peaname
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 3,390
Aug 16, 2014 23:15:53 GMT
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Post by peaname on Apr 29, 2022 0:44:00 GMT
My 13 year old enjoys cooking and I thought it might be fun to try HelloFresh. We picked 3 meals to serve 4 including a burger that has a premium price on it and with the new customer special the first box was $83. If I continue it looks like it will be $110 per box once I use all of my free meals. The first recipe was pork citrus tacos and I found it to be overly fussy with the prep required. Are all the recipes like this? Does anyone get these consistently? Is convenience your primary motivation? I used to meal plan and cook form scratch so much more but I have a stressful job and two teens who can’t drive yet we have started eating too much restaurant food.
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Post by littlemama on Apr 29, 2022 0:49:45 GMT
I like Home Chef more than Hello Fresh. You can also find some Hone Chef meal kits at Kroger, but we dont think they are as good as the ones you order
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Post by lucyg on Apr 29, 2022 1:03:49 GMT
I used to get HelloFresh boxes, maybe around five years ago? They were about $72 for the 3 meals/4 people option back then, so the price does seem to have gone up quite a bit. Like everything else, I guess. I did enjoy getting the boxes, and we always liked the meals. (Actually I think my son is getting them again now at his house.) Since I’m home during the day, I would look at the recipes early in the day and sometimes do some prep work in advance. Sometimes I would make minor changes (add more veggies, that kind of thing). And I was impressed that there was almost always one full serving left over for the next day … there were three of us and I had kind of thought we’d eat it all, but we didn’t. Nice size portions. If this is the same thing you’re talking about: sometimes it does seem like they include extra ingredients/seasonings/steps that aren’t really needed, but I figure they think it jacks up the “interesting-ness” a bit. Whatever. Sometimes I skipped things I thought were unnecessary, just as sometimes I added things I thought were needed. But I had the time for that. I think it’s probably a good basic choice for helping a teen boy learn to cook. That’s pretty much what my son is using them for, and he’s a grown man whose mother didn’t raise him right. Maybe if you have time the night before, you can go over the card with him and point out possible time-savers or things to skip? The reason I quit getting them was I started feeling stressed about getting all the meals made each week. I always have a million excuses for not cooking. Also the boxes were piling up in my garage. Eventually I let it go, but I might go back some day.
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Post by katiescarlett on Apr 29, 2022 1:10:07 GMT
We've used Hello Fresh on several occasions for a few months at a time. We enjoy the meals but it does start to get pricey so we will stop and then they will offer you more free and reduced meals to come back and we will for a while.
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milocat
Drama Llama
Posts: 5,570
Location: 55 degrees north in Alberta, Canada
Mar 18, 2015 4:10:31 GMT
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Post by milocat on Apr 29, 2022 1:22:17 GMT
I've got them twice with a great coupon (because it's $$$$ in Canadian dollars). I got it to try and get some new recipe ideas. Thought the preportioned stuff would be good, not wasteful buying if we didn't love the recipe and something different to us was in there.
I cook every night from scratch, so I know how to cook & follow recipes. I don't care for the way the recipes are written. They are all 6 steps, last step is always how to plate it. If there is rice/quinoa/etc they waste a whole step on bring water to boil, once water is boiling, add rice and turn......very detailed. Then cram the rest of the recipe in 4 steps, with multiple things in each step in paragraph form. The few things we really loved I have rewritten the recipe, still probably only 6ish steps but in a more logical spaced out order.
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Post by buddysmom on Apr 29, 2022 1:30:57 GMT
I did Hello Fresh for about two months last year. I did two (or three, whichever the minimum was) meals per week for two people. It was about $25 per meal. I am NOT a cook/chef, etc. I like EASY. They would say about how long things would take and once I chopped, mixed, and opened every...single... tiny... container it took about double the time. Plus for instance they would have two 4-oz chicken cutlets with about six potatoes for two people. But I thought the dinners tasted really good.
