Hello fresh - why?

[Montymorency]

Just wanting to understand why people go to the expense of these food boxes when they could just choose a recipe and buy the ingredients themselves

They take a well established recipies and then strip out many if not all of the non core ingredients in order to make it easier to cook. I get that they want to make things more accessible for the 'non cook' audience but to me it was at the expense of required flavours and making dishes incredibly bland. It seemed like cost cutting rather then making things less complicated.

I used to love it but then it seemed like the bulk of the recipes were minced beef/pork and I didn't want to pay ££ extra for salmon etc.
maybe I should give it another try.

There’s little to no food waste but some of the packaging needs to be more recyclable.

Yeah if you see my post upthread I agree, they clearly are trying to cut costs. For us, for a midweek dinner, it's fine. But we are like @Blondiie 's friend - DINKY couple with full on jobs who are both really basic, not particularly interested, cooks so it really broadened what they were eating, cut down on takeaways, and they can’t be faffed looking up new recipes

Says the genius who can’t even write a short sentence properly.

TBF, i like Gousto because I am fairly lazy and pretty stupid when it comes to planning what to cook for tea and buying the ingredients and doing the actual cooking every day of my sodding life… this makes it far less tedious and we seem to have plenty of leftovers so it works for us at the moment.

I think all you need to ‘understand’ is that people aren’t all the same. Our brains don’t all work the same way. We don’t all have the same demands on our time.

I have plenty of time as I only work about 20 hours a week; my kids are quite self-sufficient older teens; I don’t have elderly parents or relatives to look after. So I have the time to shop and plan and cook.

Many of my friends work full-time. Some are single parents. Some have children with complex needs. Some are looking after elderly relatives. Some have ND which can make planning and time management difficult. Some have ALL of these barriers all at once. I don’t honestly know how they even find time to have a shower or a cup of tea. Surely you can understand why someone like that might make use of one of these services?

Plus as others have said, not everyone is a confident cook. Great for you if you are, but there are probably things you have no idea how to do while others can do them easily 🤷🏼‍♀️

Agree. Choose online and everything is delivered with no waste. I get Gousto. It has actually taught my children to cook and made me far more aware of the variety of veggie dishes.

I've never used them personally, or Gousto.

But I would a e thought the reasons were pretty obvious.

You choose meals and they deliver the exact ingredients along with the recipe. The recipes and ingredients are quite straightforward and quick.

Otherwise you end up got to look up recipes, shop for often long lists of ingredients. You end up with leftovers that you might struggle to use up. You might be encouraged to try a meal that you would otherwise have bothered with.

What does it matter?

We can't all afford to keep our money tied up in meat for the freezer

Point still stands though. You cut your cloth to suit ingredients wise (meat / no meat) but keeping some basic staples in the cupboard (herbs, spices, pasta, tinned tomatoes, coconut milk, stock cubes etc) is not expensive and allows you a bit more leeway as to what to cook on any given day.

When did you last try them?

I don't personally like them as the quality of the ingredients is poor.

But you have to be monumentally stupid to not understand that the convenience of having a little bag of ingredients and a recipe card for each day, and not having to think about what to make, is a huge draw.

I get a box about once a month.

It's convenient and it gets us to try new recipes out.

If we enjoy it then we keep the recipe card and make it ourselves.

Anyone who wants a free box drop me a message with your email address and I will send you a code.

Can you not appreciate that for some people leeway to decide what to cook on any given day is not what they want.

When I get home from work I often don't have much time before I have to go out again and more often my brain feels like a wrung sponge. A store cupboard of ingredients will make me reach for a tin of baked beans or the menu for my favourite Chinese. A paper bag of components in the correct quantities with a simple instructions will make me make a proper meal.

No such thing as a free lunch?

I had a voucher which made it cheaper than buying meals for 5 days. And it meant we tried something new instead of eating the same dinners on repeat. Also, showed us how few ingredients you need to make a decent dinner!

