Hello fresh boxes?

[dreamadream1]

Hi everyone

Just wondering if anyone here uses Hello Fresh for food and roughly is it more expensive?

I work 12 hour days, my husband works 7 days a week. We do cook fairly healthy and make our own sauces, use herbs and spices and veg etc but we are both bloody knackered and sometimes don't sit down to eat until gone 8:30pm (we both cook) and I'm wondering if this would make our lives a little easier.

We are not fussy eaters so menus wouldn't be a problem for us, roughly spend £80 a week on food and toiletries for breakfasts lunches and dinners.

Any opinions welcome.

Thank you x

I've been doing Gousto for about 3 months, and have done HelloFresh previously.
They've been great for me during the Corona period because I get the 4 meal box and live on my own so basically thats all my food shopping done every week bar the odd few weeks needing to get milk or butter, plus I'm eating more actual vegetables rather than ready meals.

we've been using Mindful Chef for a couple of weeks and are really enjoying it. My husband set it up as he wanted to start cooking more but is oddly intimidated by cookery books and choice!

We're vegetarian and the selection of recipes so far has been great. The portion sizes are good (and using pre packaged amounts has been sobering to make me realise that I generally make mammoth portions!) Everything has been so tasty.
I think that after one or two more weeks we may stop and remake the meals using their recipes.

The packaging isnt too bad, comes in a cardboard box, each meal in a brown paper bag with veg like onions etc loose. However, greens like kale and spinach are plastic wrapped for vanishingly small amounts which makes me feel quite guilty. You can return the coolbag type packaging though, which is encouraging.

I dont have a referral code, but if anyone wants to DM me their email, you can get 25% off four boxes.

I’ve tried HF, Gousto, Mindful Chef and FeastBox. I think HF and Gousto are both great, prefer Gousto for the variety on offer (I think it’s 50+ recipes available each week?) and that it gets me trying things I wouldn’t otherwise. But HF tasty too - depends which of their recipes take your fancy really.

I’m not sure if anyone still needs a code but if so here’s mine for 50% off with Gousto - cook.gousto.co.uk/raf/?promo_code=SHARO314764&utm_source=weblink

Working Link, sorry!

cook.gousto.co.uk/raf/?promo_code=SHARO314764&utm_source=weblink

I did Hello Fresh and wasn't impressed. To be fair I forgot to choose so just got sent their choice - which I wouldn't have chosen. I prefer to choose my own meat....it's odd to be sent one carrot.

We had a Gousto box which we enjoyed until one week all the veg ans herbs were rotten, so we couldn't make any of the meals. We are trying not to use supermarkets as my father is in a care home, so it left us short of food that week. Gousto weren't very helpful, ans couldn't get us replacement veg, so I cancelled.

Have never tried it but would like to give it a go

I have been using simply cook since the summer but have almost tried everything on the list. I've really gotten used to the easy cooking
It offers

Hi, we tried Hello Fresh for 6 weeks and were so disappointed, in every box there were a couple of ingredients missing, eg, chicken flatbreads without the flatbread, poor substitutions, eg, parsley instead of coriander. They were great and refunded us for the missing bits but it was a pain as it actually made me go shopping more! A friend has used Gousto for about a year and says has never had anything missing, she loves it.

During lockdown we started using Hello Fresh but found it a bit bland/stodgy after a month or so. We then moved to Gousto and for the past few months have generally enjoyed the meals (very few we'd not try again) however the quality took a nosedive after Christmas (possibly not coping with new lockdown and increased demand? or change of packing supplier) with several missing or damaged ingredients and mixed up recipe cards. Look at their Twitter feed since Christmas to see the volume of complaints. All of these companies offer a token compensatory credit against the next order for this type of problem but it's not much help if it messes up the week's meal plans. We also use Pasta Evangelists a couple of times a week - great food but not cheap. This week we're giving Mindful Chef a try. None of these are economical but it saves on the shopping trips during the pandemic and gives us variety which we wouldn't have if we had to find the time to meal plan properly after being chained to the laptop homeworking all day.