On the ones that I liked, I kept and tweaked the recipes so that I can make them much easier/cheaper/quicker than their recipes were.
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quiltz
Drama Llama
Posts: 6,840
Location: CANADA
Jun 29, 2014 16:13:28 GMT
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Post by quiltz on Apr 29, 2022 2:03:05 GMT
Also the boxes were piling up in my garage. The food bank close to me takes those special insulated boxes to keep produce fresh for clients. Please donate these boxes as they will be used several times over.
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Post by lucyg on Apr 29, 2022 2:22:21 GMT
Also the boxes were piling up in my garage. The food bank close to me takes those special insulated boxes to keep produce fresh for clients. Please donate these boxes as they will be used several times over. Great idea, thanks. I’ll call them.
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Post by scraphollie27 on Apr 29, 2022 2:26:38 GMT
We get Hello Fresh regularly because I need other people to cook besides me. It’s worked like a charm and my DH has become comfortable cooking because of Hello Fresh. The guilt of wasting it is enough for us to stay home 3/4 nights a week and cook. Bonus that there are veggies involved.
I have always cooked from scratch so I use the recipes as a guideline because sometimes I find the steps don’t make sense and I’ll cut back or add ingredients. My DH follows it to a T.
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Chinagirl828
Drama Llama
Melbourne, Australia
Posts: 6,650
Jun 28, 2014 6:28:53 GMT
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Post by Chinagirl828 on Apr 29, 2022 5:05:55 GMT
We are doing them currently. We were definitely in a food rut. Although my DH eats a decent variety of foods, he had no interest eating anything other than takeaway or basic pastas, so for us it's been a good way to try different things, and get my DH eating more veggies/a more balanced diet. He is involved in choosing the meals each week and we've made a couple of them on our own since we started. The other thing I really like is that cooking is something we are doing together, instead of me alone.
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maryannscraps
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,791
Aug 28, 2017 12:51:28 GMT
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Post by maryannscraps on Apr 29, 2022 11:52:43 GMT
We did HelloFresh for a while to get out of a cooking rut. I really liked the food -- never had a recipe we didn't like. I still make a few things from them. I found that their prep times could be underestimated -- you really had to haul ass to get it on the table in that amount of time. But I liked doing it, and it brought my husband into the kitchen more. He likes to work with me in the kitchen now.
I didn't continue because it served its purpose of getting us out of a rut.
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Post by jeremysgirl on Apr 29, 2022 12:04:30 GMT
I have tried Blue Apron, Sunbasket, Hello Fresh and Home Chef and I hands down prefer Home Chef. First of all, I can customize. Meaning that I can get 2 meals for 2 and 2 meals for 4 one week and then the next get 3 meals for 2 and so on. Second, I like to cook. So I don't mind intense recipes that take time, however, Home Chef has a whole section of quicker, easier meals. I make sure I get one of those a week because there are nights I prefer to keep it simple. Second, people always complain about the price, but I have found in this day and age, especially with the high inflation, it's hard to make a meal for two people with only $20. This way, I get exactly what I need and don't have to buy individual spices or a big package of herbs or a big jar of some kind of sauce in order to make one meal. I like that I don't feel wasteful.
Anyway, I am one of those people with grocery store anxiety so it's hard for me to go shopping. This solves part of that problem because my dinners are covered and Jeremy only has to go to the store for the extra food we need for the week. Plus, I like a huge variety in my meals and this keeps me from having to hunt down recipes and write up grocery lists for him. Giving my brain a break from the administrative work of creative cooking is priceless in my opinion. Especially when you are going through a difficult time. I want to cook. I want to eat good food. I just don't want to have to do the legwork of it. Home Chef allows me to just do the part I enjoy.
All this to say that meal kits have been game changers for me. I am very happy getting a meal kit.