I'm autistic and have ADHD. I'm also a pretty decent cook. However, my DM wasn't and brought us up on convenience freezer food with the occasional roast dinner or stew. Only veggies were peas, carrots and Brussel sprouts. Strictly no "foreign food" allowed - so no Chinese, no pizzas, no curries, no pasta. Only traditional "English" food based on meat and potatoes.... That means I've had to teach myself how to cook, and at the ripe old age of 48 I'm still learning about different recipes and foods, and I'll probably always be learning more. I love to cook and love many different cuisines. DM complained a couple of weeks ago that the sausage roll I brought back from Greggs for her was "too spicy to eat."

Anyway.

I really struggle when there are unlimited possibilities.

To take a basic example - I decided to teach myself how to make Yorkshire puddings. Loads of free info, so I googled it. Oh my fucking god. Every site had a different recipe, with "expert" instructions that just contradicted each other. It took me WEEKS - and I do mean that literally - to be able to decide which recipe looked the best and to try it out.

That was a few years ago now, and obviously now I have figured out my own little way of cooking Yorkshires.

I've used Gousto in the past. It was so much easier for me to use than scouring the internet for days to find the "right" recipe. And I've kept the recipe cards and used them again and again and again.

I deliberately only chose recipes from Gousto that were new to me - so each time I've learnt a new recipe and been given the exact ingredients that I need. Some of the things I would have had anyway, others not - eg/previously I didn't have rice wine vinegar in my cupboard.

Gousto has been brilliant in helping me expand recipes that I know I can do well. And when I'm struggling with meal planning, having a visual book of recipes I can flick through for inspiration is a bloody godsend.

I only use Gousto now when they have a special offer as it's not particularly cost-effective but it definitely has its benefits for someone like me who struggles with executive function.

I've been tempted to try them, but heard quite a few people say the quality isn't that great. My reason would mostly be because I'm just cooking for myself everyday. I like the idea of not always having to eat the same meal or variations of it several days in a row in order to not waste food.

On a side note, the new JanePlan TV advert has, I think quite cleverly, compared the price of a takeaway coffee to one of their meals...

This is what would bother me. However, I recognise I'm in an extremely fortunate position compared to some on this thread. I have plenty of storage, fridge and freezer space and I positively enjoy planning meals. This was true even when we had young kids and my husband and I were both working full-time. I didn't always cook anything much, I used ready meals or beige freezer food at times, and I didn't beat myself up about that, but I always had something in that would fill us all up in a vaguely healthy way. Always plenty of fruit around, and we all ate that.

Haven't read the whole thread yet, but has anyone mentioned that on Ocado you can indeed click a button and get all the ingredients for a recipe added to your basket? You can then delete items if you already have something like flour or oil. Here's an example. https://www.ocado.com/webshop/recipe/almond-crusted-cod-with-lemon-and-parsley-butter-/194471?ad=265613%7C6361268%7C201605%7C6361284 (I promise I don't work for Ocado!)

I don't really understand why the supermarkets haven't picked up on doing this in store.
It'd be a great I think.
We are currently using Green Chef as they had a deal. It's honestly fab. Good portion sizes and quality ingredients.

I do agree with posters saying the quality of some of these can be poor. We stopped getting Hello Fresh because the chicken was stringy and I couldn’t even consider red meat or pork because it was mostly gristle - your cheapest, lowest quality cuts. The veggie options weren’t great either as they were carb heavy with very limited veg. Gousto however is amazing; I rarely trim the chicken and the mince is great providing you cook it slow. My older son and I are fussy with meat so I stay away from ‘quick cook’ meat recipes and generally choose chicken, fish, prawn or veggie. I do find the veg can be a bit limited so I tend to have my own in a different fridge drawer or frozen to add where we fancy.

If I didn’t work, I’d either not use it or maybe once or twice a week.

I also don’t think saying they’re for basic cooks is fair; those recipes can be a right faff if you don’t know what you’re doing - they often give completely unnecessary steps like mixing things in different bowls. My husband can make them but uses every utensil in the kitchen 🤣 Hello Fresh used to wind me up with the sheer amount of garlic I built up: need one clove? Here have a whole bulb every week to slowly rot in your fridge

Because we love to be judged by people who think always cooking from scratch makes them a morally superior person

I agree - cooking from scratch isn’t superior - just a waste of my precious time