I don't get 'hello fresh'

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Some friends of ours raved about hello fresh, do when they offered us a free box we jumped at the chance. But I just don't get it! I've had my 4 meals delivered and other than it bring pre-portioned out I don't see how it's easier than just making Ng your. Own stuff. I assumed that the meat and veg would come pre-prepped, peeled, chopped etc. But they don't! I'm still chopping peeling and mashing stuff. And I still have to do the weekly shop as it's only 4 evening meals.

Is it just that I'm not their target market? We cook from scratch anyway and I know how to cook. Is this aimed at ready meal/ take away/ freezer food every night people?

And no I've always cooked from scratch and have several cooking qualifications

@Chillychili

We have tried it (got the free box offer) we found it so salty. Not much veg in the meals, when I cook I always add lots of vegetables in large quantities. Also being 3 people we ended up with half of things left over. Had a few things missing as well.

But... you add however much salt you want? They just say 'add salt'

We do a Hello fresh box every week , because although I love cooking, I work 70 plus hours some weeks and DH and I have very different cooking styles. I can look in a half empty cupboard and make a decent meal for 6, he can look in a full cupboard and see nothing to cook at all . I think in ingredients , he doesn’t. So he chooses 4 meals , and the bit he hates is avoided

@RickiTarr yeah still have to chop! Although they do options like 10 min meals, prepped in 5 and there's a new chopped range too

I love the idea of it. It's the meal planning and shopping, the whole mental load of it that wears me down. I used to love cooking and experimenting with new food, but 25yrs of cooking for a family, the whining, the boredom...Yeah - Hello Fresh sounds like it would be a weight off. But it wouldn't work for us, as the chance of 3 of us eating the same meal is slim, DH eats ridiculous portions and then there's the cost.

Lots of very superior comments on here from people looking down on those of us who use Gousto/Hello Fresh etc.

I cook from scratch and I'm more than capable of following whatever recipe that's in front of me, or making up my own dishes from what I've got available.

But.....I get bored with cooking the same things. And to be honest, when I look at a recipe site I'm overwhelmed with the huge abundance of choice. I literally don't know where to start. Chicken or fish? Pasta or potatoes? I work very long hours and have two SEN children, I have precious little time to plan. Someone earlier (very snootily) said that looking at a recipe site only takes 10 minutes. Well, not for me it bloody doesn't. I don't have time to spend an hour trawling through the recipes trying to figure out what we're all going to want to eat.

By contrast, with Gousto there's 51 recipes each week, all with a thumbnail picture on the same page. One page. Boom. It's so much easier. And there's a wide variety of recipes - I've tried and cooked some really unusual things that I never would have picked before. I never choose recipes that I already know how to do because that's not the point for me. I keep the recipe cards and I'm building up a lovely stash of different recipes we've tried and liked.

And it's not just the choice. When you try a new dish with new flavours, you probably won't have the herbs/condiments etc in your pantry. I don't want to buy a whole big bottle of rice wine vinegar to try just one dish. With Gousto, you get the little portion you need. If I like the dish and decide to repeat it, then I'll go out and buy the full-size pantry ingredients.

I love cooking. And if I had more time, maybe I'd enjoy planning it a bit more. It's not that I don't enjoy planning - it's more that I find it totally overwhelming and then I end up just not bothering as I'm paralysed by indecision. I only buy Gousto with a discount so it's Ok price-wise. It's expensive at full cost. We don't do it every week either, just now and again.

And yes, I save tons of money by not going to the supermarket on those weeks! 😅

Gousto etc aren't for everyone - but they're not just for shit cooks who don't know one end of a wooden spoon from the other. Although, if you are just starting to learn, then Gousto is bloody brilliant at making good cooking seem easy.

