Hello Fresh

[missymoomoomoomoomoo]

Well my goodness

What a revelation. Found it so motivating that all I needed to do was pull out a bag and follow a recipe. Its making me cook again

What are peoples thoughts on this? Is it in the long term expensive (I have a discount code for now) and did you manage to keep it up?

It forces us to cook so is definitely worth it.
I was very sceptical as I like cooking anyway. It’s actually massively reduced our big shop so for now I’m happy to pay for the boxes.

It made me a bit rounder than I like so I had to cut down and have, in the end, gone for a different supplier when I do do a box which is very rarely these days.

What it actually did was make me a more confident cook and give me some really fabulous recipes that I can now bash out without a thought. It also taught me more about certain foods, how you don't always need to peel a butternut squash or carrots, that spinach makes a fab addition to almost any meal, that I love sweet soy and that I can cook fish and it will be edible. I make a lot more curries and east asian food now and would never be without coconut milk in the cupboard.

I would personally suggest that you try things that you wouldn't normally make yourself. I very rarely picked the pastas or the shepherd's pie kind of fare as I can make those perfectly well and I find them boring to eat.

We enjoy hello fresh but much prefer Gousto. But we do switch between the two.

I love being able to pick meals in advance and am able to calorie them into my daily allowance. They’ve definitely helped me lose weight as it’s kept my meals varied so I’m not getting bored eating the same thing all of the time! But yes they can work out expensive but for us they are worth it as we enjoy the ease of use and easy planning that comes with it.

If you are interested I can give your our Gousto referral code if you fancied trying them too.

Agree with Enb76 - we tend to pick things we wouldn’t normally cook at home, for example we wouldn’t have cottage pie or something we already are confident making.

Another one who prefers Gousto, just because I find the recipes a bit more adventurous / bang for your buck in terms of prep time to flavour. But that’s really personal preference.

I found the quality of Hello Fresh started out great but steadily deteriorated. Missing ingredients, mouldy veg, meat at the end of its life. Was just too much trouble in the end because I ended up having to get fresh ingredients as well as the delivery.

Gousto code for 50% off first box and 30% off first month.

@BlueSkyBlinking we preferred Hello Fresh when we first started getting it about 7 years ago. We tried gousto as we quite liked having a choice but at that point the portions were very tight and we were feeding three (a toddler). Now we swap between them but Gousto has won us back, mainly as the Hello Fresh choices seem to be the same after a few weeks and Gousto’s portions easily feed three.

@TenaciousOnePointOne yes I just looked at Gousto and ordered a box. The recipes look similar but the app looks more straightforward. Have you had any delivery issues?

Do either of them use free range chicken yet? We stopped them when we realised they were lower welfare meats

I prefer Gousto but every now and then Hello Fresh offer me money off to one back so I've just had 4 boxes from them then will go back to Gousto. I have avid fortnightly which keeps the costs down.

We’ve swapped to Gousto - more fish based and vegetarian. Just more choice overall.

Mindful Chef is another one. I think it's more expensive but they do reasonably high welfare meat and sustainable fish.

Morrison's also do a fresh box - cheaper than gusto and Hello fresh and works out better as they get the ingredients off the shop floor so for example if you need 15ml of soy sauce then you get a full bottle of it .

Same with the meat if you need 250g of chicken and they haven't got then you get 500g at same price .

Can you get these for just one person?

A older family member lives alone and I think she could benefit from these...

guess, Gousto do 2/4 portion options, can’t recall Hello Fresh now. Most of the options would reheat well if that’s of any use.

I'm on my second week of ordering from Hello Fresh. The recipes have all been amazing (six tried so far) but both orders have been missing ingredients. The latest order was missing all of the fridge items. For one meal alone we were missing the sausages, bacon, mince, coleslaw veg and cheddar. For the other two we were missing two more types of cheese. We got a credit of £12 total.

My mother (who lives on her own) gets a box with two meals which will last her 4 meals. She's in her late 70's so not ancient or anything but rather enjoys cooking when she doesn't have to go shopping for all the fiddly ingredients that she will only use once when trying to follow a recipe in a book.

She uses Mindful Chef

I have a referral code for Gousto too:

CAROL42287050

I like both, at first I thought Gousto meat was better quality but I actually think both are very similar.
I think I slightly prefer the flavour of Hello Fresh recipes so far, but could just be the ones we have chosen.

Gousto works out a bit cheaper than Hello Fresh. They have some Korean recipes that look good in the next fortnight too.

I always used to favour Gousto but I've lately found the recipes a bit boring and uninspiring. I'm a much bigger fan of HF now. We had the Vegetable Laksa this evening and it was heavenly!

I love Hello Fresh and Gousto. We’ve been switching between them since last September and it’s made my life so much easier. Finally no more of the “what shall I cook tonight? I’m so bored of the same old things!” I love the Gousto app for ease of use. We have 4 meals a week for 4 of us and I spread it between chicken, red meat and vegetarian. Gousto again always have a really interesting selection of veggie/vegan meals. There’s usually enough left for us to have some for lunch the next day too. So, as the dc have school lunches and we’re eating leftovers for lunch, I hardly need to buy anything at the supermarket now.

I love HF, I've never had missing ingredients and never paid full price either

I do much prefer the Gousto app - much easier to navigate and you know what you're spending each week. The HF one is rubbish - you can't see what your weekly total is and if you switch box size you lose everything in the box and have to select all over again.

We much prefer Gousto, though their quality has been really poor lately.

I love to cook and see it as a bit of a treat to be able to cook new things without too much hassle. It is relatively expensive and I've noticed the Gousto portions are smaller than previously, so we've needed to pad meals out slightly more (we buy a box for 2 but it generally does the 3 of us with extra salad or bread. Recently this just isn't the case)

The recipes do come round in rotation, but it's very easy to pause deliveries through the app.

We're going on a break for a couple of months after this week as we've built up a big stock of cards that we want to cook again, and also to save some money, however we will be back!