To ask if anyone here does ‘Hello Fresh’

[Vikinglightning]

And if so, is it worth the money?

Seriously thinking about starting it as I’m just so fed up of trawling round the supermarkets bored, trying to think of what to eat for dinner all week. Tired of never getting the portion sizes just right (there’s only 2 of us) and either having loads left over or still feeling a bit hungry. Tired of not knowing what to cook and worrying our diets aren’t great blah, blah.

Also, I’m just so short on time at the moment so would love for dinner time to be a bit quicker and easier!

I loathe meal planning so now getting Gousto 7 days a week. Love the range of recipes and haven't had a bad one yet. Never going back.

We are trying it for the first time this week. I got fed up of thinking about and cooking so many meals over lockdown so it's to try and get my mojo back a bit.

Also I'm the one who does all the thinking about food so I'm happy to take the back seat on that for a bit - DH doesn't mind cooking but doesn't like the thinking about what we are going to have.

We both love good food and trying new stuff so I'm hoping to get some ideas and get out of a rut.

We did it for a bit and it was okay, but it seemed repetitive. Not necessarily the same meals, but the same theme - burgers and chips (it could be beef, pork and apple, etc.), stir fry noodles, pasta, etc. None of it a whole lot more inventive than we could come up with on our own. But dh enjoyed it on the nights I worked late as it was better than ready meals which is what we might normally have if one of us is home with the dc. Just we all got a bit sick of it after a month or so. We did try Mindful Chef for a bit, which is significantly more expensive, but the meals were a bit more inventive and we didn't get as bored of them so quickly.

Another Gousto user, we started with Hello Fresh but I got quickly fed up of how limited the menu was and getting rotten veg (this was about 6 or 7 years ago mind!).

Gousto has at least 50 recipes a week to pick from, and we've kept the recipe cards and often re-cook recipes. We keep them in the ring binders they send out but rate the recipes with our favourite so can just open the favourites binder and pick something out. It has made meal planning so much easier for us

Another vote for simply cook here. Some weeks I use it nearly every night, others I'll use it once. It gives good ideas to change up my repertoire without having to buy say 6 different spices to make a curry.

We had sausage and kale pasta last night and chicken chowder tonight.

If you don't fancy it you aren't wasting anything as no fresh ingredients.

I tried HF and Gousto and much preferred the latter - same number of ingredients, similar prep time but a wider range of options (especially Asian meals, which I love and enjoy learning how to cook).

Here’s a Gousto discount code if anyone would like one, I think it’s 50% off a first box and then 30% for the rest of the month. cook.gousto.co.uk/raf/?promo_code=SHARO314764

We do a mixture of Hello Fresh and Gousto. I prefer Gousto. I love not having to think about what to cook. I think these boxes are for people who like to cook from scratch but don’t want to spend much time cooking or shopping for ingredients.

Oops!

cook.gousto.co.uk/raf/?promo_code=SHARO314764

I've done hello fresh and gousto - much preferred gousto for range of meals, quality of ingredients and full info given on recipe cards so easier to recreate afterwards.

I like to do the boxes for a month every now and again just to get some new ideas and refresh our menu planning. It would be expensive to do all the time but great for inspiration every now and again.

Thanks all. I saw some dodgy reviews for HF earlier, I might look into Gusto instead but whichever I go for, I just think it might take some of the food shopping stress and indecisiveness and boredom out of making dinner.

People only cooking for two, have you got grown up children? Once my children have left home I thought I'd live on toast, and never have to think about nutritional meals again. Do you get your meal cooking mojo back at some point?

Yes. Love it. Had it for 2 years

We used to have HF and loved it - great recipes and we really liked the food (me, DP and two sons). However, I cancelled them because they started to chuck everything in the same box. When we first started everything you needed for a meal was in one bag - really convenient! When you want to cook it just get the bag out the fridge. However with everything chucked into together it became no quicker than assembling the bits from my kitchen for a meal from a recipe book! I cancelled it and told them to let me know if they stopped the "chuck and ship" method. I don't know if they have.