We get 4 Gousto meals a month since the offers ran out. I wasn’t prepared to be impressed, but DSD was after a discount on her next box, so signed us up. Really glad she did! It’s so nice to be able to have something different without a trip to the big supermarket half an hour away (live in the sticks). The little village butcher/grocer is great for seasonal and local, but I enjoy cooking and like some variety. DH would be delighted to eat the same food every night for a month if I agreed, but he is happy to eat anything I chose and so far we have both enjoyed the vast majority of it. No issues at all with missing or damaged/inedible items. Only once my choices weren’t saved somehow, so we got a random selection, but when I contacted Gousto they refunded the full box price.
A meal for two does us for 2 dinners and a lunch, but I do tweak because sometimes they don’t have much veg!
It’s definitely added a few meals into our rota, and a few twists to existing favourites. The 10 min meals have been particularly good - time pressure turns me into a headless chicken, and DH reaches for a pizza...

It's probably for people who

Are not confident about cooking
Have money to spare
Like not having leftover ingredients that go off
Enjoy the excitement of having stuff come like a present to unwrap with a surprise in it

Lots of very superior comments on here from people looking down on those of us who use Gousto/Hello Fresh etc.

Agree with this!

I've had a lot on lately and meal planning was such a chore. I always choose the easy recipes and stuff I haven't made before, eg I wouldn't pick a cottage pie as it's something I know how to make and takes longer than 30 mins. We really enjoy it as you can get stuck in a rut of cooking the same dishes on loop, with Gousto we have a totally different meal every night. I totally get it's not for everyone but for example last night we had such a delicious curry that was so easy to make and I'm thrilled I can now add to my dishes!

We don't need to buy a huge amount of shopping around them as we eat simply for lunch so it's no bother picking up fresh bread etc.

I’ve done hello fresh and gousto. I prefer gousto. We kept getting hello fresh for the offers but found we wasted food as never wanted the max number of meals. Sometimes the recipes could be quite heavy on pot usage and not all of them are time savers- some can be quite faffy.

I’m sure I’ll go back to it again but we got a bit bored.

I've just had my first delivery yesterday!

I thought I might as well give it a try and see how I got on. I'm a pretty confident cook, enjoy meal planning, but always on the lookout for new ideas. DH and I like and eat different foods, so I'm hoping there might be recipes that we can BOTH enjoy. Alternatively, I can choose something I like, he can pick a different meal. To cook on different nights, obviously.

My sweet potato came ready chopped....but the bag had split. I'm concerned about all the packaging. BUT last week I had to throw out half jars of pesto, curry sauce, and manky vegetables, so I like the concept of just getting what you need.

I found the portion size (based on a scientific study of one meal so far, lol) to be very generous - i had one bowl last night, have some for lunch today and 2 tubs ready for the freezer. Black bean sweet potato stew.

My biggest worry is that the box was just left on the doorstep, so I don't think that's going to work beyond this trial experiment.

I got a free referral for Hello Fresh so I tried it. I am a reasonable cook but I eat differently (both time and type of food) from my family for a number of reasons so our food bill is always high and I thought I'd try it.

I thought the portions were big - I got the recipes for 2 and ate one as left overs. The quality of the ingredients was average and there things missing (buns for the burgers - pretty key!) but I did like the recipes and I made things I would not usually have tried mid week.

I like that you can browse the meals and they send everything you need. And I then eat meals I wouldn’t have thought of myself. But I hate all the extra chopping etc I cheat a lot in the week and use frozen chopped onions and chillies Pre chopped and frozen ginger etc it didn’t really save me much time but enjoyed the meals. It’s too expensive to use all the time and also struggled to get meals that I and the kids would eat and I’m not cooking two different meals

It simplifies the thinking, planning and shopping and that's what you're paying for.

If you like thinking about food and browsing recipe books/websites, you probably won't see the appeal.

If you have a good variety of shops nearby, and can buy all sorts of spices and seasonings cheaply it won't be as attractive as if you live in a rural market town and your local supermarket is Tesco or Waitrose and all the herbs and spices are Schwartz or Cooks Ingredients at five times the price.

I've never been tempted because we normally have 80% of the ingredients required in anyway, so it would be a waste of money.

