Anyone use recipe box companies?

[RadioactiveWear]

I am thinking of using a recipe box company for our family of 4 including teens. I work, and it is a massive chore to deal with cooking every night. I want to take the pressure off a few nights a week by having it all sorted.

We are not fussy eaters, but we like healthy, good food from all cultures. We also like a bit of vegetarian or vegan.

Can anyone give us feedback, good or bad, on using a service like this? Do you find it cost effective?

I’ve hello fresh and gusto. I think the later has a better range of recipes and the quality of produce tended to be better with less missing ingredients. If you’re buying for 4 it’s much better value than buying for 2. My only tip would be to read the recipe instructions before you order as some use lots of utensils! They’re good for teenagers to cook though as they’re really descriptive in the instructions.

I signed up to Hello Fresh last week, thinking we would just order 3 meals a week for a month or so for me and DH.

However, whilst the initial week was a good deal (60% off, free P&P & next few boxes at 25% off), I realised the rest of the time, I would have to pay the 4.99 delivery each week and that 25% off still made it pretty pricey.

So instead, I’ve decided to just meal plan better.

With a good size freezer and not fussy kiddos, I reckon it would cheaper to make it yourself.

Could, the teens take one night each a week to cook for the family?

Do you own a slow cooker - is freezing dump bags an idea? That way you defrost a bag overnight, then whack it in the slow cooker next morning and come home to a meal.

I had read multiple reviews about Hello Fresh saying they regularly subbed the main ingredients!
Also, when I tried to can el my account, they deactivated it and kept my payment details. I had to email insisting they delete the account fully.
They were a bit pushy about it.

Gousto is great can I refer you 😂 your first box is 65% off then 25% off until sometime in March. Tried to recreate a meal for two last week and it cost £11 as opposed to £8 from gousto. Big portions too

I use Simply Cook which is a bit different as it's just the seasonngs, pastes and sauces and you buy the actual ingredients. The recipe cards make it clear what you need. I prefer it that way. There's a huge choice of meals and I can honestly say it's changed my life. I was in such a meal rut. It's 10.99 for 4 different recipes.

I have a referral code for a free box if you're interested.

We love The Spicery for food from around the world. The kits are quite cheap and really easy to replicate again and again with your own spices etc.

You get a heap of stuff to recycle, chill packs, boxes, plastic cartons of xyz and while they taste great and are quite fun and motivating I gave up due to the packaging overwhelm

I highly recommend gousto. Really good for vegetarian and international cuisine.

Have tried both Hello Fresh and Gousto and they're both pointless pains in the arse: expensive, poor quality of ingredients and shitloads of packaging.

I'm a good cook who can feed people well for considerably less than these companies charge.

(Also, this TOTALLLY sounds like a post from marketeers / PR types looking for insight casually dressed up as 'hello human people', just sayin')

We do Hello Fresh term time only. We get 5x nights, 2x portions per night. I'm an excellent cook, I just cannot be chewed meal planning and cooking and thinking on top of ft work and dealing with the kids etc. Kids eat ar childcare.

Weekends we cook and eat together, school holidays too.

The meals are a mix of nice and a bit boring, but even at full price, I'm happy to pay for not having to think. Its also getting to the point where I would struggle to get 5x meals, 2x portions each, at my local Aldi for the same price unless we went fully veggie / made big vats of stews etc. Which I'm fine doing in the school hols, but not term time.

Currently signed up to Hello Fresh as we are really struggling to get organised since having our son. We feel like we waste far less due to having the exact amount of ingredients required, however it is quite expensive once the discount runs out.
I got a free ‘dessert’ after ordering so many boxes which was a bar of Tony’s chocolonely 🙄😂 not what I’d call a dessert tbh.

Once the discount runs out we won’t be renewing, it was worth a try and we got some recipes we’d not have normally considered.

I honestly think if you only plan to have 2 or 3 meals a week of not you cooking, you’d be better off to just order some really nice ready meals and sides from M&S or Waitrose etc.

My adult kids prefer Gousto to Hello fresh because the recipes seem to have more ingredients and are really tasty.
Packaging and delivery aren’t particularly sustainable but I have some great recipes and have bought ingredients for some core meals.
Definitely worth a try just to provide some variety.

Gousto is way better than HF - for many reasons, but mostly due to ingredient quality and portion size.

We have it every week as it broadens mine and my dc's palate and it's soooo easy. Delivered on Monday afternoon and sort it's out for the midweek. Worth every penny.

THIS I do not get the hype and they cannot possibly be money saving.

Simply Cook £2.50 plus per meal. Coleman's casserole mix 90p in the supermarket and you can get the other ingredients while you're in there.
Or you could buy a mini bottle of wine or beer and use that to make your sauce instead.

Meal kits. Literally hundreds of meals for a family you can cook for around £5. Look online for recipes or use magazines for seasonal inspiration.

I tried it once but cooking the recipes took me far longer than my normal meals would. I still had to go to the shops for other food so it kind of defeated the object for me of saving time.