Not any more. Loved the idea and the recipes. However, the food wasn’t fresh and I had to contact them for each box I had (3 in total). I had mouldy cheese, rotting veg etc. They were good customer service wise but if I’m buying for 4 to make my like easier and half the products are unusable it defeats the object. The amount of plastic used was dreadful too.

Simply cook is the one that has worked best for us, although we regularly pause it because we tend to build up a backlog of boxes.

It is definitely more cost effective, the flavourings and herbs are £2.50 per meal and then often just another few pounds for the actual ingredients, so almost half the price of HF and Gousto.

It’s definitely not quicker , I found it such a faff and as it was following a recipe I was taking twice as long to make dinner whereas recipes I already know I do without thinking in half the time .
We did it for 2 months and then cancelled

Yes I do 3/4 days a week every few weeks. I like to have time on and time off.

I do find it's a huge amount of washing up! But it's nice to have things I wouldn't cook before and lots of the recipes have become favourites that we cook on non hello fresh days.

It's one less mental load item which I like. I can just open a bag and cook. I know it's all pretty healthy as I choose those meals.

I do find it very very annoying that so many of the meals have a supplement of a couple quid extra.

I use Mindful Chef. It just means I don't have to think about meal planning or even deciding what to eat. It also means I can try new things without ending up with a cupboard full of once-used spices.

We do either Gousto or Hello Fresh every so often depending on their 'can we tempt you back' discounts.

It's just nice to have a break from thinking about meal planning for a couple of week - we try different things and DC like looking at the menus and choosing some of the meals.

I don't like the tiny pots of things and sometimes the recipes are things that we could do ourselves fairly easily but given that we're not eating out at the moment it makes a change.

I use it occasionally just for a change and not having to think too hard about what to have for meals. Some of the recipes such as basic pasta dishes I don't think are worth £5 per portion and others use just about every damn utensil in the kitchen so read the recipes carefully if you just want something quick and easy! Generally I've found the quality of the produce and the BB4 dates on things to be good, although my last box had a couple of missing items.

@ohidoliketobe

We get simply cook - it's a fair bit cheaper (think it's £8 for 4 recipes) but you just get the recipe cards and the herbs/ spices pots. You buy your own fresh ingredients. There's never anything particularly random or exotic you need to buy, usually just 4 or 5 ingredients, and they're all pretty much under 30 mins total cooking time. There are loads of recipes to pick from or they'll send you a random selection. You aren't limited to using the stuff within a short time frame either

Thanks for this. I’ve signed up to a trial as I like the idea of using the recipes and spices when it fits with our plans.

Like some others I live on my own so have been getting the 3 meals for 2 people box for a couple of months now and just eating the leftovers the next day.

The use by dates are really good and I order the rapid box so meals shouldn't take any more than 20 mins to cook.

I've decided to up mine to the 4 meals for 4 people this week and freeze the other portions and skip the following weeks box as the meal price per person is cheaper the bigger the box.

Definitely beats trawling round the supermarket after work trying desperately to find some inspiration. Plus no food waste is a massive bonus.

@blueJava - My box this week came with the ingredients for each meal (except the stuff that needs to be kept in the ice bag) all in sperate bags with the corresponding recipe card number on so can pop in the fridge and just grab when needed.

Another vote for simply cook.. I like that it isn’t such a tight timescale as they send you the flavourings (herbs, spices, stocks, pastes) and you buy the fresh bits when you need them. I get one box a month with 4 meals in, and it just mixes things up a bit, and encourages us to try new things. I can also easily tweak it to feed an extra person, or switch out an ingredient someone doesn’t like, which I guess is harder to do with one like hello fresh.

Not HF but we recently started Gousto with the 50/30% off, did it for the month and have not cancelled it completely - aim to have it once a month or so from now on.
Is expensive but great IMO - Very lazy but if you're like me and HATE meal planning and looking round the supermarket for random stuff. I just go to the supermarket for the easy stuff with gousto. We are vegetarian and the selection was surprisingly good, but is probably better value if you're a meat eater. Husband was very bothered by the endless little plastic packets. Both of us slightly annoyed by the fact that you can't send the box back (like you can with abel & cole) - yes it's recyclable but takes up a big chunk of the bin.
But we broadly very much liked the food and are keeping the recipe cards to use again. I'd recommend it using the offer at least .