Hello Fresh or the like

[Hiccupiscal]

A friend gave me 2 bags of food from hello fresh to try, I must say -.I was quite impressed. Zero waste, and much smaller portion size than I would have done for myself -.portion size and feeling like I have to clear my plate is such a big issue for me!

I went on the website but its not great IMO, they want you to sign up and pay for the box before you can see what menu choices there are?

I'm not a great cook but would like this to change, and i would love to adopt a more veggie/vegan lifestyle, i think this could be the way to go forward with it.

Do you use Hello Fresh? Are they any good?
Fresh ingredients? Healthy? Good choice?

Or can anyone recommend me a company similar, that have veggie/vegan options?

I love the thought of having meals prepped and sorted for me.
If i could hire someone to cook it all too, I would, but i guess I better start to learn some recipes myself

I use them occasionally (when they send special offers through)
I’m sure that you don’t sign up and pay before selecting your meal choices.
There are quite a few to choose from each week and you select from them, and pay at the checkout.
The recipes are easy to follow and the meals are nice. Just expensive unless offers.
I do keep the recipe cards and have made a few meals using shop bought ingredients with them

Anyone else?

We’ve done hello fresh and gusto when had offers. Wouldn’t bother at full price for two reasons.

Waste - might not waste good but all that is the way plastic and individual packaging.

Cost - it’s so expensive at full rate. Even discounted it’s a push.

Saying that found the menus choices mostly good and their instructions are good.

But would never sign up regularly cause of the ridiculous cost.

Hey @Hiccupiscal I did Hello Fresh for about 3 months at the start of this year. I got their a Christmas box as a one off and was so impressed that I started ordering the weekly ones.

From memory you have to put your payment details in first, but once in you have access to 3-4 weeks of future menus to chose from and it’s really easy to skip a week, or change the number or meals you get that week. I saw a lot of comments online with people complaining they would forget to skip and then get charged, so I put a reminder in my phone 6pm the night before the cut off, so I never forget to adjust if needed.

I was pleasantly surprised at the meals. I thought I would just ‘like’ them, but I actually found at least 1 a week that I LOVED and was disappointed they didn’t offer it the following week and I wanted it again!! Like others above I have saved the recipe cards so I can make them again. I also really liked someone else doing my grocery shopping for me, and that at night I don’t have to think about what to cook - I just chose one of the cards. No thought required. I also like the increased veges I am eating.

Some negatives - the amount of packaging each week (although I read it is less impact on the environment than throwing out some meat past it’s used by date or from freezer burn which you may have done when cooking normally). That I need to adjust my order to less meals sometimes (if I had a few nights out, I would end up with a backlog of meals. In hindsight I should have skipped a week or reduced meals. It’s easy to do, but for some reason I just didn’t). Cost is high, but I found many portion sizes bigger and could make an extra meal, so it often counted as lunch too. I also went to the supermarket less, so didn’t buy any little impulse things that may have added up).

I stopped because I was about 4 meals ‘behind’ and I wanted to have a chance to eat them and catch up, and also my pantry was quite full, as I hadn’t used it since I started HF. I wanted to ‘run it down’ abit. I will definitely go back to it again soon.

So if any of the above suits you, I would give it a chance!

Same as lovely. I tried Hello Fresh and Gousto, much preferred the latter - more Asian style meals to choose from, which I really loves cooking and eating. Both equally bad on packaging.

I have a Gousto referral/discount code if you like, for 50% off a first box: cook.gousto.co.uk/raf/?promo_code=SHARO314764&utm_source=weblink

Morrisons have also come out with a version.

I liked Hellofresh, mostly used the vegetarian options as theres often a premium to pay for meat/fish dishes, plus sometimes the chicken dishes use thigh meat which I dont like. Its easy to skip weeks with the app if you dont like the choices/going away/skint etc. Lot of packaging but most recyclable. We found portion size to be good, pleasantly surprised as we were expecting them to be stingy! Definitely takes the hassle out of shopping/deciding what to have for dinner. I like the menu cards too.

