6 a faff. Roast two veg and stir fry two others and bake the fish and steam the rice and basically take two hours to prep a simple dinner, and use every pan in the house. I prefer one or two pot dinners mid week that take 10-20 mins to prep and leave only 2-3 pans to wash up. The recipes were OK. But often they either had lots of veg and no carbs or lots of carbs (three different kinds in one meal) and not enough fresh veg so I ended up supplementing them. Overpriced and over fussy.

[GeekyWombat]

I tried Hello Fresh and the meals we had were great, the issue was it was delivered by Yodel and in my area the Yodel deliverers are idiots.

Of the three boxes in our trial offer, one was delivered when they said it would be. One was chucked over my neighbour's back gate and was only discovered two days later when my elderly neighbour went to put her bins out. The third was due to be delivered before 7pm (earmarked for that night's dinner) and didn't so we ordered takeaway. It was delivered some time after 9pm (when DH arrived home in the car) because he discovered it at 7am the next morning when he drove OVER it, because they had left it UNDER the car.

When I rang to cancel they actually didn't seem that surprised and gave me a refund without any argument at all.

[Pumpkinisland89]

We've used Hello Fresh.
I liked it but it was expensive and husband was grumpy about it (not sure why?). I'm not a good cook but managed to make yummy food.
The only thing which was disappointing was that they often forgot to put ingrediants in. They were always minor ones which you could survive without but still... They didn't seem particularly bothered about missing things out either.

[mogloveseggs]

We’ve tried both and preferred gousto. Massive portion sizes so what was 4 meals turned out to be 8!

[SacharissaCrisplock]

We've just started trying Gousto and will be getting our fourth box next week.

We went for them over Hello Fresh because it looks like you can pick from more recipes each week and as I'm really not a confident cook I wanted to go for nice, simple recipes.

So far they've always been delivered on time and the meals for two are sufficient to feed me, my husband and our two year old.

One box had some missing rosemary so I emailed them and they refunded £3 immediately and apologised so I can't argue with that. So far there's also only been one recipe that I probably wouldn't bother with again which isn't a bad hit rate.

[crazymumofthree]

It's £31 for two weeks worth with hello fresh so 6 meals, perhaps I will give it a try still as mixed reviews. In terms of food etc we literally meal plan and don't have lots of spices etc in and don't try many different dishes, I am also not a great cook and don't have lots of time hence trying to get out the comfort zone and try something different. Both our boys are type 1 diabetic so trying to make sure meals are a good balance and I don't really have a lot of time to research different meals, ingredients etc and carb count it all so thought this might help make things a little easier for now and to have everything ready and measured out etc! (It was another type 1 Mum who recommended although I am pretty sure she said gusto) thanks for all you insights everyone I will see how I get on!

[BreakfastAtSquiffanys]

I've tried Hello Fresh and really like it, several of their recipes are now firm favourites that I cook buying my own ingredients on non Hello Fresh days.
A couple of their recipes are faffy, but nothing takes 2 hours. The majority are one pan cooking.
I'm thinking about swapping to try Gousto for a couple of weeks as they have a wider choice of recipes to choose from each week.

OP - You CAN change your weekly meals, there is a default of 3 recipes per week, but you can change any or all of them to others from that week's list.

[DontCallMeBaby]

We had Hello Fresh for most of a year, cancelled a couple of months ago.

Plus points:

• Choice and flexibility. They rolled their veggie options in with the mainstream ones a while ago which meant you got about 7 options from which to choose 3. If you didn’t fancy anything (or only 1 or 2) or we’re going away or something you can cancel with a week or more notice - I’m pretty disorganised but never ended up with a box I didn’t want. When I set it up there were a few things you could say you didn’t like - fish was one of them, so our choices never defaulted to a fish recipe.
  
• The recipes themselves. There were very few that I didn’t like, and only one that I thought really didn’t work. They’re also really well written - if it says put the water on to boil now, don’t second guess it, you need to put the water on now! I find book or website recipes are often slightly out of order, or state more pans than is really necessary, but these work really well.
  
  Neutral:
  
• Portion sizes. Usually too much in the way of carbs for us (their standard portion of rice is huge), sometimes too much veg, meat just right. But for 3 hearty appetites it might work less well - we often got two good size chicken breasts and a teeny one, which is fine for DD as her appetite is small.
  
• Cuts of meat. Plenty of people like chicken thighs, we don’t. A lot of the recipes involve thighs and I ended up having to check what kind of chicken was involved in ‘chicken with whatever’, which was a pain.
  