Also, this TOTALLLY sounds like a post from marketeers / PR types looking for insight casually dressed up as 'hello human people', just sayin')

I agree. We should be paid to respond

I’ve had Hello Fresh twice. First time I used a discount code and got 6 discounted boxes. We loved it, good meal variety and no issues. We couldn’t justify the full price though so think we only had one box at full price after the discount and then cancelled.

A year or so later we got another discount code and were in a bit of a rut with meals (same evening meals every week for weeks and weeks) so signed up again thinking it would give us some inspiration. Again, good selection of meals but the experience was the polar opposite, every delivery had items missing, the boxes were arriving like mush in places because the ice packs had melted and soaked the cardboard with condensation. We didn’t even see out the trial period before cancelling.

I will say that the portions were huge, we were ordering for 4 (2 adults, 2 kids) and always had enough leftovers for one adult to have as a meal the next day or to split between with the kids so from that point of view they were good value.

I've tried gousto, hello fresh and simply cook. Ranked from best to worst...

Gousto.
Pros: Good choice of recipes, I like that you can keep the recipe cards and remake them.
Cons: lots of packaging waste. Expensive after the initial discounts. I felt pressured to actually cook the meals (rather than doing a freezer dinner when I'm ill) as I'm not sure if the meat was previously frozen so I had to use it in time. Whereas when I do a supermarket shop I can freeze the meat and cook it when i actually have the energy for involved meals.

Hello fresh.
Pros: each meal came in its own bag so no rooting through the fridge to find the right ingredients. (If you find that a nuisance) (Meat/fish was bagged separately to keep it cold)
Not sure if the herbs/spices were exclusive blends or if I can recreate the meals.
Cons: Hardly any meals my teen would eat, the pescetarian stuff was nearly all out of stock, veggie meals were all too spicy. The bags mentioned as a 'pro' also had stuff in that was meant to be in the fridge which I didn't realise so we had a bag of spinach and a pepper that went off. Even more packaging than Gousto. Meat was previously frozen, and it all only lasted a few days.

Simply cook.

Pros: ummm... lots of choice. You can buy the ingredients and cook when it suits rather than feeling pressured like with the others.

Cons: it's only the spice blends, you then have to buy all the ingredients as well so doesn't save time. Some of the ingredients were listed as "1 pack of xyz" with no indication as to what size pack. You can't recreate the meals again, which makes sense from a business view. I'd say 50% of what we've cooked wasn't that nice anyway. Very expensive for what it is.

The best thing I've found, which is way better than any of those is the lollipop app. I think it's called lollipopai. The only thing I don't like about it is that it's currently only usable through sainsburys. But it's full of recipes, you just "add" them to your online shop and all the ingredients are added. You can deselect things you don't need.

We've done HF and gousto. HF I kept up for a while but gousto I stopped after the cut price trial. I thought gousto was better but HF lasted longer because we got it during lockdown when I had choosing what to eat/cook fatigue!

I did restart HF but had the same issue poster upthread said of mushy ingredients, bad packaging etc.

I still make some of the recipes we had, so it broadened our repertoire of easy dinners at least.

All I've tried have been expensive, poor quality of ingredients, lots of cheap carbs and less expensive meat/fish and WAY too much packaging!

It's so bad for the environment!

I use Gousto because I prefer the recipes. I don’t eat meat and I like that they offer alternatives on the same dish. We usually get 5 meals for 2 people every week and I find it very good value for money. We both work irregular hours and it takes the pain out of meal planning for me.

I tried Hello Fresh and Mindful Chef. Hello Fresh consistently don’t have a good enough selection of decent vegetarian or fish dishes and Mindful Chef were expensive but the non-meat dishes were not very inspiring.

I use guosto and have done for a while now after trying out a few , tried to post a link but seems its not allowed 😂

Enjoyed it so far and it's got the widest range out of the options , also has quick cook recipes which are great as I have a toddler so am often looking for things I can make fast!

Hopefully MN will allow me to share the discount that will get you 65% off then 25% off your next 2 months its RIPLE43509155

I also get a few quid off my next week if you end up using my code so I'd owe you a big thanks for that haha

Thx, I have loads of posts on MN, so defo not marketing on thier behalf.

I just ordered Simply Cook for a week for £1, although that seems to have tied me into then paying £9.99 a week!

We'll see. I'll give it a go.

We did Gousto for about 18 months. Spent 38-40 quid per week for four meals for two adults.
6 months ago we decided to order the exact same ingredients from Sainsburys and we chose 20 of our fave Gousto recipe cards. Each week I add 4 lots of recipe ingredients to the Sainsburys shop and we rotate every week for 5 weeks. I spend 15-16 pounds on the ingredients per week (although initial outlay for store cupboard ingredients meant i spent about 20-25 quid). Meals are exactly the same but half the cost and no massive boxes and packaging to deal with! Save your money!