We use Hello Fresh and while we know it's more expensive than if we buy the ingredients ourselves we find the evenings less stressful and healthier. We both work full time and after a year and a half of buying the boxes, we arent ready to give up yet. Aspects I like:

• all ingredients in one bag, no searching the back of cupboards for something, or realising you dont quite have enough.
• not having leftovers. Some people may like left over ingredients and food, but our fridge, freezer and cupboards were bursting at the seams.
• the meals are yummy and we frequently make the recipes again of our favourites .
• healthier - we get the 'balanced' range which is fewer calories and more veggies, beans and pulses. Before getting HF we would get home late and have a ready meal or a takeaway.
• you can skip weeks easily
• good variety of meals.

The downside is it is expensive (but when it's replacing a takeaway it's cheaper), but for me it's worth it, and I have no intention of stopping any time soon.

We have HelloFresh. I love some of the meals but I'd agree with the cons above about packaging...even though it's recyclable. I do appreciate just opening the complete menu set rather than having to find everything!

Our positive is that is has given my partner, who had never really cooked before, the confidence to prepare a range of dishes. We deliberately try to get the range of dishes as we want to learn to cook. The instructions for duck, monkfish, Hasselback potatoes etc are worth it as they taste and look impressive but the instructions are so easy!

We are currently trying to find a way of getting the difficulty level 3 recipes...we are ready for them but we can't work out how to do it. Once delivery calm down after the pandemic, I'll probably start making my own hellofresh from the supermarket on delivery.

It's been a godsend during this...I've been shielding and it's been less stress than getting deliveries for the supermarket!

I've been using Gousto, absolutely love it. We're veggie and much prefer the meal choices to hello fresh. Love that we don't have to think about dinner 4 nights a week and stops me over buying at the supermarket and throwing things away.
I have a discount if anyone wants to try it out

https://cook.gousto.co.uk/raf?promocode=ADELE41868639&utmm_source=iosapp

I’ve tried Hello Fresh and Gousto and I think I report Hello Fresh. You can cancel at any time, or skip a week, change delivery day etc easily. I found Gousto had a lot of recipes like spal Bol that I can already made so I preferred Hello Fresh for the variety.

I have a discount code here if you want to try- gets you £20 off your first box.

Hi, you’ve been invited to savour the joy of cooking HelloFresh and get a £20 coupon to spend on your first box of fresh ingredients and delicious recipes. Start your cooking adventure now with HelloFresh using the following voucher code HS-96GRL7JVM. Happy Cooking! www.hellofresh.co.uk/?c=HS-96GRL7JVM&utm_source=raf-share&utm_campaign=share-sms&utm_medium=app&utm_content=iOS&utm_version=c1

We have used both Hello fresh and Gusto. Hello fresh is more flexible, you can choose between 3 to 5 meals a week, with Gusto you get 4 meals a week. Gusto is a bit cheaper £35 for 4 recipes, HF is £42 or 43 for 4 recipes. We like using it because we are veggie and we used to end up eating the same food over and over again. With the recipes, they only repeat themselves every few weeks and the food really taste nice. For vegeterian/ vegan, I prefer Gusto, lately I've found it difficult to find 3 recipes I like with Hello Fresh.
If you can afford it, I think it's worth it. You can sing up for both and see the recipes and decide which one you want each week.

I've used simply cook who just give you the spices and recipe card so cheaper and more flexible (don't have to use quickly). Portions are fairly generous if there's just two of you (definitely can stretch to 3 people for most). I have one free trial box code per month if anyone wants it, private message me.

I dip in and out of HF - if I wait enough I get a discount to lure me back!

I’ve found that the meals are much lower on veg than what I’d cook here, so I add more. From memory each meal has one type of veg - such as pork loin, mash and greens, whereas for that type of meal I’d serve 3 veg. In the noodle/pasta type dishes I usually end up adding pepper/courgette/sweetcorn etc.

However, the benefit is that the kids have tried new things, they enjoy helping to cook it (10&12) and that encourages them to try it.

I have used Hello Fresh, firstly about 5 years ago. I think they had just started as someone came knocking on the door to sell it and I signed up on impulse. We used it for about 3 months then decided it was something we could do without, it was getting expensive and I suppose the novelty wore off too.

During lockdown I decided to reactivate it as another way of being sure of getting food when there were no delivery slots and we were self isolating due to me having Covid symptoms. I noticed straight away that the quality had gone down and every recipe came with bags or chicken stock to add flavour. Also a lot of recipes seemed to have ketchup or sugar in. There was also a lot more plastic waste than I remembered. They were using the cheapest possible ingredients and we cancelled after 3 boxes.