I did try Simply Cook, but a lot of the seasonings sent were full of sugar, which I didn't like but I wouldn't pay full price anyway, because it is ridiculously expensive - you're basically paying almost the same for a tablespoon of a spice paste that you would a whole jar in the supermarket.

Another option for anyone who likes the idea but not the cost, amount of packaging or not being able to choose your own ingredients, would be to look at the recipe section of a supermarket website (I think nearly all of them that do online shopping has them) choose what you want and press the 'add to online order' button. You'll be able to remove anything you already have, adjust quantities/brands/pack sizes etc and complete your shop with toilet roll, cereal, etc etc. So you get a similar experience, with less packaging and likely lower cost.

Because whatever they say, it's not a cheap option, especially at full price. £4 per portion for a home cooked meal is probably two or three times what comparable meals cost, unless you're in the habit of buying bulk packs of vegetables instead of the loose amount of what you actually need and premium level spices, sauces etc and only using them once.

If you're the type of person who cooks regularly and keeps a half decent store cupboard, you'll be buying the cheaper larger packs, using them all and the cost per meal will be almost nothing. I've just had to replace all my spices because they inexplicably ran out all the same time and it probably cost around a fiver for

coriander
cumin
chilli
garam masala
paprika
turmeric

and a couple of others that I can't remember.

The vegetarian options seem especially poor value for money. Something like sweet potato and black bean stew will cost a pound or two for 4 portions. Worth bearing in mind.

That's the cost of the ingredients if you bought them from a supermarket, not from Hello Fresh that is.

DD used it when on placement - she was working long hours so it saved her time.

It meant that she didn't have to go shopping or think of what to cook but was still eating a proper balanced meal every night.

Mind you, she never paid full price as there seems to be lots of codes and offers out there for free or half price boxes.

Does anyone want a Gousto code? 50% off your first box, and 30% off for the first month

https://cook.gousto.co.uk/raf?promocode=LESLE42198043&utmm_source=iosapp

Our recipes this week attached, if anyone wants the method to any, let me know :)

I expect that judging by the person who fronts their adverts you may not be part of the target market.

We've had a few Gousto boxes and A mindful Chef. Have also tried Pasta Evangelists, which was by far and away the easiest and super yummy, but I don't really want to eat pasta that often.

It was partly because I'm exhausted with planning and making meals ALL.THE.TIME. My teens choose the recipes, they BOTH have to be happy to eat them, and then they (supposedly) cook - the reality is DD cooks with DH's help. But at least I've not had to make the usual input. Given that we're never eating out now, I'm happy to pay a bit extra for the convenience. We have a box every 2-4 weeks.

(Live rurally, so options like Deliveroo etc unavailable, and there are very limited options nearby for takeaway food)

There really is nothing that some mumsnetters wont judge!

I've never tried it but I can totally see the appeal. I like cooking but with two wee ones I dont have the time to browse shops or recipe books. I also get so bored of thinking 'what shall we cook this week'. A friend sent me a gousto recipe which was a real hit. Having said that, the produce needs to be excellent to make it worthwhile.

I'm really starting to grow bored of posters who's apparent lack of ability to imagine any way of life other than their own is just a thinly disguised dig.

I think I was hoping it would make cooking quicker and easier for me and it didn't so I was disappointed.

I don't mind the meal planning and working out what to cook and I like trying new recipes so don't have an issue with that.

I'd like it much more if all the veg was prechopped!

And it's not just the choice. When you try a new dish with new flavours, you probably won't have the herbs/condiments etc in your pantry. I don't want to buy a whole big bottle of rice wine vinegar to try just one dish. With Gousto, you get the little portion you need. If I like the dish and decide to repeat it, then I'll go out and buy the full-size pantry ingredients.

I can see how for someone who doesn't have a stock of that stuff it would be really useful.

@CuthbertDibbleandGrubb

I expect that judging by the person who fronts their adverts you may not be part of the target market.

I've actually not seen the adverts just heard about it from friends.