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peaname
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 3,390
Aug 16, 2014 23:15:53 GMT
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Post by peaname on Apr 29, 2022 16:00:36 GMT
I didn’t consider all the other benefits like portion control, forced eating at home and the variety they offer. I will say my son is a picky eater and he ate every bite of the tacos he made including the pickled onions and sour cream crema! I’ll have to try Home Chef too.
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anniebeth24
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 3,716
Jun 26, 2014 14:12:17 GMT
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Post by anniebeth24 on Apr 29, 2022 16:49:51 GMT
We are doing them currently. We were definitely in a food rut. Although my DH eats a decent variety of foods, he had no interest eating anything other than takeaway or basic pastas, so for us it's been a good way to try different things, and get my DH eating more veggies/a more balanced diet. He is involved in choosing the meals each week and we've made a couple of them on our own since we started. The other thing I really like is that cooking is something we are doing together, instead of me alone. This is me and DH. I take responsibility for most things related to food, but "require" him to help when we get a meal kit delivered. It's been a good empty nest activity and I always choose something I'd never think to cook on my own. We generally get one box of 3 meals for 2, one week per month. That's a good balance for us. I have a few freebies from Marley Spoon available. If anyone's interested in trying it out, PM me.
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RosieKat
Drama Llama
PeaJect #12
Posts: 5,538
Jun 25, 2014 19:28:04 GMT
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Post by RosieKat on Apr 29, 2022 19:40:34 GMT
We get Hello Fresh regularly because I need other people to cook besides me. It’s worked like a charm and my DH has become comfortable cooking because of Hello Fresh. The guilt of wasting it is enough for us to stay home 3/4 nights a week and cook. Bonus that there are veggies involved. I have always cooked from scratch so I use the recipes as a guideline because sometimes I find the steps don’t make sense and I’ll cut back or add ingredients. My DH follows it to a T. Same to every bit of this here. It has helped DH understand some basics of cooking. He can't cook squat, but he can make these OK. And from my perspective, it replaces fast food on the nights I'm just stressed or busy. Not getting out 4 little jars of spices and measuring them out, pulling each ingredient and measuring 2 tsp of flour, etc. just makes it so much easier on me mentally. This means I can cook something rather than going out. I know they are generally high sodium and high fat, although some of that is controllable, but I figure they're still better for me than KFC. Are my other from scratch recipes better? Yes, as a general rule. But they are mostly just too much to handle when I'm just on my last leg emotionally (which is a lot these days).
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tracylynn
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,899
Jun 26, 2014 22:49:09 GMT
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Post by tracylynn on Apr 29, 2022 20:00:31 GMT
I started Hello Fresh in March. Got 3 boxes in a row and was drowning in meals. So have put it on hold. I'm think that I might do one box every 2-3 weeks. I like the variety it gives.
The recipes are a little weird sometimes, but I can cook, so I just side eye the recipe then wing it. It usually works out!
I personally love the fact that you don't waste food. Correct portion sizes, etc.
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Post by dewryce on Apr 29, 2022 20:24:59 GMT
I did Hello Fresh for about two months last year. I did two (or three, whichever the minimum was) meals per week for two people. It was about $25 per meal. I am NOT a cook/chef, etc. I like EASY. They would say about how long things would take and once I chopped, mixed, and opened every...single... tiny... container it took about double the time. Plus for instance they would have two 4-oz chicken cutlets with about six potatoes for two people.But I thought the dinners tasted really good. On the ones that I liked, I kept and tweaked the recipes so that I can make them much easier/cheaper/quicker than their recipes were. Do you mean 6 full potatoes or 6 small ones? Because that seems like a serving if they are decent sized ‘small’ potatoes. Or am I misunderstanding the issue. That wouldn’t be new
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Post by leannec on Apr 29, 2022 20:25:21 GMT
I subscribe to a Canadian meal delivery company called Chefs Table and I really like it ... I'm single and I was getting lazy about cooking "real food" so this has been great ... I get two meals every week ... The prep work is time consuming but I have always been a slow cook Actually cooking the recipes is simple Because my meals feed two, I always have leftovers ...
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