I liked the idea of hello fresh but if you are looking to go vegan wouldn't recommend, even their veggie options I found really samey after a few weeks and very expensive when you actually work out what it would cost to buy the ingredients fresh.

I had liked the look of mindful chef but they don't deliver to my area.

It’s nice for the occasional week when you don’t want to think but it is expensive for what is nowadays - everything used to be organic and free range which isn’t the case now. If you google you will find 50% off your first two boxes and they send you codes every now and again if you cancel.

You can sign up and put payment details in then choose your meals - if nothing you like the look of the you can just skip the week or cancel altogether and you won’t be charged.

Riverford also do one which has codes knocking around. Worth working your way through the codes on all the different brands.

We are using hellofresh at the moment because DS2 wanted to learn and try out new recipes to cook, without having to trapes to the shops looking for odd ingredients constantly.

We buy the 2 person recipes, to keep costs down but also he doesn't have to worry about everyone liking his choice of dinner.

its given him loads of confidence and he's gone on to cook recipes again but for the whole family, and buying the odd different ingredients we don't have in stock as he knows which ingredients he'll probably use again so we have them ready in the cupboard now.

We'll probably do another month of 3 meals a week then stop, and just resuse his favourite recipes cards.

So far all the food has been lovely, he's even enjoyed food with stuff in that he usually can't stand.

I think Themindfulchief is all veggie/vegan.

Another Hello Fresh here. We used to do it a few years ago and have started again but I'm disappointed, as although there is a lot of choice they are very samey so we often skip weeks eg every bloody recipe seems to have potato wedges some weeks, or they are all the same flavour (eg loads in a week will feature hoisin sauce, or everything will be 'garlic x'). Probably so they can order in bulk but bloody annoying.

Also they charge additional fees for loads of their meals, which they didn't used to do (and the standard pricing doesn't seem to have got any cheaper!)

I've skipped so many weeks now (due to not being able to find enough meals that we fancy) I'm thinking of cancelling because of it.

I tried hello fresh and loved it but as a single person it wasn't great value for money.

I now subscribe to simply cook. It's just the stock, seasoning etc and recipe cards they provide so you still need to buy your own protein and veg but it works really well for me. Recipe cards come with a shopping list so that part is easy as well.

I can honestly say I've never had a meal I didn't like and I'm learning loads of techniques from it.

It's a similar idea to hello fresh. You log on and pick four recipes from a massive selection and they post them to you. I get it fortnightly and it's well worth the money. Can't ever see myself stopping it. If you wanted to try it, I noticed Tesco sell the recipe kits for some of their dishes so you could buy one and see what's involved before subscribing.

We use Mindful Chef and they are fantastic. You sign up but then they are extremely flexible in changing how many meals you get and how often they deliver. All dairy free and great vegan options. I am eating far more interesting food than I ever have. Easy to cancel or miss a week or even get delivered to you on holiday.

Another for hellofresh here. We just get it once a month, towards the end when the big shop has run out. It's a nice way to top up the fridge and not have to go do a supermarket shop and Iv found they have a really good choice and enjoyed (almost) every meal we have chosen.

I use hellofresh. We buy the 2 person box for 2 adults & a 6 YO. We really enjoy most of the meals.

I use the app and make choices from there. It's easy to skip weeks or pause your subscription. We tend to buy when offers are available, it can be quite good value.

They send out all the recipe cards so the meals can be re-created. Credit is given if ingredients are missing (not been a major issue for us).

There are always veggie options available, although there are less veggie options than meat.

They often use chicken thighs where I would have used breast. Sometimes meat portions are small (carbs & veg are plentiful). The only thing we aren't keen on are pasta dishes - I added extra chopped tomatoes and spices to the last one to improve it.

I have not tried any of the other meal boxes, although I have tried simply cook. Only 2 dishes so far, but they were both excellent.

We use gousto and have been for over a year. We really enjoy the meals and yes it is a little more expensive but my overall shopping bill has gone down as I’m not buying much from the supermarket now, mainly perishables.

I Looked at hellofresh but found them more expensive and not as much choice