@Sosigsandwich thanks, hope you like it. I received the first box yesterday and so far I'm impressed.

@Eg2016 What meals did you choose?

I've tried Hello Fresh and Gousto over the last couple of months with discount codes, currently on my first week of Gousto - I got 4 x meals for 2 people.

I've been out of the UK for a long time so went for classic British comfort - bangers and mash with fig onion gravy (delicious!) and roasted carrots, cottage pie, chicken and mushroom pies with spring greens and lamb meatballs with roasted potato slices, honey carrots and an amazing home made mint sauce.

I cooked it all up over the weekend and put most in the fridge for meals during the week and a couple in the freezer. Works a treat and with the discount got 8 meals for £24 and no waste. I just heat it up each day. Highly recommended.

@Sosigsandwich so far we have tried the chicken curry and lasagne both were lovely.

Another vote for Gousto - much prefer it to Hello Fresh.
And here's a shameless promo code

cook.gousto.co.uk/raf/?promo_code=DEBBI42144403&utm_source=weblink

What I really liked about Hello Fresh was that they incorporated veg into everything in a way that I wouldn't have thought too. For example the chicken loaded wedges had carrot in so you get at least one of your 5 a day in every meal. Does anyone know if Gusto is the same?

First Gousto box arrived and we were most looking forward to the saffron and crab risotto... The crab has been replaced with prawns which we hate!! Fortunately we have crab in but it's not a great first impression.

I was using Gousto until middle of last year, when lockdown occurred they basically took on too many customers, the quality went down, less choice of meals and so many damaged or missing ingredients that I got sick of contacting them.....

Hi OP,
Just to add (and you may want to go with a HF or Gousto box anyway) but we're in a similar boat in terms of working long hours / end up sitting down to dinner similar time as you (albeit granted only Mon-Fri) and find meal planning our friend. We do a meal plan for the whole week and get an Occado delivery on Sat morning. Because of the above, we keep Mon-Fri dinners really simple and v quick to make - somewhat repetitive but we're ok with that for the sake of meal planning / weekly shop takes minimal time, and evening meal prep takes minimal time.
Eg once we week we just have an oven pizza, with a really really nice salad (it's lovely - bag of rocket, thinly sliced fennel, orange segments, Parmesan) - salad made whilst pizza cooking so basically 10 mins to prep. Also one evening might have fish cakes, with one of those nice steam fresh frozen vegetables microwaved. That sort of thing. So not a complete cop out, not too bad in terms of nutrition etc.

Also pinched a few HF recipes from their website that have become regulars! (Take me about 15 mins to make) - can find these free on their website, do have guesstimate a couple of the quantities.

We both like cooking, but are ok with this approach during the week and at the weekend things are much more homemade.

So we tried Gusto this weekend for the first time. I was quite excited and found it underwhelming

We had fish florentine bake which was really lovely and I'll be trying that recipe again - sauce made with cream cheese and stock ... an excellent short cut! So easy to do with very little mess and pots.

Last night was sticky pork with noodles. They subd the wholewheat noodles for rice noodles which we don't like as much and they were pretty tasteless even with the dressing. The pork was a bit meh. A lit of dishes were created for a salad!

Today was fish gyros. Ok but tasted overwhelming of soy sauce, way too many salad leaves in addition to the Greek salad (that element was very nice but would have been nice to have red onion). Only one mini naan each?!!! Crikey. I ended up roasting some gnocchi (weird but all I had in!) as for what I think is priced as a main meal, there wasn't enough carbs.

Tomorrow night is beef stew and orzo which I'm looking forward to.

Overall I don't think I'll bother again. Very expensive for ok food and a ridiculous amount of plastic packaging. Actually it made me a bit cross.

I think I'll look to try Hello Fresh next.