  Negatives:
  
• Missing ingredients. This was why we cancelled in the end. It’s not cheap (another negative) so it’s really disappointing to have missing ingredients that mean you have to go to the local shop, adapt the recipe, or abandon it entirely (I still have mince in the freeze from the time they sent me a Caribbean style chilli missing the key, obscure spice that made it different to the norm). The last box I had was missing a key ingredient for one recipe, and had flat leaf parsley in two of the recipe bags instead of the different herbs that were actually required. At that point I decided this was no fun any more, and cancelled.
  
  It was fun while it lasted though. I enjoyed cooking some new things, and having all the ingredients rather than substituting what I had in, or what DD might like, and the meals were mostly really nice. Plus I miss DD’s face and the forlorn ‘is this a Hello Fresh meal?’ when faced with anything a bit different.

[crazymumofthree]

Well I have just ordered the gusto one as my friend that recommended had a 50% off code for the two weeks the same as hello fresh and she said she has tried both and preferred the gusto so will see what we think and perhaps try the hello fresh too (would be silly not to for 50% off!!) and see which I prefer! Chosen our meals and shown DS he is quite excited!!

[EveryoneTalkAboutPopMusic]

We’ve started using Gousto after a friend gave me a discount code. It’s helped us as DH feels more confident about cooking and seems to be enjoying it when he does. It’s also widened our regular meals as some of them are so good that they’ve become family favourites.

[wowfudge]

I tried Hello Fresh and liked it at first. Then I began to find it limited in terms of veggie and healthier options. There was too much repetition - cheese in every veggie dish, for example. Way too much in terms of the carb portion sizes. I also got hacked off with the packaging and ingredients: it's supposed to give you less wastage of fresh things but they'd supply a whole something you only needed half of, which wasn't used up in another recipe, etc and some of the items were completely overpackaged. Some recipes called for a ridiculous number of ingredients too. It all got too fiddly and annoying!

[FluffyWuffy100]

I did both. liked them both a lot actually.

I preferred gusto - the meals were quicker (HF are v optimistic with their timings!!!) and I did have a few ingredient quality issues with Hello Fresh with moldy veg ingredients.

[FluffyWuffy100]

I did find it a bit of a bind that I HAD to be in and cook at least 3 days a week before everything went off (so realistically in the next 3 to 5 days) so think it works better if you are always eating at home as the norm.

[FluffyWuffy100]

Also pretty light on the calories often - 400 to 500 calories per serving does not a main course for dinner make for a normally active adult who isn't needing to loose weight!

[Grumpbum]

I love Gousto I have only had one meal I didn’t like and we get a box a month, sometimes more.
The portions are huge feeds 2 adults, 7 and 3 year old.
They deliver the box into a safe place whilst I’m at work, very well packaged I have never had any meat go off.
I like to be able to pick my recipes based on my weekly plans and I have a good stock of quick tasty recipes to use

[teenmumandsowhat]

I’ve just had my first gousto box after being given a 50% off code.
I’m impressed with how simple the recipes were to follow. And it was nice trying different things. I’ve also found the portion sizes very generous.

[mrsmayitstimetogo]

we've used the Riverford recipe boxes a fair bit. Not cheap, but we can generally feed 5 from one meal. You can't pick and mix individual meals, but they have a range of boxes. I really don't like all the little plastic containers every tiny thing comes in though, so we've stopped for the time being.

[Scrambledheads]

I had hello fresh for a month, family boxes. The recipes were fun and tasty but the fresh ingredients were almost always poor quality or mouldy! Not fresh at all and their customer service wasn't great. It's designed to be ready to cook when you finish work or to fit in with a busy life but defeats the object when you have to run out to the shop for fresh vegetables!

[BreakfastAtSquiffanys]

I only ever had one omission (a clove of garlic!) and one dodgy ingredient in over a year of using Hello Fresh. However we live within an hour of their major distribution centre which might explain fresher ingredients.
I find the quality of their meat very good.

However avoid if you hate coriander! They use it a LOT!

[lubeybooby]

I've had both in the past but prefer gousto - stuck with them and on my 10th or so box now.

[crazymumofthree]

I'm glad I've gone for gusto then if the food quality is better! And if it's low calorie that is also good as I could do with loosing a few stone pounds!

[Loopy9]

We have Hello Fresh every so often. We’ve never had a problem with missing ingredients or rubbish delivery. It’s all been spot on. You can self select the dishes, so can try different things. It’s helps us get out of a meal planning rut too. I’d highly recommend Hello Fresh. I like their App too, I can dip in and use the recipes even if I don’t order food from them. Cheers